Valerie Sperling
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 645380 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Valerie Sperling |
| NOMBRES | Valerie |
| APELLIDO | Sperling |
| FIRMA | SPERLING V |
| AFILIACIONES | Clark University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6403-6027 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 28 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 104 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 28 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1991 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Alexis Peri, Dear Unknown Friend
One of the side effects of patriarchy is that state authorities often fail to take women seriously as potential political actors, relegating females on their own side to supporting, cheerleading roles and assuming that other women do not present a significant threat. The peasant women who rebelled against collectivization under Joseph Stalin, as Lynne Viola has noted, were generally dismissed as “backward” pawns of the inevitably male kulak, rath…
The Way Home, or the Way to Prison? Gender Legacies and Anti-War Protest in Russia
This article analyzes the activist rhetoric of Put′ Domoi (The Way Home)—a prominent, Russia-based public protest movement consisting primarily of women whose family members were “mobilized” into fighting in Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Using a detailed framework that describes Russia’s gender-related ideologies under Putin, we analyze Put′ Domoi’s activist rhetoric focusing primarily on the first six months of their public activism (…
Gender, germs, and governors
This article describes how the concept of political masculinities helps explain public responses to US governors’ COVID-19 policies. We draw upon governors’ approval ratings, using a paired comparison of similar states with male and female governors, illustrating these findings with examples of citizens’ opinions on governors’ performance from local newspapers and social media. While the approval ratings data suggest citizens made few gender-base…
Movement of Movements
What happens when a social movement must relocate to continue its advocacy? Such a “movement” of movements has been going on—in a partial, fragmented way—since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, raising a host of issues for Russian social movements. Past research has identified several broad trends in Russian civil society prior to the war: enduring, evaporating, and adapting forms of activism. These terms captured, respectively, orga…
Russia in a changing climate
Climate change will shape the future of Russia, and vice versa, regardless of who rules in the Kremlin. The world's largest country is warming faster than Earth as a whole, occupies more than half the Arctic Ocean coastline, and is waging a carbon‐intensive war while increasingly isolated from the international community and its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Officially, the Russian government argues that, as a major exporter of hydr…
Unpacking ‘Traditional Values’ in Russia’s Conservative Turn
We argue for analytically separating women’s and LGBTQ+ rights and differentiating the degrees of sexism and LGBTQ-phobia in Russia to better understand its conservative turn in the 2010s. Comparing Putin’s speeches to domestic audiences (1999–2020) with public opinion, we identify a somewhat conservative trend regarding women’s rights and a far more conservative one on LGBTQ+ rights. While Russia made a sharper conservative turn in summer 2021, …
The Evolution of Civic Activism in Contemporary Russia
This article examines Russian citizens’ support for and participation in civic activism today, nearly three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Specifically, we consider how activism has evolved over time in two key issue sectors—environmentalism and women’s rights. We draw on a recent nationally representative survey that challenges existing stereotypes of Russians as apathetic and/or fearful of participating in civic activism, showi…
Mixed signals
The prevailing wisdom among scholars of gender in Russia is that Vladimir Putin – as Russia’s “strongman” president – has become an agent of traditionalism. Some political scientists, often without a gendered lens, have argued that Putin is not so powerful, compelled to deploy various tactics and ideologies to balance competing interests among elites and retain support from the general public. We systematically analyze Putin’s statements about ge…
Seeking better judgment
Drawing upon data from field interviews, court records, and media and NGO reports, this article examines Russian cases claiming LGBT discrimination in domestic courts and at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The ECtHR has provided a less homophobic venue than Russia’s domestic courts for such claims, but its judgments have had little effect in Russia. We argue that the Russian case illustrates a paradox in the domestic politics of inter…
Building the Russian State
Putin’s macho personality cult
