Personal reflections
Thank you Laura for your kind words about my presentation, you have helped me re-frame my thoughts on Glos Polek! I loved your insights related to the Cold War. This question you posed: for women in Poland, to what extent were Polish female identity and Polish women’s attitudes to migration shaped by Cold War political tensions? Will probably inspire the angle of my dissertation topic, honestly! I feel like this is a fascinating subtopic.
Also thank you for the reading suggestion, I will look into it! Your comments have made me realize that within my study of Polish women, I have been focusing a lot on the theoretical and interdisciplinary aspects of the field, such as social reproduction and sociology. But in this focus, I may have failed to zoom out properly onto the wider history and tensions of the time that informed the experiences of Polish women. I think I definitely need to zoom out to properly zoom back in if that makes sense? I also want to implement some of the comments on my presentations from Dr Struck into my long essay such as how my research enhances the field, changes, and challenges the chronology with regard to gender and migration. I feel like I have recently been trying to fit my research into the current direction of the field rather than making my own additions, so I will work on that.
Comments on other presentations
George – I loved your presentation on transnational environmental movements starting with the global sixties. I found the structure of your presentation and the confidence with which you spoke very engaging. I’m impressed by how slowly and comprehensively you spoke, this is something I struggle with! I was impressed by your honesty in reflections on the project proposal, specifically how you will take a more socio-political than emotive approach. I know in my own project there is so much interdisciplinary potential, as in your case it’s anthropological reading. So I understand your dilemma of using different fields and then bringing them back to the study of history. I also learned and considered a lot that I hadn’t before, such as how environmental disasters are a transnational rather than national issue, and how motherhood was related to reasons for protesting. I’m so excited to see where your essay takes you!
Avery – I was looking forward to your presentation after our discussions in the unconference, and your presentation on female dissent in the British Empire: understanding ideologies of resistance for the double subaltern did not disappoint! I also engaged with postcolonial theory and subaltern studies in my short essay! I definitely agree that even if you are doing a case study on Ireland and India that you should read about different places to understand connected histories. The discussion on understanding hunger strikes as either violent versus non-violent forms of protest really interested me. I’m all for breaking out of black and white binaries and investigating the gray area, as you mentioned. I was wondering what are the types of primary sources you are going to use, and if there are many to choose from? Will they be personal accounts, government or organization documents, etc? I’m eager to hear all about this!