Kristen Ghodsee facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Kristen Ghodsee
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Kristen Ghodsee in 2011
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Kristen Rogheh Ghodsee
April 26, 1970 |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater |
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| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Ethnography Gender theory Feminism Utopianism Anthropology |
| Institutions | University of Pennsylvania |
Kristen Rogheh Ghodsee, born on April 26, 1970, is an American expert who studies cultures and societies. She is a Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
She is well-known for her work on Bulgaria after the fall of Communism. She also contributes to the study of how gender roles changed after socialist rule. Dr. Ghodsee has looked at how Muslim communities' gender relations shifted after Communist rule. She also studies how Islamic beliefs mix with ideas from Marxism–Leninism. Her work includes looking at communist nostalgia, the history of Marxist feminism, and the idea of utopianism.
Contents
Kristen Ghodsee's Academic Journey
Dr. Ghodsee earned her first degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She then received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
She has received many important research grants and fellowships. These include awards from the National Science Foundation and Fulbright. She has also been a visiting scholar at top institutions. These include the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Harvard University.
In 2012, she was chosen to be the president of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. In 2021, Dr. Ghodsee was a visiting professor in Paris, France. In July 2022, she became the head of the Russian and East European Studies Department at the University of Pennsylvania.
Exploring Life After Communism
Understanding "Red Nostalgia"
In 2004, Dr. Ghodsee wrote one of the first articles about how people in Eastern Europe felt a growing sense of Communist nostalgia. This feeling is sometimes called Ostalgie in former East Germany. It is also known as Yugo-nostalgia in countries that used to be part of Yugoslavia.
Earlier studies often saw this nostalgia as a simple longing for the past. They thought it was a phase people needed to go through. But Dr. Ghodsee's idea of "red nostalgia" looked deeper. She explored how people missed the real benefits they had under socialism. These benefits included things like jobs and social support. She argued that this feeling was not just about missing youth. It was also a way to criticize the big economic changes that happened after Communism ended.
Public Memory and History
Dr. Ghodsee has also studied how countries remember their past. She looked at how Communist states, World War II, and the Holocaust in Bulgaria are remembered. She has discussed how some groups try to connect Communism with mass killings. For example, she mentions billboards that say "100 years, 100 million killed."
Dr. Ghodsee believes that some groups want to make people think that the Nazi Holocaust and the victims of Communism are the same. She questions the number of 100 million deaths often linked to Communism. She says this number comes from a debated source. She argues that these efforts increased during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. She thinks it was a way for leaders to stop people from supporting leftist ideas. This was happening as economies struggled and inequality grew.
She points out that good things achieved under Communist states are often ignored. These include better literacy, education, women's rights, and social security. Instead, discussions about Communism often focus only on crimes by leaders like Stalin.
In her 2017 book, Red Hangover, Dr. Ghodsee suggests that Western countries were too proud after the Cold War. They linked all socialist ideas to the bad parts of Stalinism. This allowed a system called neoliberalism to take over. This system, she argues, hurt democracy and led to economic problems. It caused job losses, hopelessness, and more inequality. This has helped extreme right-wing nationalism grow. She believes it's time to rethink our ideas about democracy. We need to find new ways to move forward in human history.
Writing About Cultures
Dr. Ghodsee's recent work combines traditional study of cultures with a storytelling style. She uses creative writing to make her academic books easier to read for everyone. She calls this "literary ethnography." This style uses stories, conversations, and descriptive writing to share information about cultures. She believes these writings can explore a culture without pushing a specific theory.
Her third book, Lost in Transition, mixes personal stories and fiction. It shows a human side of the changes after Communist rule. Some people have found the book "compelling and highly readable." Others have said it tells a story "at the expense of theory." While some liked that it was "remarkably free of academic jargon," others had "mixed feelings." Outside of universities, one reviewer said the book was "very easy to read" and "impossible to put down."
Awards and Recognition
Dr. Ghodsee's 2010 book, Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe, won several awards. These include the Barbara Heldt Prize and the Harvard University/Davis Center Book Prize. It also won the John D. Bell Book Prize and the William A. Douglass Prize.