Masculinity has long been Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calling card. At the center of Putin’s macho aura is his image as a tough leader who will not allow Western countries to weaken Russia or dictate what Russia’s domestic and foreign policies should look like. This article draws attention to the role of masculinity in the Putin regime’s legitimation strategy, and how it became more obvious during the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine …
The Purpose of Putin's Machismo
The Russian president carefully cultivates an image of muscular masculinity to pump up nationalist fervor against a West portrayed as culturally and sexually decadent
Women and Gender in Postwar Europe
The stereotypical image of East European women during the Cold War was captured in a notorious 1980s Wendy's commercial depicting a mock Communist-run fashion show. Under the command of an East European–accented announcer, a plain, heavyset woman came out on the catwalk to show off her daywear, eveningwear, and swimwear, each time wearing the same kerchief and shapeless blue dress. The message of the Wendy's commercial was the clear advantage con…
Jennifer Utrata, Women without men
Jennifer Utrata, Women without men: single mothers and family change in the new Russia." Canadian Slavonic Papers, 57(3-4), pp. 335–336
Sex, Politics, and Putin
Is Vladimir Putin macho, or is he a 'fag'? Sperling investigates how gender stereotypes and sexualization have been used as tools of political legitimation in Putin's Russia. Despite their political polarization, regime allies and detractors alike have wielded traditional concepts of masculinity, femininity, and homophobia as a means of symbolic endorsement or disparagement of political leaders and policies. By repeatedly using machismo as a mean…
Russian feminist perspectives on Pussy Riot
While Pussy Riot's “Punk Prayer” and its aftermath constituted something of a turning point for Russia politically - as well as personally for the women imprisoned afterwards - it was neither the first nor last of Pussy Riot's endeavors. Among other things, their series of songs, published as video clips on the web, endorsed mass protest against the Putin regime, criticized state-sponsored homophobia, and praised feminism as a possible curative f…
Nashi Devushki
In Russia, as elsewhere, hegemonic ideas about gender are invoked in the political realm. This article explores some of the gendered ways in which political youth organizations voice their criticism of and support for the Putin-centered regime. Interviews and a wide range of mass media sources, including blogs and YouTube videos, as well as the scholarly literature are used to look at political youth group actions and rhetoric on both sides of th…
Empowering Women in Russia
Women's Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe
Women's Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe. Edited by Richard E. Matland and Kathleen A. Montgomery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 400p. $85.00 cloth, $35.00 paper. It was something of a truism that within the political institutions of the Soviet bloc states, women and power were found in inverse proportion to each other. While women occupied roughly 30% of the seats within the faux-parliamentary bodies of the communist…
The last refuge of a scoundrel
In a nation‐state, where ethnic and territorial borders coincide, patriotism may easily have an exclusivist‐nationalist component, and be used to serve the goals of politicians hoping to mobilise the population for destructive goals. In a multinational state like Russia, the militaristic patriotism that Yeltsin's and Putin's administrations promote can also carry that risk. The Russian state leadership's use of a militaristic patriotism as a mean…
Russian Politics
Journal Article Russian Politics: Challenges of Democratization Get access Russian Politics: Challenges of Democratization by Zoltan Barany and Robert G. Moser. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2001. 260 pp. Cloth, $54.95; paper, $19.95. Valerie Sperling Valerie Sperling Clark University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 117, Issue 2, Summer 2002, Pages 331–332, https…
Constructing Global Feminism
Organizing Women in Contemporary Russia
This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the contemporary Russian women's movement and of the social, political, economic, historical, and international contexts that surround it. Valerie Sperling paints a vivid portrait of the women's movement's formation and development, paying particular attention to the key challenges facing a social movement in post-communist society, including the virtual absence of civil society, constant flux …
Organizing Women in Contemporary Russia
This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the contemporary Russian women's movement and of the social, political, economic, historical, and international contexts that surround it. Valerie Sperling paints a vivid portrait of the women's movement's formation and development, paying particular attention to the key challenges facing a social movement in post-communist society, including the virtual absence of civil society, constant flux …
The Russian Women's Movement
Seminars for developing women's political activism in Russia provided the basis for field observations and surveys of participants and leaders in the emergent Russian women's movement. The seminars provided an elite sample of activists, including those who were long-term participants in the zhensovety those newly mobilized in Western-influenced, explicitly feminist groups, and the majority, who were engaged in women's NGOs with a variety of speci…
