Women and Post-War Transitions: Politics
On November 9-10, Atrium ZRC in Ljubljana, hosted project’s workshop entitled “Women and post-war transitions – Politics”, presenting intriguing lectures of the following nine lecturers, each a renowned specialist in the field.
First we started with welcome speech by Roman Kuhar, Dean of Faculty of Arts and introductionary speech by principle investigator, Marta Verginella.
Glenda Sluga, Professor of International History at the University of Sydney, presented the development of international politics, especially on the question of permanent peace, humanity and humanitarianism. Dr. Sluga also made a special emphasis on gender perspectives when the international law was framed in the League of Nation and when the framework of Human Rights was established after World War II.
See her presentation here.
Elda Guerra, Professor of Didactics of History at the Specialization School for High Schools Teaching of the University of Bologna brought under attention the political circumstances in Italy during the Second World War and post-war situation in Italy. She demonstrated how the framework of citizenship changed after the war and presented various factors that conditioned that change.
See her presentation here.
Andrea Feldman, Associate Professor of History at the University of Zagreb, discussed the position and political endeavours of women in the aftermath of World War I in Croatia. She focused especially on Zofka Kveder Demetrović, the editor of a prominent women’s magazine Jugoslavenska žena (Yugoslav Woman).
See her presentation here.
Matthew Stibbe, Professor of Modern European History at Sheffield Hallam University, UK, discussed the role the women had in the socialist revolutions after World War I, especially their involvement in strikes, antimilitarism and political violence. He pointed out how women rarely make much of an appearance in the scholar and commemorative activities in regard to the centenary of the revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe in 1918-19.
See his presentation here.
Birgitta Bader-Zaar, Assistant Professor at the Institute for History of the University of Vienna, spoke about the democratisation of political rights of women in the interwar period. Her lecture contextualized the issue of women’s political and social rights within the European territory, presenting complex, uneven and non-linear development across various states. The focal attention of the lecture was laid upon the specifics of political integration in the newly established Austrian state.
See her presentation here.
Julie Gottlieb, a Reader in the Modern History at the University of Sheffield, shed light onto the development of political rights in Britain, once women gained the right to vote. Following the general outcomes she wrapped her lecture around the biographical outlines of noteworthy, yet quite controversial figure of Helena Swanwick, British suffragist and pacifist of German descent. Her biographical aspects, embracing not only her national and international political activities, but also her personal, intimate stances help address various aspects of political history of women in the interwar Britain.
See her presentation here.
Ivan Kosnica works as Assistant Professor at the Department for the History of Croatian Law and State at the Faculty of Law at the University of Zagreb. His paper presented problems of women’s citizenship status in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia (1918–1941). The most interesting were different regulations of citizenship status after the formation of the new state and his emphasis on gender as an important aspect of these regulations. His presentation was supported with many noteworthy cases, for instance how women, who were-applicants for citizenship had often encountered hardships to receive it.
See his presentation here.
Chiara Bonfiglioli is a Lecturer in Gender&Women’s Studies at the University College Cork. She researches women’s and feminist history from a transnational perspective, with a specific focus on ex-Yugoslavia and Italy. Her presentation was based on Women’s Antifascist Front (AFŽ) archival collections hosted in Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana and Sarajevo. Her paper discussed the ways in which women’s citizenship rights were conceptualized. By means of various aspects she elucidated the factors, which played an important role in the construction of modern, emancipated, yet motherly female models in the post-war era.
See her presentation here.
Mateja Jeraj, an experienced archivist at the Slovenian State Archive, presented various aspects of Slovenian Women’s Antifascist Front (AFŽ, 1942-1953), being part of massive and internally quite diverse Yugoslav Anti-Fascist Women’s movement. It presented a unique phenomenon within comparative global movements, stemming from Marxist theoretical standpoint. The lecture presented advantages and disadvantages AFŽ provided in terms of women’s political and social rights and sketched reasons for its dissolution.
See her presentation here.
Dagmar Wernitznig, concluded the workshop with a lecture titled In the Antechambers of Power: Gender and Post-War Politics – a Synopsis. She attempted to contextualize political paradigm shifts (e.g. the enfranchisement of female citizens in certain post-conflict nations) in contradistinction to the dichotomies or infrastructures of gender constellations and peacebuilding during aftermaths of war. She investigated particular female protagonists (such as Vira Boarman Whitehouse, Sarah Wambaugh and Rosika Schwimmer) in individual countries on political platforms specifically, as well as by examining interfaces of women’s agency in the geographic area of (Central) Europe generally, with a special emphasis on the former Habsburg lands.
See her presentation here.
Last but not least you can also view the final speech by the projects principal investigator, Marta Verginella.
Transnationally and comparatively formed workshop juxtaposed presentation of various perspectives of gender history with a focus on its women’s part. The presented aspects may at first glance seem locally specific, but all of them demonstrated a good share of general features across various national spaces. The findings stemming from the lectures and the vivid debates will enrich future research within the Eirene project.
