International Conference: Queering 20th-Century East Central Europe Archives – Emotions – Histories
Tue 26.05.2026 | 10:03
Prague
The Prague Branch of the German Historical Institute Warsaw (Part of the Max Weber Foundation), in cooperation with the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University in Prague, the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe (Institute of the Leibniz Association), invites scholars to participate in the follow-up conference, which will be held in May 2026 in Prague.
The conference aims to advance and consolidate research on the histories of gender and sexual diversity, queer lives, and LGBTQIA+ experiences in East Central Europe throughout the twentieth century. Although pioneering studies have already opened this field, scholarship on the region remains comparatively limited. The cultural, social, and political trajectories of queer lives in East Central Europe are still only partially integrated into the broader historiography. Shaped by the overlapping legacies of empire, war, authoritarian regimes, state socialism, and post-socialist transition and transformation, these histories complicate linear narratives of progress and call for innovative methodological and comparative approaches.
In Prague, we invite participants to approach these questions through the lenses of archives, emotions, and histories. Attention to secrecy and disclosure, to silences and absences in the archive, and to the affective dimensions of memory and everyday life opens up new ways of writing queer histories in the region. These perspectives not only uncover hidden or suppressed voices but also reimagine the very forms of knowledge and evidence on which queer historiography can be built.
Prof. Ann Cvetkovich (University of Texas at Austin) will deliver the keynote lecture “Feeling My Way through the Archives: A Journey in Queer Method” to frame and inspire our discussions. Her influential work on the archive of feelings and on the intersections of affect, memory, and queer culture has profoundly shaped queer studies and historiography. Therefore, her speech will provide a conceptual anchor for exploring how emotions, archives, and intimate experiences can serve as vital sources for rethinking queer histories in 20th-century East Central Europe.
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Inclusive follow-up event
This conference builds on the preparatory workshop held in Marburg in 2025, where researchers began conceptualizing queer histories in East Central Europe and presented early stages of their projects. In Prague, we seek to carry this conversation forward by bringing the original group into dialogue with a broader community of scholars. Participants from the workshop will present further developed versions of their work, while the conference also invites new contributors whose research is at an advanced stage and ready for publication.
The event is thus conceived as both a continuation and an expansion: it refines the debates initiated in Marburg while opening space for new perspectives, approaches, and case studies. Depending on the range of submissions, the program may combine a workshop-style format with a broader conference setting. The ultimate goal is to situate individual papers within wider historiographical debates and to prepare contributions for a planned special issue(s) or edited volume, reflecting the intellectual directions developed across both events.
Themes and scopes
The conference continues to explore queer lives and identities in East Central Europe across the twentieth century, situating them within broader political, social, and cultural transformations. We invite contributions that address queer experiences in their full diversity, from imperial and interwar contexts through wartime occupations and state socialist regimes to post-socialist transitions and contemporary anti-gender mobilizations, while also addressing the wider social, cultural, and political contexts that shaped them.
This conference is committed to building an inclusive, intellectually open space that supports both emerging and established scholars working across disciplines. We encourage contributions that are methodologically innovative and intersectional in perspective. The event will foster constructive feedback and transnational exchange among researchers engaged in shaping queer historical scholarship in the region.
While in-person participation is strongly encouraged to facilitate informal exchange and networking, hybrid attendance may be possible in selected cases.
Conference language: English
Venue: Prague, Czech Republic
Conference Date: May 26-28, 2026
If you have any inquiries, please contact queerconfe2026@usd.cas.cz.
We look forward to advancing the discourse on queer histories in East Central Europe.
Scientific Board
Dr. Martin Babička, Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Contemporary History
Dr. Anna Dobrowolska, University of Basel
Dr. Jaromír Mrňka, Max Weber Foundation, German Historical Institute Warsaw
Dr. Rasa Navickaitė, Vilnius University
Prof. Dr. Judit Takács, ELTE Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest
Advisory Board
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kateřina Kolářová, Charles University, Faculty of Humanities
Dr. Michal Pitoňák, Charles University, Faculty of Humanities
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Věra Sokolová, Charles University, Faculty of Humanities
Dr. Josef Šebek, Charles University, Faculty of Arts
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The call for papers is now closed. We thank all those who submitted an abstract for their interest.