Mixed signals
The prevailing wisdom among scholars of gender in Russia is that Vladimir Putin – as Russia’s “strongman” president – has become an agent of traditionalism. Some political scientists, often without a gendered lens, have argued that Putin is not so powerful, compelled to deploy various tactics and ideologies to balance competing interests among elites and retain support from the general public. We systematically analyze Putin’s statements about ge…
Nashi Devushki
In Russia, as elsewhere, hegemonic ideas about gender are invoked in the political realm. This article explores some of the gendered ways in which political youth organizations voice their criticism of and support for the Putin-centered regime. Interviews and a wide range of mass media sources, including blogs and YouTube videos, as well as the scholarly literature are used to look at political youth group actions and rhetoric on both sides of th…
The last refuge of a scoundrel
In a nation‐state, where ethnic and territorial borders coincide, patriotism may easily have an exclusivist‐nationalist component, and be used to serve the goals of politicians hoping to mobilise the population for destructive goals. In a multinational state like Russia, the militaristic patriotism that Yeltsin's and Putin's administrations promote can also carry that risk. The Russian state leadership's use of a militaristic patriotism as a mean…
The Evolution of Civic Activism in Contemporary Russia
This article examines Russian citizens’ support for and participation in civic activism today, nearly three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Specifically, we consider how activism has evolved over time in two key issue sectors—environmentalism and women’s rights. We draw on a recent nationally representative survey that challenges existing stereotypes of Russians as apathetic and/or fearful of participating in civic activism, showi…
Putin’s macho personality cult
Masculinity has long been Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calling card. At the center of Putin’s macho aura is his image as a tough leader who will not allow Western countries to weaken Russia or dictate what Russia’s domestic and foreign policies should look like. This article draws attention to the role of masculinity in the Putin regime’s legitimation strategy, and how it became more obvious during the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine …
Unpacking ‘Traditional Values’ in Russia’s Conservative Turn
We argue for analytically separating women’s and LGBTQ+ rights and differentiating the degrees of sexism and LGBTQ-phobia in Russia to better understand its conservative turn in the 2010s. Comparing Putin’s speeches to domestic audiences (1999–2020) with public opinion, we identify a somewhat conservative trend regarding women’s rights and a far more conservative one on LGBTQ+ rights. While Russia made a sharper conservative turn in summer 2021, …
Russian feminist perspectives on Pussy Riot
While Pussy Riot's “Punk Prayer” and its aftermath constituted something of a turning point for Russia politically - as well as personally for the women imprisoned afterwards - it was neither the first nor last of Pussy Riot's endeavors. Among other things, their series of songs, published as video clips on the web, endorsed mass protest against the Putin regime, criticized state-sponsored homophobia, and praised feminism as a possible curative f…
Russia in a changing climate
Climate change will shape the future of Russia, and vice versa, regardless of who rules in the Kremlin. The world's largest country is warming faster than Earth as a whole, occupies more than half the Arctic Ocean coastline, and is waging a carbon‐intensive war while increasingly isolated from the international community and its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Officially, the Russian government argues that, as a major exporter of hydr…
Seeking better judgment
Drawing upon data from field interviews, court records, and media and NGO reports, this article examines Russian cases claiming LGBT discrimination in domestic courts and at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The ECtHR has provided a less homophobic venue than Russia’s domestic courts for such claims, but its judgments have had little effect in Russia. We argue that the Russian case illustrates a paradox in the domestic politics of inter…
The Way Home, or the Way to Prison? Gender Legacies and Anti-War Protest in Russia
This article analyzes the activist rhetoric of Put′ Domoi (The Way Home)—a prominent, Russia-based public protest movement consisting primarily of women whose family members were “mobilized” into fighting in Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Using a detailed framework that describes Russia’s gender-related ideologies under Putin, we analyze Put′ Domoi’s activist rhetoric focusing primarily on the first six months of their public activism (…
Gender, germs, and governors
