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WHM Event: Women Political Prisoners and Socialism

A discussion on gendered pain, body and the state

Location

On Campus : Women's Center

Date & Time

March 12, 2015, 2:00 pm3:00 pm

Description

In recognition of Women's History Month, Dr. Jana Kopelentova Rehak of the UMBC Anthropology Department presents Women Political Prisoners and Socialism in Czechoslovakia: Gendered Pain, Body and the State. Please join us for this lecture and discussion in the Women's Center on Thursday, March 12th at 2pm.

More about the event:

In Czechoslovakia in 1948 political others became political prisoners. Women and men disappeared, were arrested, tortured and sentenced to prisons and labor camps. During their imprisonment political prisoners were subjected to continuous interrogations shaped by physical and psychological torture. Gendered pain holds a significant place in their torture narratives. The inflicted pain by the state on prisoner's bodies and the concepts of cruelty were constructed by culturally shaped ideas in particular to male or female body. In my presentation I will address different forms of psychological pain remember by Czech women prisoners and relate such to current anthropological understanding of pain and social suffering.