Mediating Post-Socialist Femininities

Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this collection of essays examines the ways in which popular media re-construct ideas and ideals of femininity in the post-socialist cultural space. The authors explore a comprehensive range of questions including: How have post-socialist women engaged with media as media producers and consumers, as well as objects of media representation? What are the consequences of the commodification of femininity in the post-socialist context? How does the female body serve as a battleground for the enactment and renegotiation of gendered identities and ideologies? How can we understand and theorize post-socialist women?s activist movements?

In seeking answers to such questions, this volume highlights the need to reconsider feminism as a political and theoretical project with many faces. It bridges research on the mediation of post-socialist femininities with broader concerns about the transnational trajectories of feminism today.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Feminist Media Studies.

1. Mediating Post-Socialist Femininities: Contested histories and visibilities 2. Becoming Visible in The Digital Age: The class and media dimensions of the Pussy Riot affair 3. Feminine Libidinal Entrepreneurship: Towards a reparative reading of the sponzoruša in turbo folk4. Feminine Voice In Poland: The case of Danuta Wałęsa 5. Watching Pink Reality TV: Gendered commercial ethno-nationalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina 6. Old Title, New Traditions: Negotiating ideals of femininity in Krest’ianka magazine 7. The Egoist Lifestyle: Gender, community, and the "new generation" of post-communist Bulgaria 8. Between Sovietism and Americanization: Ideals of femininity during and after the Cold War in Finland