This article describes how the concept of political masculinities helps explain public responses to US governors’ COVID-19 policies. We draw upon governors’ approval ratings, using a paired comparison of similar states with male and female governors, illustrating these findings with examples of citizens’ opinions on governors’ performance from local newspapers and social media. While the approval ratings data suggest citizens made few gender-base…
Movement of Movements
What happens when a social movement must relocate to continue its advocacy? Such a “movement” of movements has been going on—in a partial, fragmented way—since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, raising a host of issues for Russian social movements. Past research has identified several broad trends in Russian civil society prior to the war: enduring, evaporating, and adapting forms of activism. These terms captured, respectively, orga…
Women's Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe
Women's Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe. Edited by Richard E. Matland and Kathleen A. Montgomery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 400p. $85.00 cloth, $35.00 paper. It was something of a truism that within the political institutions of the Soviet bloc states, women and power were found in inverse proportion to each other. While women occupied roughly 30% of the seats within the faux-parliamentary bodies of the communist…
Peeking Behind the Celluloid Curtain
(1991). Peeking Behind the Celluloid Curtain. Journal of Popular Film and Television: Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 154-163
Organizing Women in Contemporary Russia
This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the contemporary Russian women's movement and of the social, political, economic, historical, and international contexts that surround it. Valerie Sperling paints a vivid portrait of the women's movement's formation and development, paying particular attention to the key challenges facing a social movement in post-communist society, including the virtual absence of civil society, constant flux …
The Russian Women's Movement
Seminars for developing women's political activism in Russia provided the basis for field observations and surveys of participants and leaders in the emergent Russian women's movement. The seminars provided an elite sample of activists, including those who were long-term participants in the zhensovety those newly mobilized in Western-influenced, explicitly feminist groups, and the majority, who were engaged in women's NGOs with a variety of speci…
Migration, Displacement and Identity in Post-Soviet Russia
The Russian women's movement
Constructing Global Feminism
Organizing Women in Contemporary Russia
This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the contemporary Russian women's movement and of the social, political, economic, historical, and international contexts that surround it. Valerie Sperling paints a vivid portrait of the women's movement's formation and development, paying particular attention to the key challenges facing a social movement in post-communist society, including the virtual absence of civil society, constant flux …
Russian Politics
Journal Article Russian Politics: Challenges of Democratization Get access Russian Politics: Challenges of Democratization by Zoltan Barany and Robert G. Moser. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2001. 260 pp. Cloth, $54.95; paper, $19.95. Valerie Sperling Valerie Sperling Clark University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 117, Issue 2, Summer 2002, Pages 331–332, https…
The last refuge of a scoundrel
In a nation‐state, where ethnic and territorial borders coincide, patriotism may easily have an exclusivist‐nationalist component, and be used to serve the goals of politicians hoping to mobilise the population for destructive goals. In a multinational state like Russia, the militaristic patriotism that Yeltsin's and Putin's administrations promote can also carry that risk. The Russian state leadership's use of a militaristic patriotism as a mean…
Women's Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe
Women's Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe. Edited by Richard E. Matland and Kathleen A. Montgomery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 400p. $85.00 cloth, $35.00 paper. It was something of a truism that within the political institutions of the Soviet bloc states, women and power were found in inverse proportion to each other. While women occupied roughly 30% of the seats within the faux-parliamentary bodies of the communist…
Empowering Women in Russia
Nashi Devushki
In Russia, as elsewhere, hegemonic ideas about gender are invoked in the political realm. This article explores some of the gendered ways in which political youth organizations voice their criticism of and support for the Putin-centered regime. Interviews and a wide range of mass media sources, including blogs and YouTube videos, as well as the scholarly literature are used to look at political youth group actions and rhetoric on both sides of th…
Sex, Politics, and Putin
Is Vladimir Putin macho, or is he a 'fag'? Sperling investigates how gender stereotypes and sexualization have been used as tools of political legitimation in Putin's Russia. Despite their political polarization, regime allies and detractors alike have wielded traditional concepts of masculinity, femininity, and homophobia as a means of symbolic endorsement or disparagement of political leaders and policies. By repeatedly using machismo as a mean…