Registration for participation without a paper: https://forms.gle/MBMrRyHLM6ViTXqF8
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Queering 20th Century East Central Europe
Archives – Emotions – Histories,
Prague, May 26–28, 2026
Venues: Charles University, Faculty of Humanities, Pátkova 2137/5, Praha 8
Laichter House, Chopinova 4, Praha 2
TUESDAY, MAY 26, 2026
13:30–14:00 Registration
14:00–14:10
Opening of the Conference
Welcome by the organizers and partner institutions
14:10–15:25
Panel 1: Archives, Recovery, and Queer Life-Writing (Chair: Judit Takács, ELTE Center for Social Sciences, Budapest)
Barbara Schnalzger (MONAliesA – Feminist Library and Archive, Leipzig)
Archiving Queer Lives: The Herstory of the “Lila Archiv” in East Germany
Paweł Matusz (University of Regensburg)
Where Is Zbigniew P.? An Attempt to Reconstruct an Archive of the Host of Queer Balls in Poznań in the 1960s and 1970s
Dani Carron (European University Institute, Florence)
“Deutschland – Einig Hetenland? [Germany – United Hetero-land?]” Queer Engagements with German Reunification, 1989–1991
15:25–15:45 Coffee break
15:45–17:00
Panel 2: Institutions, Expertise, and the Governance of Sexuality (Chair: Anna Dobrowolska, University of Basel)
Eha Emilia Oras (University of Tallinn)
(Not) the Right Kind of Patient: Expertise, Credibility and Sex-Gender Non-Normativity in Interwar Estonian Medicine
Michał Narożniak (European University Institute, Florence)
Wojciech the Hermaphrodite and Leon Wachholz: Early-Modern Lives, Fin-de-Siècle Forensics, and the Emergence of Gender Identity Category
Flavia Guerrini (University of Innsbruck)
What Survives in a Hostile Archive? Recovering Traces of Queer Youth in the Archives of Child and Youth Welfare
17:00–17:30 Coffee break
17:30–19:00
Keynote Lecture
Welcome by Věra Sokolová, the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University
Ann Cvetkovich (University of Texas at Austin)
Feeling My Way through the Archives: A Journey in Queer Method
WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 2026
10:00–11:15
Panel 3: Sexology, Psychiatry, and Gender Concepts under Socialism (Chair: Věra Sokolová, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague)
Stoyo Tetevenski (Sofia University)
“Gender Self-Esteem”: Gender and Gender Identity in Socialist Bulgaria
Zsófia Anna Veszely (European University Institute)
Queer Comrades: Teenage Friendship and Same-Sex Desire in Hungarian Sex Education during the Cold War
Inxhi Brisku (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
From Prison to Psychiatry: Queer Lives and Medicalization in Socialist Albania
11:15–11:30 Coffee break
11:30–12:45
Panel 4: War, Occupation, and Queer Lives in Extremis (Chair: Jaromír Mrňka, German Historical Institute Warsaw – Prague Branch)
Frédéric Stroh (University of Strasbourg, ARCHE)
Race and Sexuality under Nazism: The History of Slovenian Homosexuals during the Second World War in a Museum Cellar
William Ross Jones (University of Oxford)
Risk(y) Reading: A Reparative Framework of Risk for the Trans Feminine Past
Eugenia Seleznova (Central European University)
"Straightening", Silences, Utilizing "Girlhood": Three Strategies of a Soviet WWII Youth Resistance Member's Queer Story Public Narrations
12:45–14:00 Lunch break
14:00–15:30
Panel 5: Public Discourses and the Making of Queer Modernities (Chair: Rasa Navickaitė, Vilnius University)
Barbara Trojanowska (European University Institute, Florence)
Heartfelt Friends: Women-Loving Women in Habsburg Galicia’s Public Discourse
Judit Takács (ELTE Center for Social Sciences, Budapest), Gábor Csiszár (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)
Queer Intimacies in the Hungarian Popular Press, 1910–1939
Anna Borgos (Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, HUNREN, Budapest)
From Abnormal Sexual Feelings to Rebellious Women: Representations of Women’s Same Sex Attractions in Hungary from the Prewar Years to the State Socialist Period
Denisa Vídeňská (Brno University of Technology)
Caught in the Trap of Representation: Visual Images of Female Homosexuality in Interwar Czechoslovakia
15:30–15:45 Coffee break
15:45–17:00
Panel 6: Cultural Fields, Visuality, and Memory Politics (Chair: Josef Šebek, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague)
Kata Benedek (Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague)
Queer Cultural Capital in State Socialist Cultural Fields. The Hungarian Case / Releasing Emotional Archives: Ethical Reflections on Two Unreleased Queer Documentaries (1981 & 1986) from State-Socialist Hungary
Maria Vtorushina (European University Viadrina Frankfurt-Oder)
Studying Queer Embodiment in Ukrainian Art: Museums and Archives — Allies or Obstacles?
