The public lecture will examine debates over gender and citizenship in interwar Czechoslovakia and put these debates into the wider East-Central European context. It will concentrate on intersections between the private and public realm, as in family and marriage law. It will argue that debates over women’s rights in the Czech lands stemmed from fundamental disagreements over the meaning of democracy and its ties to the Czech nation.
Professor Melissa Feinberg (Rutgers University, USA) is a modern European historian, with particular interests in gender history, Eastern Europe, the history of human rights, political culture, emotions in politics, and the history of feminism. She published two books „Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1950“ (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006) and „Curtain of Lies: The Battle over Truth in Stalinist Eastern Europe“ (Oxford University Press, 2017).