Russian feminist perspectives on Pussy Riot
While Pussy Riot's “Punk Prayer” and its aftermath constituted something of a turning point for Russia politically - as well as personally for the women imprisoned afterwards - it was neither the first nor last of Pussy Riot's endeavors. Among other things, their series of songs, published as video clips on the web, endorsed mass protest against the Putin regime, criticized state-sponsored homophobia, and praised feminism as a possible curative f…
The Purpose of Putin's Machismo
The Russian president carefully cultivates an image of muscular masculinity to pump up nationalist fervor against a West portrayed as culturally and sexually decadent
Women and Gender in Postwar Europe
The stereotypical image of East European women during the Cold War was captured in a notorious 1980s Wendy's commercial depicting a mock Communist-run fashion show. Under the command of an East European–accented announcer, a plain, heavyset woman came out on the catwalk to show off her daywear, eveningwear, and swimwear, each time wearing the same kerchief and shapeless blue dress. The message of the Wendy's commercial was the clear advantage con…
Jennifer Utrata, Women without men
Jennifer Utrata, Women without men: single mothers and family change in the new Russia." Canadian Slavonic Papers, 57(3-4), pp. 335–336
Putin’s macho personality cult
Masculinity has long been Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calling card. At the center of Putin’s macho aura is his image as a tough leader who will not allow Western countries to weaken Russia or dictate what Russia’s domestic and foreign policies should look like. This article draws attention to the role of masculinity in the Putin regime’s legitimation strategy, and how it became more obvious during the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine …
Building the Russian State
Seeking better judgment
Drawing upon data from field interviews, court records, and media and NGO reports, this article examines Russian cases claiming LGBT discrimination in domestic courts and at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The ECtHR has provided a less homophobic venue than Russia’s domestic courts for such claims, but its judgments have had little effect in Russia. We argue that the Russian case illustrates a paradox in the domestic politics of inter…
Mixed signals
The prevailing wisdom among scholars of gender in Russia is that Vladimir Putin – as Russia’s “strongman” president – has become an agent of traditionalism. Some political scientists, often without a gendered lens, have argued that Putin is not so powerful, compelled to deploy various tactics and ideologies to balance competing interests among elites and retain support from the general public. We systematically analyze Putin’s statements about ge…
The Evolution of Civic Activism in Contemporary Russia
This article examines Russian citizens’ support for and participation in civic activism today, nearly three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Specifically, we consider how activism has evolved over time in two key issue sectors—environmentalism and women’s rights. We draw on a recent nationally representative survey that challenges existing stereotypes of Russians as apathetic and/or fearful of participating in civic activism, showi…
Russia in a changing climate
Climate change will shape the future of Russia, and vice versa, regardless of who rules in the Kremlin. The world's largest country is warming faster than Earth as a whole, occupies more than half the Arctic Ocean coastline, and is waging a carbon‐intensive war while increasingly isolated from the international community and its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Officially, the Russian government argues that, as a major exporter of hydr…
Unpacking ‘Traditional Values’ in Russia’s Conservative Turn
We argue for analytically separating women’s and LGBTQ+ rights and differentiating the degrees of sexism and LGBTQ-phobia in Russia to better understand its conservative turn in the 2010s. Comparing Putin’s speeches to domestic audiences (1999–2020) with public opinion, we identify a somewhat conservative trend regarding women’s rights and a far more conservative one on LGBTQ+ rights. While Russia made a sharper conservative turn in summer 2021, …
Gender, germs, and governors
This article describes how the concept of political masculinities helps explain public responses to US governors’ COVID-19 policies. We draw upon governors’ approval ratings, using a paired comparison of similar states with male and female governors, illustrating these findings with examples of citizens’ opinions on governors’ performance from local newspapers and social media. While the approval ratings data suggest citizens made few gender-base…
Political science (24 obras) · Sociology (22 obras) · Politics (19 obras) · Law (18 obras) · Gender Studies (14 obras) · Law (13 obras) · Gender Politics and Representation (12 obras) · Political economy (10 obras) · Gender Studies (9 obras) · Art (7 obras)