What roles do sex and sexuality play in Central and Eastern European history? What effect did the region’s tumultuous history have on sexual identities, desires, and practices? How do Central and Eastern European conceptions and practices of sexuality differ from “Western” mythologies of its sexualities?

NOTCHES is seeking short essays (1000-1500 words) exploring histories of sexuality in Central and Eastern Europe. We welcome blog posts, interviews with scholars, archivists, and activists, as well as submissions to our “Archives of Desire” series in which historians reflect on specific primary sources and their value in researching or teaching histories of sexuality.

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23 May 2009 over 100 FEMEN activists, supported by DJ HELL, German DJ and Music label owner, participated in protest “Ukraine is not a Brothel!” against sex tourism and prostitution at Independence Square, Kiev, Ukraine. (Wikimedia Commons)

Possible topics for exploration include:

  • Sex work, human trafficking, and migration
  • Sexual cultures and diaspora
  • Nationalism and sexuality
  • Sex and empire
  • Fascist sexualities
  • Socialist and post-socialist sexualities
  • Sexual violence and war
  • Sexual identities, desires, and fetishes
  • Sexual science, sexology, and sex reform
  • Religion and sexuality

Style and image guidelines:

  • Submissions should be written for a non-specialist and international audience. Therefore, avoid jargon and use hyperlinks wherever possible to clarify terms or concepts that may be unfamiliar to a general readership.
  • Include at least one relevant image for which you have obtained permission and caption your image with clear attribution information. We also welcome your use of a range of sources such as movies or sound files.
  • Include a short author bio including hyperlinks with your submission.
  • For more information see our submission guidelines.

Proposals and queries are most welcome. Send submissions to editor Katya Motyl at kmotyl@uchicago.edu by June 15, 2017. All submissions to NOTCHES will go through an internal peer review process prior to publication.

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Katya Motyl is a PhD candidate in Modern European History at the University of Chicago, as well as a Dissertation Fellow at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS). Her research interests include gender and sexuality in Central and Eastern Europe, feminist theory, embodiment, and the history of emotions. Her dissertation, “Bodies that Shimmer: An Embodied History of Vienna’s New Women, 1893-1931,” traces the experience and performance of new womanhood in Vienna from the fin de siècle to the interwar period. Katya tweets from @k_motyl



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NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at www.notchesblog.com.

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4 Comments

  1. This looks really interesting – I look forward to reading them! Just wanted to check, would you consider Russia in that group? Thanks.

  2. Alysha Zawaduk

    Hi, this is a great idea! I wrote an essay for a graduate seminar (which was titled “gender and society in Ukraine”), and it was about the centrality of nationalism in Ukrainian “feminism” or Ukrainian women’s movements. It’s about 2000 words but I would be able to edit it down. Are you interested at all in academic essays (non-jargony, accessible to non-academic audiences)?

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