Kristen Rogheh Ghodsee (born April 26, 1970) is an American ethnographer and Professor of Russian and East European Studies at theUniversity of Pennsylvania.[1] She is primarily known for her ethnographic work onpost-CommunistBulgaria as well as being a contributor to the field ofpostsocialistgender studies.[2] She was critical of the role of Western feministnongovernmental organizations doing work among East European women in the 1990s. She has also examined the shifting gender relations of Muslim minorities after Communist rule,[3] the intersections of Islamic beliefs and practices with the ideological remains ofMarxism–Leninism,[4]communist nostalgia, the legacies ofMarxist feminism,[5] and the intellectual history ofutopianism.[6]
In 2021, Ghodsee was an invited professor at the Center for History atSciences Po in Paris, France.[18] In July 2022, she was appointed the chair of the Department of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.[19]
In 2004, Ghodsee published one of the first articles considering the gendered aspects of the growingCommunist nostalgia in Eastern Europe.[20] Already beginning in the late 1990s, various scholars were examining the phenomenon ofOstalgie in formerEast Germany and what had been calledYugo-nostalgia in the successor states of the formerSocialist Yugoslavia.[21] This earlier work on the emergence of Communist nostalgia focused on its consumer aspects and considered the phenomenon a necessary phase thatpost-Communist populations needed to pass through in order to fully break with their Communist pasts.[22] In contrast, her concept of "red nostalgia" considered how individual men and women experienced the loss of the real material benefits of the socialist past.[23][24] Rather than just a wistful glance back at a lost youth, red nostalgia formed the basis of an emerging critique of the political and economic upheavals that characterized thepostsocialist era.[25][26]
Ghodsee has explored the politics ofpublic memory aboutCommunist states,World War II, and theHolocaust in Bulgaria.[27][28] According to Ghodsee, theVictims of Communism Memorial Foundation is aconservativeanti-communist organization which seeks to equatecommunism with murder such as by erecting billboards in Times Square which declare "100 years, 100 million killed" and "Communism kills."[29] Ghodsee posits that the foundation, along with counterpart conservative organizations in Eastern Europe, seeks to institutionalize the "Victims of Communism" narrative as adouble genocide theory, or the moral equivalence between theNazi Holocaust (race murder) and the victims of Communism (class murder).[29][30] Ghodsee argues the 100 million estimate favored by the foundation is dubious, as their source for this is the controversial introduction toThe Black Book of Communism byStéphane Courtois.[29] She also said that this effort by anti-communist conservative organizations has intensified, in particular during the2008 financial crisis for commemoration of the latter in Europe, and can be seen as the response by economic and political elites to fears of aleftist resurgence in the face of devastated economies and extremeeconomic inequality in both the East and West as the result of the excesses ofneoliberalcapitalism. Ghodsee argued that any discussion of the achievements under Communist states, including literacy, education, women's rights, and social security is usually silenced, and any discourse on the subject of communism is focused almost exclusively on Stalin's crimes and thedouble genocide theory.[30]
In her 2017 bookRed Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism, Ghodsee posits that the triumphalist attitudes of Western powers at the end of theCold War, and the fixation with linking all leftist andsocialist political ideals with the horrors ofStalinism, allowed neoliberalism to fill the void, which undermined democratic institutions and reforms, leaving a trail of economic misery, unemployment, hopelessness and rising inequality throughout the formerEastern Bloc and much of the West in the following decades that has fueled the rise of extremistright-wing nationalism in both the former and the latter. She says that the time has come "to rethink the democratic project and finally do the work necessary to either rescue it from the death grip of neoliberalism, or replace it with a new political ideal that leads us forward to a new stage of human history."[31]
Ghodsee's later work combines traditional ethnography with a literary sensibility, employing the stylistic conventions of creative nonfiction to produce academic texts that are meant to be accessible to a wider audience.[32] Inspired by the work ofClifford Geertz and the conventions of "thick description", she is a proponent of "literary ethnography."[33] This genre uses narrative tension, dialogue and lyrical prose in the presentation of ethnographic data. Furthermore, Ghodsee argues that literary ethnographies are often "documentary ethnographies", i.e. ethnographies whose primary purpose is to explore the inner working of a particular culture without necessarily subsuming these observations to a specific theoretical agenda.[34]
Ghodsee's third book,Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life After Communism, combines personal ethnographic essays with ethnographic fiction to paint a human portrait of the political and economic transition from Communist rule.[35] While some reviewers have found the book "compelling and highly readable",[36] and "an enchanting, deeply intimate and experimental ethnographic narrative",[37] others have faulted the book for telling a story "at the expense of theory."[38] That the book was judged "remarkably free of academic jargon and neologisms"[39] produced very "mixed feelings"[38] within the scholarly community, with one critic stating that "the somewhat unconventional technique of incorporating fiction alongside her [Ghodsee's] ethnographic vignettes feels a bit forced."[40] Outside of academia, however, one reviewer claimed thatLost in Transition "is very easy to read and is, in fact, impossible to put down, largely because it is so well-written."[41]
Ghodsee's 2010 book,Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity and the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria was awarded the 2010 BarbaraHeldt Prize for the best book,[42] by a woman in Slavic/Eurasian/East European Studies,[43] the 2011 Harvard University/Davis Center Book Prize[44] from the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, the 2011 John D. Bell Book Prize[45] from the Bulgarian Studies Association and the 2011 William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology[46] from the Society for the Anthropology of Europe[47] of theAmerican Anthropological Association.[48]
