'Ukraine is not a brothel!' This was the first cry of rage uttered by Femen during Euro 2012. Bare-breasted and crowned with flowers, perched on their high heels, Femen transform their bodies into instruments of political expression through slogans and drawings flaunted on their skin. Humour, drama, courage and shock tactics are their weapons. Since 2008, this 'gang of four' – Inna, Sasha, Oksana and Anna – has been developing a spectacular, radical, new feminism. First in Ukraine and then around the world, they are struggling to obtain better conditions for women, but they also fight poverty, discrimination, dictatorships and the dictates of religion. These women scale church steeples and climb into embassies, burst into television studios and invade polling stations. Some of them have served time in jail, been prosecuted for ‘hooliganism’ in their home country and are banned from living in other states. But thanks to extraordinary media coverage, the movement is gaining imitators and supporters in France, Germany, Brazil and elsewhere. Inna, Sasha, Oksana and Anna have an extraordinary story and here they tell it in their own words, and at the same time express their hopes and ambitions for women throughout the world.

The FEMEN movement began in Ukraine in 2008. It has since spread throughout the world, as far as Spain, Sweden and Belgium. In France it really began to catch on when Inna Shevchenko arrived in Paris, where she sought asylum after she was deported from Ukraine. She took refuge in the "Lavoir Moderne Parisien" theatre, which has now become the training ground of FEMEN activists in France. This project is a fictional story based on real events and witness testimonies collected by the author, who has been in personal contact with FEMEN France for over 4 years. The aim is to study this social phenomenon and open up debate on the subject without taking sides or pronouncing judgment. The journal follows the story of a young French girl who, after a number of negative experiences connected to her social status as a woman in contemporary society, decides to join the movement. It's not easy, and there will be consequences in her personal and professional life. She soon begins to question herself. A fascinating album that helps us understand the inner workings of the controversial feminist organization.

The relative rise or decline of feminist movements across the globe has been debated by feminist scholars and activists for a long time. In recent years, however, these debates have gained renewed momentum. Rapid technological change and increased use of digital media have raised questions about how digital technologies change, influence, and shape feminist politics. This book interrogates the digital interface of transnational protest movements and local activism in feminist politics. Examining how global feminist politics is articulated at the nexus of the transnational/national, we take contemporary German protest culture as a case study for the manner in which transnational feminist activism intersects with the national configuration of feminist political work. The book explores how movements and actions from outside Germany’s borders circulate digitally and resonate differently in new local contexts, and further, how these border-crossings transform grass-roots activism as it goes digital. This book was originally published as a special issue of Feminist Media Studies.

Is Vladimir Putin macho, or is he a "fag"? Sex, Politics, and Putin investigates how gender stereotypes and sexualization have been used as tools of political legitimation in contemporary Russia. Despite their enmity, 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 means of legitimation, Putin's regime (unlike that of Gorbachev or Yeltsin) opened the door to the concerted use of gendered rhetoric and imagery as a means to challenge regime authority. Sex, Politics, and Putin analyzes the political uses of gender norms and sexualization in Russia through three case studies: pro- and anti-regime groups' activism aimed at supporting or undermining the political leaders on their respective sides; activism regarding military conscription and patriotism; and feminist activism. Arguing that gender norms are most easily invoked as tools of authority-building when there exists widespread popular acceptance of misogyny and homophobia, Sperling also examines the ways in which sexism and homophobia are reflected in Russia's public sphere.

Superfluous Women tells the unique story of a generation of artists, feminists, and queer activists who emerged in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. With a focus on new media, Zychowicz demonstrates how contemporary artist collectives in Ukraine have contested Soviet and Western connotations of feminism to draw attention to a range of human rights issues with global impact. In the book, Zychowicz summarizes and engages with more recent critical scholarship on the role of digital media and virtual environments in concepts of the public sphere. Mapping out several key changes in newly independent Ukraine, she traces the discursive links between distinct eras, marked by mass gatherings on Kyiv’s main square, in order to investigate the deeper shifts driving feminist protest and politics today.

Investigating the genesis of the prosecuted "crimes" and implied sins of the female performing group Pussy Riot, the most famous Russian feminist collective to date, the essays in Transgressive Women in Modern Russian and East European Cultures: From the Bad to Blasphemous examine what constitutes bad social and political behavior for women in Russia, Poland, and the Balkans, and how and to what effect female performers, activists, and fictional characters have indulged in such behavior. The chapters in this edited collection argue against the popular perceptions of Slavic cultures as overwhelmingly patriarchal and Slavic women as complicit in their own repression, contextualizing proto-feminist and feminist transgressive acts in these cultures. Each essay offers a close reading of the transgressive texts that women authored or in which they figured, showing how they navigated, targeted, and, in some cases, co-opted these obstacles in their bid for agency and power. Topics include studies of how female performers in Poland and Russia were licensed to be bad (for effective comedy and popular/box office appeal), analyses of how women in film and fiction dare sacrilegious behavior in their prescribed roles as daughters and mothers, and examples of feminist political subversion through social activism and performance art.

The concept of the avant garde is highly contested, whether one consigns it to history or claims it for present-day or future uses. The first volume of The Idea of the Avant Garde – And What It Means Today provided a lively forum on the kinds of radical art theory and partisan practices that are possible in today’s world of global art markets and creative industry entrepreneurialism. This second volume presents the work of another 50 artists and writers, exploring the diverse ways that avant-gardism develops reflexive and experimental combinations of aesthetic and political praxis. The manifest strategies, temporalities, and genealogies of avant-garde art and politics are expressed through an international, intergenerational, and interdisciplinary convocation of ideas that covers the fields of film, video, architecture, visual art, art activism, literature, poetry, theatre, performance, intermedia and music.