Week Three (6 February, Old Library)
Primary: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, Chapters 7-9
Supplementary: Mirta Vidal, ‘Chicanas Speak Out, Women: New Voice of La Raza’ (1971)

Week Two (30 January), Old Library)
Primary: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, Chapters 4-6
Supplementary: Kathie Sarahchild, ‘Consciousness Raising: A Radical Weapon’ (1968); Sarachild ‘A Program for Feminist “Consciousness Raising”’ in Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation (1970)

Week One (23 January, Old Library)
Primary: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, Chapters 1-3
Supplementary: Piercy, ‘Woman on the Edge of Time, 40 years on: “Hope is the engine for imagining utopia”’, The Guardian (2016); Carol Hanisch, ‘The Personal Is Political’ in Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation

The talk explores what mistakes were made with regard to the semi-periphery by focusing on two pivotal countries that were mostly left out of the liberal international order (LIO) in the 1990s even though they sought to belong: Russia and Turkey. The LIO never settled on a consistent policy regarding their incorporation. Halfway recognition—or alternating between inclusion and exclusion—is even worse than aloofness or full alienation because it first creates expectations and then creates resentment when those expectations are not met.

Although few could define it, “civilian morale” became one of the twentieth century’s most lethal concepts. In its name, millions of civilians were bombed and starved, as belligerents sought to break enemy morale through air raids and food blockades. How did it become normal to wage war by attacking cities and civilian morale? From the First World War through the Second, ideas and practices surrounding morale and the “home fronts” circulated rapidly in a transnational process.

In this talk, Timo Aava will discuss the history of ways of organising ethnically diverse states. The early twentieth century was a period of intense reform discourse in the Habsburg and Romanov empires and the emergence of nation-states after the end of the First World War. All of these, however, were inhabited by a multitude of nationalities, and the question was how to address this meaningfully to guarantee the internal stability and self-governance of the nationalities.

As global politics shifts toward great-power competition and zero-sum thinking, the European Union faces a stark test of survival. Once built around multilateralism, rules, and win-win integration, the EU now confronts war on its borders, economic pressure from China, and an increasingly unreliable United States. This panel explores whether Europe can adapt to a more hostile world and defend its vital interests without abandoning its core identity and fundamental values.

The question of space has been a crucial one in the development and maintenance of empires, particularly those that claimed and exercised sovereignty over overseas territories. A similar question shaped the experiences of women’s groups and organizations at the end of the empire, in an even more urgent way, as they sought to rebuild the ties between France and its colonies after World War II and the Vichy period. This seminar examines how women’s groups framed their activism across a plurality of spaces – national, imperial, and transnational – between 1945 and the late 1950s.

This paper examines how electoral losers respond to election outcomes, a cornerstone of democratic theory in which regime legitimacy depends on the consent of the losers. Empirically, we focus on Spain, a highly polarized democracy that experienced protests during the 2023 government formation process. We analyse the factors that erode citizens’ willingness to accept electoral defeat, with particular attention to political polarization and its attitudinal consequences. The paper also explores whether electoral loss contributes to the emergence of illiberal attitudes among voters.