Redi Koobak - PhD student

PhD project:

 “Whirling Stories: Postsocialist Feminist Imaginaries and the Visual Arts”

My thesis explores the emergence of feminist imaginaries in postsocialist Estonia through focusing on the art of a feminist and lesbian identified visual artist Anna-Stina Treumund. Art is an important starting point for the decolonization of knowledge and a powerful means through which to negotiate feminist ideas, ways of expressing oneself and voicing critique in a context where these concepts and theories cannot readily be found. I study Treumund’s self-portrait photography with an ethnographic attitude and through a relational approach, arguing that her art does not only stand for the politics of self-representation. It also powerfully evokes contemporary struggles with time, place, and reality in postsocialist Estonia, entangled in webs of power imbalances that characterize the relations between the former Eastern Europe and the West. Working through questions on the geopolitics of knowledge and the force of the visual field with the help of Treumund’s art, I challenge the “lagging behind” discourse that often places the former Eastern Europe, including its feminist endeavors, in a perpetual “catching up” mode. I attempt to find ways out of the hegemonic progress narratives and show how Treumund’s art carves out her own individual space for difference to come as well as a space for thinking differently about the postsocialist condition.

Education and work experience

• 2007 – .. PhD candidate in Gender Studies, Department of Thematic Studies - Gender Studies, Linköping University, Sweden, supervised by Professor Nina Lykke and Dr. Cecilia Åsberg
• 2009-2012 - Editorial Secretary on NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, Routledge: Taylor & Francis
• autumn 2010 - Associate Research Student, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, United Kingdom, supervised by Professor Celia Lury
• 2005 – 2007 Assistant lecturer, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Tartu, Estonia
• 2006 Lecturer, Gender Studies programme, Tallinn University, Estonia
• 2005 Gender mainstreaming course instructor, Phare Twinning Project “Development of Administrative Capacity of National Authorities in the Field of Gender Mainstreaming”, Ministry of Social Affairs, Tallinn, Estonia
• 2003 – 2004 MA in Gender Studies, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
• 2001 exchange student, Women’s Studies, University of North-Carolina at Greensboro, USA
• 1998 – 2003 BA in English Language and Literature, University of Tartu, Estonia

Fields of interest:

• visual culture studies
• feminist cultural studies
• postsocialist feminist thought
• postcolonial theory
• queer theory
• geopolitics of knowledge
• writing as a process of inquiry

Selected publications:

• Koobak, Redi and Thapar-Björkert, Suruchi (forthcoming) Becoming Non-Swedish: Locating the Paradoxes of In/visible Identities. Feminist Review.
• Åsberg, Cecilia, Koobak, Redi and Johnson, Ericka (2011) Beyond the Humanist Imagination. NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 19: 4, 218-230.
• Koobak, Redi (2009). Nähtavuse ja nähtamatuse poliitika [Politics of Visibility and Invisibility], Ariadne’s Clew: Estonian Journal of Gender Studies IX ¿, 120-124.
• Koobak, Redi (2009) Zooming in On Photography Online: Three Hundred and Sixty Five Flickering Selves. In D. Golanska and E. Oleksy (eds) Teaching Visual Culture in an Interdisciplinary Classroom. Feminist (Re)interpretations of the Field. ATHENA3, Advanced Thematic Network in Women's Studies in Europe, University of Utrecht and Centre for Gender Studies, Stockholm University, 75-95.
• Koobak, Redi (2008) Intersektsionaalsusest ehk lugusid feministlikku mõtte rändamisest [Of Intersectionality Or Stories Of Traveling Feminist Thought], Ariadne’s Clew: Estonian Journal of Gender Studies VIII ¿, 39-49.
• Koobak, Redi and Põldsaar, Raili (eds) (2008) Ihakeha ja lihakeha: valik esseid ja arutlusi kehast (Selected essays on the body). Kirjastuskeskus: Tallinn.
• Koobak, Redi. (2007). Soolise erinevuse tulevik: intervjuu Elizabeth Grosziga [The Future of Sexual Difference: Interview with Elizabeth Grosz], Ariadne’s Clew: Estonian Journal of Gender Studies VII ¿, 125-129.