Ghodsee won the 2011 Ethnographic Fiction Prize[49] from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology for the short story "Tito Trivia," included in her book,Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life After Communism.[50] Together with co-author, Charles Dorn, Ghodsee was awarded the 2012 Best Article Prize from the History of Education Society (HES) for the article in the journalDiplomatic History: “The Cold War Politicization of Literacy: UNESCO, Communism, and the World Bank.”[51] In 2012, she won a John SimonGuggenheim Fellowship for her work in anthropology and cultural studies.[52][53][54]
In a 2014 essay in theEuropean Journal of Women's Studies, philosopher Nanette Funk included Ghodsee among a handful of "Revisionist Feminist Scholars" who uncritically tout the achievements of communist-era women's organizations, ignoring the oppressive nature of authoritarian regimes inEastern Europe.[55] Funk argued that the "Feminist Revisionists" are too eager in their "desire to find women’s agency in an anti-capitalist Marxist past" and that this "leads to distortions" and "making overly bold claims" about the possibilities for feminist activism under Communist states.[56]
In response, Ghodsee asserts that her scholarship seeks to expand the idea of feminism beyond the attainment of "personal self-actualization", asserting that "if the goal of feminism is to improve women's lives, along with eliminating discrimination and promoting equality with men, then there is ample room to reconsider whatKrassimira Daskalova calls the 'women-friendly' policies of state socialist women's organizations". She notes that "the goal of much recent scholarship on state socialist women's organizations is to show how the communist ideology could lead to real improvements in women's literacy, education, professional training, as well as access to health care, the extension of paid maternity leave, and a reduction of their economic dependence on men (facts that even Funk does not deny)".[57]
Ghodsee identifies herself as being of "Puerto Rican-Persian" heritage.[58] Her father wasPersian, and her motherPuerto Rican. Ghodsee grew up inSan Diego. While attending university she met and married aBulgarian law student. She is the mother of one teenage daughter.
Kristen R. Ghodsee,Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023.ISBN978-1982190217
Kristen Ghodsee,Red Valkyries: Feminist Lessons from Five Revolutionary Women. New York and London: Verso Books, 2022.ISBN978-1839766602
Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell A. Orenstein,Taking Stock of Shock: Social Consequences of the 1989 Revolutions. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.ISBN978-0197549247
Kristen R. Ghodsee,Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War, Durham,Duke University Press, 2019.ISBN978-1478001812
"Pressuring the Politburo: The Committee of the Bulgarian Women's Movement and State Socialist Feminism,"[60]Slavic Review, Volume 73, Number 2, Fall 2014.
"Subtle Censorships: Notes on Studying Bulgarian Women's Lives Under Communism,"[61]Journal of Women's History: Beyond the Page, Fall 2012
"Feminism-by-Design: Emerging Capitalisms, Cultural Feminism and Women's Nongovernmental Organizations in Post-Socialist Eastern Europe,"[62]Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Spring 2004 (Vol. 29, No. 3)
"Socialist Secularism: Gender, Religion and Modernity in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, 1946-1989" with Pam Ballinger,Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History, Vol. 5: 6–27
Ghodsee, Kristen (January–February 2010). "Revisiting the United Nations decade for women: Brief reflections on feminism, capitalism and Cold War politics in the early years of the international women's movement".Women's Studies International Forum.33 (1):3–12.doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2009.11.008.
"Minarets after Marx: Islam, Communist Nostalgia, and the Common Good in Postsocialist Bulgaria."East European Politics & Societies, November 2010 24: 520–542
"Left Wing, Right Wing, Everything: Xenophobia, Neo-totalitarianism and Populist Politics in Contemporary Bulgaria",[63]Problems of Post-Communism, (Vol. 55, No. 3 May–June 2008)
"Religious Freedoms versus Gender Equality: Faith-Based Organizations, Muslim Minorities and Islamic Headscarves in Modern Bulgaria,"Social Politics, (Vol. 14, No. 4, 2007)
^"Kristen R. Ghodsee"(PDF).University of Pennsylvania.Ph.D. - UC Berkeley [C. Phil with Academic Distinction] Social and Cultural Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality; M.A. - UC Berkeley, Social and Cultural Studies; B.A. - UC Santa Cruz, Literature (Creative Writing) [with Honors] and Theatre Arts [Graduated with Honors from Merrill College]
^Berdahl, Daphne (2000). ""Go, Trabi, Go!": Reflections on a Car and Its Symbolization over Time".Anthropology and Humanism.25 (2):131–141.doi:10.1525/ahu.2000.25.2.131.
^From Notes to Narrative: Writing Ethnographies that Everyone Can Read. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016
^Tsao, Eugenia (2011-12-09). "Walking the Walk: On the Epistemological Merits of Literary Ethnography".Anthropology and Humanism.36 (2):178–192.doi:10.1111/j.1548-1409.2011.01091.x.
^Jung, Yuson (2012). "Project MUSE – Lost In Transition: Ethnographies of the Everyday Life After Communism (review)".Anthropological Quarterly.85 (2):587–592.doi:10.1353/anq.2012.0032.S2CID144736571.
^abOustinova-Stjepanovic, Galina (2013-02-06). "Lost in transition. Ethnographies of everyday life after communism by Ghodsee, Kristen".Social Anthropology.21 (1):104–106.doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12004_9.
^Castro, A. Peter. "Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism."Journal of International and Global Studies, vol. 9, no. 2, June 2018, pp. 146+.Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A565970268/AONE?u=wikipedia&sid=ebsco&xid=d7773e1c. Accessed 12 July 2022.
Kristen Ghodsee reads fromLost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life After Communism onThe World
Headscarves as Politics: Gender, Islam and Shifting Discourses of Social Justice in the Balkans, apublic lectureArchived 2010-06-10 at theWayback Machine at Indiana University
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