Contributor archive

Articles written by Andrea Petö

“Better stories” in higher education Cunning strategies for gender studies: What can you do when nothing can be done? Can the hangman be an ally of gender studies?

This paper is based on two arguments: First, “grim storytelling” only gives access to part of the story and therefore needs to be supplemented with “better stories” — stories that generate an understanding of human potentiality, creativity, resilience, interconnectedness and shared “vulnerability”. Second, the tendency towards “grim storytelling” in critical social sciences constitutes a major limitation for the possibilities of imagining and enacting the very transformations that Europe most urgently needs in order to enhance the European project.

By Andrea Petö June 20, 2023

Roots of illiberal memory politics. Remembering women in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution

In 2016, commemorations of the 60th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution brought new conflicts in memory politics. This article analyzes the reasons for women’s absence from the historiography of the 1956 Revolution and discusses how the polypore state is using the populist turn to introduce hegemonic narratives and to include women in the narrative of “national feminism”.

By Andrea Petö March 8, 2018

The Blue and White pin that matters

The founders of CEU, politicians, including PM Orban, had a common dream back then. That dream was that we would build a free and successful country where not party apparatchiks, but academics decide who can study at a university, and what institution can call itself a university.

By Andrea Petö June 13, 2017

Memoralization of the holocaust in the polish film aftermath

The author argues that the history of the Holocaust is the history of Europe; "as Europeans, we all continue to live it". "It is not wise to appropriate to ourselves the story of suffering, because even in the short term such a course will lead to isolation and a rise in anti-Semitism."

By Andrea Petö October 18, 2014

Negotiating Soviet gendered reality in Lithuania. Among superwomen and alcoholics

Adopting and Remembering Soviet Reality: Life Stories of Lithuanian Women 1945—1970, Edited and adapted by Dalia Leinarte, Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi 2010, 234 pages

By Andrea Petö October 3, 2011

Arrow Cross Women and Female Informants

In Hungary, there were several active women fascists. In the People’s Tribunals after World War II, however, few of the women were convicted. There was an unwillingness to think of women as capable of such evil deeds.

Essay by Andrea Petö February 16, 2010