Professional Affiliation

Assistant Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, NC

Wilson Center Project

Gender, Rights and Democratic Crisis in the Czech Lands, 1918-1950

Project Summary

Dr. Feinberg's project is a study of Czech political culture from the establishment of the democratic Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, through its slide into rightist authoritarianism in 1938, and past the Communist takeover of 1948. While many historians have seen the failure of Czech democracy simply as the result of German or Soviet pressure, Dr. Feinberg arguea that the Czechs were actually always ambivalent about democracy. She examines the history of this ambivalence by analyzing debates in Czech politics over gender and rights, specifically looking at initiatives to change marriage and family laws, employment regulations, citizenship law and abortion statutes over the first half of the twentieth century.

Major Publications

Recent publications associated with this project include:



"Democracy and Its Limits: Gender and Rights in the Czech Lands, 1918-1938" (forthcoming in Nationalities Papers December 2002) and



"Gender and the Politics of Difference in the Czech Lands After Munich" (forthcoming in East European Politics and Societies).