This event features a book presentation by Anna Dobrowolska (University of Basel) on the history of sexuality in state-socialist Poland in its European and global contexts, with a focus on how communism transformed both sexual discourses and intimate practices between 1945 and 1989.
We are used to thinking that the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s was an essentially Western phenomenon. The surge in pornographic production, effective oral contraception, and new developments in fashion and popular culture all seem to be inextricably linked with a capitalist economy. Yet little has still been written about the transformations of intimate lives on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Was there a sexual revolution behind the Berlin Wall? And, if so, what areas of social life did it impact? Did women, in the words of Kristen Ghodsee, have better sex under socialism?
During the event, Anna Dobrowolska, the author, will present the book's key arguments and sources, followed by a Q&A session with the audience. Anna will also reflect on the process of rewriting her doctoral dissertation into a monograph during her time as a Max Weber Fellow at the EUI.
Dr 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, Rethinking History, and Aspasia. In 2024, she received the Polish Science Foundation's START Fellowship for young researchers.
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