Shana Penn will discuss her award-winning book, Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland, focusing on how oppositionists manipulated gender conventions to disarm the communist system, while ultimately returning to traditional gender assumptions in the wake of their 1989 democratic victory. These tactics and assumptions find precedents in anti-Nazi resistance efforts during the German occupation of Poland, and in late 19th century underground activism against Czarist rule during the partition era. Penn will also discuss with us the excitement of studying a recent past whose revelations influenced present-day Polish society, touching on themes such as activist history and recent events such as Czarny Protest.
