Shana Penn – “Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland”
Shana Penn presented a lecture, “Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland,” sponsored by the Elizabeth Hubert Malott Commons and the European Union Center of California. Penn’s Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland (University of Michigan Press, Spring 2005) was the first book to reconstruct women’s leadership in the rise of an independent press in Poland and the fall of the communist government. Solidarity’s Secret was supported in part by an Open Society Institute Fellowship, which Penn received in recognition of her contributions to raising public awareness of gender issues in a newly democratic Poland.