Women's and gender history in Southeast Europe in the 20th century

Gender and women's history in Southeast Europe has attracted great interest in the last two decades.

Women's and gender history in Southeast Europe in the 20th Century: oral history, ethnographic and biographical approaches as a way to advance intersectionality

Local cooperation partner: Dr. Rory Archer, Centre for Southeast European Studies
Incoming Senior Fellow: Dr. Chiara Bonfiglioli, University College Cork, Ireland; Aleksandra Knežević, University of Belgrade;  Immanuel R. Harisch, University of Vienna
Incoming Junior Fellows: Rachel Trode, European University Institute in Florence, Italy & Drivalda Delia, MA, University of Regensburg, Germany

Duration: February 2022 to December 2024
Symposium/talk: tba

Content:

Gender and women’s history in SEE has been witnessing a considerable interest in the past two decades, particularly when it comes to the history of women’s participation to interwar religious associations, antifascist resistance movements, state socialist women’s organizations, the second feminist wave, and peace movements during the Yugoslav wars. Recent studies have also interrogated the interrelations between gender and women’s history, social history, and labour history. Despite such scholarly advancements in the field, however, gender is often still treated in isolation rather than in its intersection with other factors of social differentiation, even though intersectionality as a theory and as a method is well established in both the social sciences and in the humanities. When it comes to the application of intersectional, post-socialist and post-colonial approaches, women’s and gender history does not seem to follow suit, even if several philosophical and political debates are happening within the field of women’s and gender studies in the region, both on intersectionality and on the necessity to combine post-socialist and post-colonial studies.

‘Women’ and ‘men’ are often treated as homogeneous, pre-existing subject positions, without interrogating the formation of different femininities and masculinities in 20th century SEE in intersection and interrelation with class, ethnicity, race, political orientation, urban/rural location and cross-border connections and cultural transfers. Notably, the ongoing debates on class and race as salient categories of analysis for both socialist and post-socialist societies in SEE, are not yet fully integrated within women’s and gender history.

We believe that more can be done at a scholarly level to understand how male and female citizens in SEE experienced not only political and ideological changes, but also wider economic and social processes, and how these in turn shaped their masculinities and femininities. Phenomena such as mass industrialization, urbanization and cross-republican migration under state socialism, or Europeanisation, widespread deindustrialization, loss of employment and emigration after 1989, together with the violent conflicts that affected the region in the 1990s, had a deep impact on the making and remaking of masculinities and femininities and of ‘gender regimes’ along specific class and ethnic lines.

Through the research activities of the project team, we aim to highlight how oral history, ethnographic and biographical methodological approaches can help us challenge a simplified understanding of gendered transformations during the 20th century and to integrate ongoing debates about intersectional, postsocialist and post-colonial approaches and interpretations within women’s and gender history in Southeastern Europe.


 

Project activities so far:

Teaching activities:

  • Seminar for Master studends (2022-2025): "Women's and gender history in 20th century Southeastern Europe"
  • Workshop for doctoral students (May 2023): "History and intersectionality in Southeastern Europe"


Research/Publishing/Project applications (ongoing):

  • Rory Archer: “Inside the Factory, Outside the Party-state: The Agency of Yugoslav Women Workers in Late Socialism (1976–1989)”, Women, Work, and Activism Chapters of an Inclusive History of Labor in the Long Twentieth Century edited by Eloisa Betti, Leda Papastefanaki, Marica Tolomelli, and Susan Zimmermann. Budapest: CEU Press. https://ceupress.com/book/women-work-and-activism
  • Rachel Trode: "All eight-hundred of us girls! Women Tobacco Workers and the May 1906 Strikes in Sarajevo", Women's Political Action in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1780–1918 edited by Barbara Haider-Wilson and Waltraud Schütz (OÄW).
  • Chiara Bonfiglioli (ERC Consolidator 2023 Stipendium): Women and Non-Alignment in the Cold War era: biographical and intersectional perspectives. 
  • Chiara Bonfiglioli and Rory Archer are drafting a review article critically examining the state-of-the-art with regard to scholarship based on biographies, historical ethnographies and qualitative research on gender and women’s history in SEE (submission in Autumn 2024).
  • Rory Archer is preparing a manuscript of a journal article titled “Sex, Health and Modes of Masculinities among the Yugoslav Workforce in Postcolonial Africa” (submission in June 2024 planned)
  • Chiara Bonfiglioli recently submitted a book chapter on the transnational connections between the Women in Black in Venice-Mestre and the Women in Black and other pacifist activists in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, to be published by Fall 2024.


