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
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.