Anna Dżabagina (University of Warsaw)
“Catastrophe of Rampant Homosexuality” – Tracing Lesbian Past in 19th and early 20th Century Polish Egodocuments
17:30–20:00
Queering the East Central European Art: A Cozy Evening at the Laichter House
17:30–18:00
Štěpán Lars Laichter, Larissa Friedrich (Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe, Institute of the Leibniz Association, Marburg)
Introduction to the Laichter House and the Exhibition with a Special View on Jan Laichter and His Connection to Rainer Maria Rilke
18:00–18:45
Lisa Rocke & Maximilian Wahlich (The Bauhaus Archive, Berlin)
New ideas on figures of the Bauhaus
18:45–19:30
Gideon Horváth, moderated by Larissa Friedrich
Artist Talk: Discussion with the Contemporary Hungarian Artist
19:30–20:00
Barbora Lungová (Brno University of Technology)
Artist Talk: Queering the Countryside
20:00
Opening of the Exhibition “Unknown Longings, Hidden Feelings – Concealed Stories in Authoritarian States”
THURSDAY, MAY 28, 2026
10:00–11:15
Panel 7: Activism, Crisis, and Community Knowledge (Chair: Michal Pitoňák, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague)
Magda Wlostowska (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, GWZO Leipzig)
Documenting Queer Activists’ Responses to the HIV/AIDS Crisis in Late Socialist and Early Post-Socialist Poland
Rasa Navickaitė (Vilnius University)
Between Sexiness and Monstrosity: Representations of Lesbianism in Post-Soviet Lithuania
Franko Dota (University of Rijeka)
A Letter from Macedonia: The Homophile Voice from the Archives of Yugoslav Queer Lives
11:15–11:30 Coffee break
11:30–13:00
Panel 8: Friendship, Affect, and Queer Memory Across Borders (Chair: Kateřina Kolářová, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague)
Georgia-Taygeti Katakou (European University Institute, Florence)
Archiving the Greek Left: Friendship, Queerness, and Counter-Communities of Emotion
Riikka Taavetti (University of Turku)
Connections in Interwar Northeastern European Queer History: Martti Laine’s novel Kuilu (1937) in Finnish and Transnational Contexts
Shaban Darakchi (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences/University of Lund)
Love, Secrecy, and State Power: Affective Traces of a Lesbian Relationship in Socialist Bulgaria
Ioana Zamfir (University of Oxford)
Mapping Soviet and Post-Soviet Queer Desire: Reconsidering Identity Formation through Spaces of Affection and Tenderness
13:00–14:00 Lunch break
14:00–15:15
Panel 9: Queer Subjects and Cultural Imaginaries (Chair: Eszter Timár, Central European University, Vienna)
Mathias Foit (University of Padua)
The Male Bride of Breslau, Hungary’s George Sand and the L’Uomo-Donna of Rome: The Queer Diva and Gender Non-Conformity in Belle Époque and Interwar Europe (approximately 1901–1935)
Eszter Varsa (Central European University / Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences)
Approaches to the Silenced Queer History of Romani Woman Activist Mária László in 1950s Hungary
Jennifer Ramme (University of Graz)
No Hero’s Tale: Tracing Queerness in Alternative Cultures and Music Scenes of Late State Socialism in Poland
15:15–16:00 Final Discussion and Conference Conclusions – Towards Publications (Chair: Jaromír Mrňka)
16:00 End of the Conference
