Past Talks

1. Who was afraid of Winnie the Pooh? Censorship of English, American and Canadian Books for Kids Published in Communist Poland (1944–1990)

Speakers: Anna Wiśniewska-Grabarczyk, Paweł Grabarczyk
Date: April 25, 2025
Location: University of Cambridge

This talk explored the mechanisms of censorship applied to children's literature from English-speaking countries in Communist Poland between 1944 and 1990. The speakers analyzed how political and ideological pressures shaped the selection, translation, and modification of books by authors such as A.A. Milne and others. Special attention was given to the subtle strategies used to align foreign children's literature with the values of the regime—or to suppress it altogether.

2. Fashion and Censorship

Speaker: Alina Popescu
Date: May 13, 2025
Location: Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art (INHA), Paris

Throughout history, clothing has been a site of regulation and control. Governments, institutions, and social norms have repeatedly dictated what people can or cannot wear, using fashion as a tool to enforce moral codes, social hierarchies, or political ideologies. From sumptuary laws in early modern Europe to the policing of dress under authoritarian regimes, fashion has always carried symbolic weight beyond its surface appearance. Studying fashion and censorship is important because it reveals the subtle ways in which power operates in society. Clothes are not neutral. They can signal conformity or resistance, privilege, or marginalization. By examining how and why fashion has been censored, we gain insight into broader social, political, and cultural dynamics. Exploring the intersection of fashion and censorship uncovers the hidden rules that shape how we present ourselves, and it challenges us to consider how these rules are enforced, negotiated, or contested.

INHALab Residence & Sartoria 2025 Project

Created in 2019, the Sartoria association aims to approach fashion studies through the  prism of art history. Looking beyond the formalist approaches that the relationship between art and fashion has often favoured, the aim is to consider the methodological turning points that have shaped art history research, as well as the debates and concepts that are emerging today. At the same time, it will provide a platform for interdisciplinary exchange aimed at disseminating the knowledge and questions raised by these new research horizons, which are chronologically and geographically extensive. (See https://calenda.org/1227653). As part of its policy of encouraging and supporting young researchers, each year the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art invites a group of researchers to propose a creative scientific project in a field related to art history. In 2025, the Sartoria collective’s project, Fashion(s) & Censorship(s), investigated the political dimension of clothing by examining the history of fashion censorship and its contestation. Through seminars, screenings, performances, educational workshops, and an exhibition, the initiative aimed to trace a global history of clothing censorship from the modern era to today. (See Sartoria (27 mars 2025). Résidence INHALab 2025, Mode(s) et Censure(s) – Programme Avril-Juin. Sartoria. Consulté le 28 octobre 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/13l22. Among the talks given at this seminar:

• April 8 | Lecture with Jallal Mesbah (University of Angers). This session focused on the feminist activist group FEMEN and their use of nudity to protest and examined how legal and institutional frameworks regulate such exposure of the body as a form of censorship.  
• May 6 | Lecture with Anna Mari Almila (Sapienza University of Rome). Almila explored how the female body is seen as disruptive in patriarchal societies, and how women negotiate and resist dual pressures of religious and secular censorship. The talk deepend the thematic inquiry of the INHALab residency into control of the dressed and undressed body.
• May 28 | Lecture with Pernilla Rasmussen (Lund University, Sweden). Her talk “One people – One dress! When King Gustav III introduced a national dress in Sweden, in 1778” investigated how the national dress imposed by the Swedish crown in 1778 functioned as a mechanism of sartorial control and limitation of foreign luxury influence.
• June 11 | Lecture with Carol Tulloch (School of Design, Chelsea, Camberwell and Wimbledon (CCW), University of the Arts London). Her lecture “Censor, censorship, censure: black lives, black rights, black style” explored the interrelations of clothing, identity, and power among Black diasporic communities, analysing how dress and style are shaped by and resist systems of control and censorship. 

For more information on Sartoria;s activities, visit this website. 

Why are the bells ringing, Mitică? and Censorship 

One session of the program, hosted by Paul Șoptirean (member of Sartoria), was dedicated to the screening of Why Are the Bells Ringing, Mitică? (1981) by Lucian Pintilie, one of the most important Romanian and Eastern European film directors. As a researcher working on the censorship of Romanian cinema during the communist period*, I was invited to share insights into this remarkable case. Pintilie’s film was severely censored under Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime (the film was banned for nearly a decade until the regime’s fall). It was condemned for its subversive tone, bleak vision of society, absence of patriotic optimism, and grotesque, chaotic aesthetic.

Under the communist regime, censorship was pervasive: multiple institutions monitored every stage of film production, from script to screening, enforcing ideological conformity and prohibiting various topics. Costume design was also a site of ideological control. Directors like Pintilie resorted to allegory and irony, using classic literary sources as vehicles for veiled social critique. Pintilie officially adapted the classic playwright I.L. Caragiale but subverted his codes to expose the moral decay of contemporary Romania. Regarding the clothing, in Why Are the Bells Ringing, Mitică?, Pintilie and costume designer Doina Levintza employ costumes as a form of visual satire. Characters are overdressed and theatrical, their attire opulent and exagerate - colorful, outdated, grotesque - recalling the world of a masquerade. The costumes are a layer of discourse that expose the artificiality and superficiality of a (micro)society, whether in Caragiale’s world or in communist Romania, providing a striking example of how visual aesthetics and costume design in cinema could become politically charged.

The discussion following the screening of the film explored how the film’s costumes played a role in its censorship, showing how sartorial choices can serve as subtle yet powerful forms of political commentary.
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*For a more detailed analysis of the director’s work through the lens of censorship, see Alina Popescu, “Filmele-Pintilie si cenzura sau despre nasterea unui autor si moartea unei scoli nationale de film” (Pintilie-films and censorship or How an author is born and a national film school died) in Politică și societate în epoca Ceaușescu, Florin Soare (coord.), Polirom, Iasi, 2013.