Special Issue: East-South Interaction in the Global Sixties through the Lens of Gender

The Global Sixties: An Interdisciplinary Journal is inviting submissions for a special thematic issue focusing on Global East-Global South relations during the "long sixties" (circa mid-1950s to mid-1970s), with an emphasis on women's and gender history.

Recent scholarship has explored the Second World-Third World interactions during the Cold War era, challenging the conventional perspective on “closed” societies of the communist world. It has demonstrated that Eastern European and Soviet actors engaged in varied interactions with the Global South, ranging from cultural diplomacy to political and economic cooperation. Yet, with a few notable exceptions (e.g. works by Kristen Ghodsee, Yulia Gradskova and Francisca de Haan), the issues of women and gender have been underrepresented in this scholarship.

This thematic issue aims to open new conversations regarding the exchange of ideas related to gender roles and gender equality between the Global East (defined as any member state of the Eastern Bloc, the Soviet Union, Albania, and Yugoslavia) and the Global South (referring to countries then classified as “developing” or “Third World.”)

We invite contributions that present perspectives from Eastern Europe about the Global South and/or Global South perspectives on Eastern Europe.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Female leaders’ transnational diplomacy between East and South.

• Interactions between women’s activists and organizations, and their representation in public narratives.

• International events, such as festivals, conferences, and other gatherings that involved women from the Second and Third World.

• Narratives, memoirs, or travelogues of women from the Global South visiting Eastern Europe and/or Eastern European women visiting the Global South.

• Media representations generated by transnational encounters, particularly in relation to gender, class, and ethnicity/race.

• Expressions of transnational solidarity but also of Eurocentrism and Orientalism in East-South women’s encounters.

• The circulation of feminist ideas between the East and South, including reactions to and perceptions of contemporary Western feminism.

• Perceptions of gender and decolonization in Eastern Europe.

• Propagation and/or reception of the socialist model of gender equality in the Global South.

• Debates and attitudes about sexuality and reproductive rights in the context of East-South exchanges.

We are open to any other ideas that involve women and gender within the East-South dynamic during the global sixties.