CFP: Baltic Sexualities in Global Perspective

Deadline: September 15, 2024

Baltic Study Group 

VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

Baltic Sexualities in Global Perspective

31 October – 1 November 2024

The conference aims to bring together scholars from various disciplines who explore, theorise, and seek to address historical, social, legal, and political aspects of sexuality (of any historical period) within the  present day territories of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Sexuality is broadly defined as a range of emotional, physical, and psychological dimensions, characteristics, behaviours, and attractions that relate to a person’s sexual orientation, sexual activity, sexual identity, and sexual desires. Sexuality can involve, but is not limited to, sexual orientation (such as LGBTQ+ and/or asexuality), romantic attraction, and experiences of intimacy and pleasure. In addition, sexuality is inextricably linked to social/cultural norms and values, as well as legal and medical knowledge production.  

Focusing on the region that comprises present-day Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, this conference seeks to examine Baltic sexualties in transnational and global perspective. The prevalence of multiethnic and multilingual societies, significant diaspora populations, and the region’s historic reputation as a borderland and space of heightened mobility make the Baltic lands particularly fruitful for exploring transfers and exchange across borders, as well as the impact of competing cultural, social, and political ideas upon sexualities. 

We take inspiration from a broad range of scholarly work that addresses the transnational exchanges and various aspects of sexuality in a broader CEE context, such as: family planning (Ku?ma-Markowska & Ignaciuk, 2020), rights and sexual politics (Gradskova, Kondakov, and Shevtsova, 2020), sex education (Jarska, 2023), (sexual) knowledge production (Lišková, & Fisher, 2024), sex trafficking (Kligman & Limoncelli 2005), sex work (Whitehead, & Demirdirek, 2004), and the gay and lesbian press (Szulc, 2018). We invite contributions exploring transnational flows in historical perspective (e.g. pan-Baltic in the Russian imperial/Soviet context, or between the Baltics and the USSR/socialist world/West), as well as  contemporary studies of connections between the Baltic States and the ‘East’, ’West’ or ‘the Third’ worlds under the broad theme of sexuality. 

We invite submissions of  250-word abstracts for 15-minute papers to be delivered on Zoom at the online conference. We are interested in receiving proposals from scholars working within a wide range of disciplines including, but not limited to:

History

Politics and International Relations 

Sociology and Anthropology

Psychology

Media and Communications

Legal Studies

Art, Music, and Literature

Contributions may address or go beyond the following themes:

Rethinking chronologies and timelines of sexual ‘revolutions’

Entanglements between the global and the local contexts

Competing forms of knowledge production

Sexuality and (non)normativity

Sexuality and procreation

Sexual health and sex education 

Mobilities 

Sexual rights and global politics

Please send abstracts and a short biographical note to Rasa Kamarauskaite rasa.kamarauskaite.15@ucl.ac.uk by 15 September 2024. 

References

Gradskova, Y., Kondakov A., and Shevtsova, M. (2020). Post-socialist Revolutions of Intimacy. Sexuality & Culture, 24, 359-370.

Jarska, N. (2023). Polish Experts in School-based Sex Education and the West: Exchanging Ideas through the IPPF (1956–1989). Contemporary European History, 1-14.

Kligman, G., & Limoncelli, S. (2005). Trafficking women after socialism: From, to, and through Eastern Europe. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, 12(1), 118-140.

Ku?ma-Markowska, S., & Ignaciuk, A. (2020). Family planning advice in state-socialist Poland, 1950s–80s: Local and transnational exchanges. Medical History, 64(2), 240-266.

Lišková, K., & Fisher, K. (2024). Sexual Knowledge and Expertise in Europe’s East: Transnational Exchanges. Contemporary European History, 1-5.

Szulc, L. (2018). Transnational homosexuals in communist Poland: Cross-border flows in gay and lesbian magazines. Springer International Publishing.

Whitehead, J., & Demirdirek, H. (2004). Introduction: Sexual encounters, migration and desire in post-socialist context (s). Focaal, 2004(43), 1-13.

Zippel, K. (2004). Transnational advocacy networks and policy cycles in the European Union: The case of sexual harassment. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 11(1), 57-85.