In 2011, she won the Ethnographic Fiction Prize for her short story "Tito Trivia." This story was part of her book, Lost in Transition. In 2012, she and Charles Dorn won the Best Article Prize from the History of Education Society. This was for their article "The Cold War Politicization of Literacy." Also in 2012, she received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. This award recognized her work in anthropology and cultural studies.
Views on Feminist Studies
In 2014, a philosopher named Nanette Funk wrote an essay. She included Dr. Ghodsee among scholars who, she felt, praised women's groups from the Communist era too much. Funk argued that these "Feminist Revisionists" were too eager to find women's power in a Marxist past. She felt this led to "distortions" and "overly bold claims" about what feminist action could achieve under Communist rule.
Dr. Ghodsee responded to this. She said her work aims to broaden the idea of feminism. She believes that if feminism's goal is to make women's lives better, then we should look at all policies that helped women. She points out that Communist states had policies that improved women's literacy, education, and job training. They also offered paid maternity leave and reduced women's financial dependence on men. She notes that even Funk agrees these improvements happened.
About Kristen Ghodsee's Life
Dr. Ghodsee describes herself as having "Puerto Rican-Persian" heritage. Her father was Persian, and her mother was Puerto Rican. She grew up in San Diego. While in college, she met and married a Bulgarian law student. She is a mother to one teenage daughter.
Books by Kristen Ghodsee
- Kristen R. Ghodsee, Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023. ISBN: 978-1982190217
- Kristen Ghodsee, Red Valkyries: Feminist Lessons from Five Revolutionary Women. New York and London: Verso Books, 2022. ISBN: 978-1839766602
- Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell A. Orenstein, Taking Stock of Shock: Social Consequences of the 1989 Revolutions. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. ISBN: 978-0197549247
- Kristen R. Ghodsee, Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War, Durham, Duke University Press, 2019. ISBN: 978-1478001812
- Kristen Ghodsee, Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism, Durham, Duke University Press, 2017. ISBN: 978-0822369493
- Kristen Ghodsee, From Notes to Narrative: Writing Ethnographies that Everyone Can Read. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. ISBN: 978-0226257556
- Kristen Ghodsee, The Left Side of History: World War II and the Unfulfilled Promise of Communism in Eastern Europe, Durham, Duke University Press, 2015. ISBN: 978-0822358350
- Kristen Ghodsee, Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life After Communism, Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. ISBN: 978-0822351023
- Kristen Ghodsee, Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity and the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-0691139555
- Kristen Ghodsee, 'The Red Riviera: Gender, Tourism and Postsocialism on the Black Sea, Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. ISBN: 978-0822336624
- Rachel Connelly and Kristen Ghodsee, Professor Mommy: Finding Work/Family Balance in Academia, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011. ISBN: 978-1442208582
Important Articles
- "Pressuring the Politburo: The Committee of the Bulgarian Women's Movement and State Socialist Feminism," Slavic Review, Volume 73, Number 2, Fall 2014.
- "Rethinking State Socialist Mass Women's Organizations: The Committee of the Bulgarian Women's Movement and the United Nations Decade for Women, 1975–1985", Journal of Women's History, Volume 24, Number 4, Winter 2012.
- "Subtle Censorships: Notes on Studying Bulgarian Women's Lives Under Communism," 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," 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
- "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", 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)
- "Red Nostalgia? Communism, Women's Emancipation, and Economic Transformation in Bulgaria," L'Homme: Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft (Journal for Feminist History), Spring 2004 (Vol. 15, No. 1/2004).
- "And if the Shoe Doesn't Fit? (Wear it Anyway?): Economic Transformation and Western Paradigm of 'Women in Development' in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe", Women's Studies Quarterly, Fall & Winter 2003 (Vol. 31, No. 3 & 4)
- Revisiting 1989: The Specter Still Haunts, Dissent Magazine, Spring 2012
- "Коса ("Hair" in Bulgarian) разказ от Кристен Ghodsee
- "Tito Trivia" Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 37, No. 1, June 2012: 105–108.
- "What Has Socialism Ever Done For Women?" (with Julia Mead) Catalyst. Vol. 2, No. 2, Summer 2018. 100-133
See also
- Anti anti-communism
- Gender roles in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe
Images for kids
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Kristen Ghodsee in 2011
