Tatsiana Shchurko – From Harlem to Tashkent: Rethinking Histories of Socialist Internationalism for Transnational Feminist Solidarities

Tuesday, April 26, 2022 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm CEST/GMT+2 
Online lecture series

In 2006, Esther Cooper Jackson, a renowned Black civil rights activist, social worker, and leftist thinker, participated in a community event in Harlem. Among many things, she also talked about her Cold War-era political activism and underlined that “more and more of us need to become internationalist.” What does this statement mean for transnational feminist solidarities today? How to pick up on Esther Cooper Jackson’s call thoughtfully and ethically? What are the prospects to engage with histories of socialist internationalism for social justice struggles today? To engage with these questions, I return to alternative histories of transnational feminist solidarities rooted in practices of socialist internationalism. Today, many past solidarities associated with the Soviet Union and socialist internationalism have been excluded from transnational feminist inquiry and devalued. However, our current ongoing context of the pandemic, rise of the global right, imperial violence, and authoritarian politics make obvious the transnational interdependencies and raise concerns about the possibility of feminist solidarity and care between distant communities. To approach the contemporary urgencies, I look at the link between past radical struggles in the U.S. and the former second world. In this way, I focus on alternative geographies of connection, togetherness, and solidarity that appear marginal, insignificant, or invisible for conventional historiographies and traditional geographic arrangements. For this talk, I will address why to study the various histories of socialist internationalism and what significance these stories can have for contemporary transnational feminist solidarities.

Tatsiana Shchurko is a researcher and queer feminist activist from Belarus. In 2021, she completed her PhD in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. Her dissertation explores hidden or unclaimed histories of socialist internationalism for their relevance today. Specifically, Tatsiana explores the relations between Black women and state socialist women and “sister cities” solidarities to reevaluate how internationalist ideas and transnational mobility play a fundamental role in producing a sense of agency and resistance to global injustices.

This lecture series is jointly curated by faculty involved in Transnational Feminism, Solidarity, and Social Justice, a new project that offers a sustainable platform for students and professors from OSUN colleges to engage in rigorous academic work, express themselves freely, inspire each other through art, and work closely with local and international initiatives to further the feminist agenda for social justice. 

Other lectures in the Transnational Feminism, Solidarity, and Social Justice lecture series: For information on the Transnational Feminism, Solidarity, and Social Justice lectures from Fall 2021 >>
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