“A Modest Soldier in the Great Army of Communists”: Visual Representations of Women in Ceaușescu’s Romania
My research investigates, using discourse analysis and visual semiotics, the norms and ideological guidelines of Communist propaganda regarding gender identity and sex roles, as expressed in the magazine Femeia, between 1965-1989. Femeia was, at the time, the official media outlet of the National Council of Women, directly involved in educating and mobilising women. The discourse and visuals of Femeia reinforce the idea that, in fact, women were the collective character of women’s emancipation, as anonymity was crucial in a totalitarian regime that did not tolerate individualism but advocated abnegation, self-sacrifice and devotion.
Petruța Teampău
Petruța Teampău teaches at the Faculty of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj (Romania), where she has been a lecturer since 2009. She is a PhD. in cultural anthropology (2008), and currently teaches courses in political anthropology, qualitative methodology, applied ethics and political sociology. Research interests include collective memory and urban narratives, gender ideologies and practices during Communism and post-communism, and cultural discourses of body and gender.