Public talks/Conferences/Events:

  • Chiara Bonfiglioli gave a talk for the lecture series “Europeanisation Processes in Southeastern Europe” at CSEES in May 2022, on the theme: “Women’s Non-Aligned Internationalism between Yugoslavia and the Global South”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQYfYN6sosk
  • The project team participated at a Symposium at the Institute for Contemporary History, Ljubljana on 17.05.205 “History on the Edge” on the theme of gender and labour history in SEE:
    • Rachel Trode - Tobacco workers in Sarajevo
    • Rory Archer - Albanian workers in Croatia
    • Chiara Bonfiglioli - Non-Aligned biographies
  • On 25 May 2023 Dr Chiara Bonfiglioli delivered a public talk at the University of Graz on the topic of our ELF and her recently awarded ERC grant (WO-NAM: the herstory of women in the Non-Aligned Movement) https://www.uni-graz.at/de/veranstaltungen/public-lecture-finding-women-in-the-non-aligned-movement-biographical-and-intersectional-perspectives-1/
  • Two public lectures were organised in Graz by external researchers working on gender in SEE.
    • “The Beautiful, Rich and Invisible Life of Ida S(z)abo” Tues., 23.05.2023, 13:00-14:00 - Krisztina Rácz (Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade) - SR 111.42 (Beethovenstraße 8, 4. OG, 8010 Graz)
    • “Slovenian Textile Workers between Deindustrialization and Dispossesion” Tues., 30.05.2023, 13:00-14:00 - Nina Vodopivec (Institute for Contemporary History, Ljubljana) - SR 111.42 (Beethovenstraße 8, 4. OG, 8010 Graz).
  • Rory Archer, participation at ASEEES conference, in Philadelphia on the panel: “Mediterranean Masculinities and the East: A Historical Anthropological Examination of Sexuality, Intimacy, and Representations”. For a second panel about East-South global connections Rory Archer presented the paper “Sex, health and modes of masculinities among the Yugoslav workforce in postcolonial Africa” (2 December 2024). This is being prepared to submit to a journal during 2024.
  • Chiara Bonfiglioli, participation at ASEEES conference, in Philadelphia on the panel: “Women's Solidarity in the Postwar World: Women of State Socialist Europe as Contributors and Beneficiaries of Solidarity Work” (2 December 2024).
  • For a second panel at ASEEES on Non-Aligned connections Chiara Bonfiglioli presented the paper “'Updating Malthus' Population Theory Is Out of the Question Today':Nevenka Petrić and Non-Aligned Alliances against Neo-Malthusianism”
  • Rory Archer and Chiara Bonfiglioli recently spoke about the ELF and gender history more broadly on the University of Graz podcast, Podcast "gender & mehr". See: https://koordination-gender.uni-graz.at/de/services/podcast-gender-mehr/18-southeast-european-history-with-chiara-bonfiglioli-and-rory-archer/
  • Drivalda Delia gave a lecture at the conference “Women in Arms, in Turkey and beyond” organised by the Hans Böckler Foundation and the University of Cologne in cooperation with the Southeast Europe Association, 30.11 – 01.12.2023. https://nfg024.unikoeln.de/sites/nfg024/user_upload/Flyer_NFG_book_launch_final.pdf


Planned project activities:

  • Junior fellow Drivalda Delia will present her research in the format of an ongoing series of brownbag lectures at Uni Graz (CSEES) on 12 March 2024.
  • Rory Archer, participation at ASEEES conference, in Philadelphia on the panel: “Mediterranean Masculinities and the East: A Historical Anthropological Examination of Sexuality, Intimacy, and Representations”. For a second panel about East-South global connections Rory Archer presented the paper “Sex, health and modes of masculinities among the Yugoslav workforce in postcolonial Africa” (2 December 2024). This is being prepared to submit to a journal during 2024.
  • Chiara Bonfiglioli, participation at ASEEES conference, in Philadelphia on the panel: “Women's Solidarity in the Postwar World: Women of State Socialist Europe as Contributors and Beneficiaries of Solidarity Work” (2 December 2024).