Book Talk: Anna Dobrowolska, Polish Sexual Revolutions: Negotiating Sexuality and Modernity behind the Iron Curtain
Drawing on her recent monograph, Anna Dobrowolska examines how state socialism shaped sexual discourses and intimate lives between 1945 and 1989. Challenging conventional narratives of East Central Europe as merely "catching up" with the West, her work highlights alternative histories of sexual modernity and liberation, while shedding light on the historical roots of current debates on sex education, LGBTQ+ rights, and gender equality.
- Beginning:
- Thursday, 29 October 2026 14:15
Book Talk with Anna Dobrowolska (Basel) - moderated by Jacqueline Nießer (IOS, Regensburg)
Abstract
Polish Sexual Revolutions: Negotiating Sexuality and Modernity behind the Iron Curtain studies the history of sexuality in state-socialist Poland in its European and global context, focusing on how communism transformed both sexual discourses and intimate practices between 1945 and 1989. It reconfigures our understanding of the sexual revolution, departing from the case study of Poland to complicate our understanding of ‘sexual modernity’ and ‘progress’. Engaging with the most recent scholarship on sexuality in East Central Europe, the monograph reassesses the role played by communist states in modernising their citizens’ approaches to sex. Contrary to the stereotype which perceives East Central Europe as ‘lagging behind’ the West in sexual matters and having to ‘catch up’ after 1989, the book sheds light on the ambiguous histories of state-socialist entanglements with sex to showcase alternative visions of sexual liberation. By focusing on forgotten genealogies of discussions of sexuality, the monograph historicizes the roots of contemporary debates on sex education, LGBTQ+, and women’s rights in the region.
Anna Dobrowolska is a postdoctoral assistant at the Department of History, University of Basel. She holds a DPhil in history from the University of Oxford, and her research focuses on the history of sexuality, visual culture, and gender under state socialism. Between 2021 and 2024 she was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, an EUI-IHEID Fellow at the Geneva Graduate Institute, and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Warsaw. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Women's History, Rethniking History,and Aspasia. In 2024, she received the Polish Science Foundation's START Fellowship for young researchers.
The film screening (27.10.) and book talk are an initiative of the Equal Opportunity Representatives of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies and is open to everyone interested in the topic.
Location:
GS OSESUR, Landshuter Straße 4, 93047 Regensburg, Room 017
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