Volume 4, 2010

Gender, the Body, and Sexuality

Women and War

The first section on 'Gender, the Body, and Sexuality' explores issues that have been of fundamental importance to women's and gender studies since the 1970s. The second section brings together work on women and war, as well as contributions that focus on media representation of women during times of war with special attention paid to the Second World War.

The Forum section in this volume brings together specialists in women's and gender studies from Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Serbia/former Yugoslavia and Hungary to discuss their experiences with the establishment of academic research on women and gender as well as the current situation within the field. Lastly, this volume of "Aspasia" offers book reviews and reports, including one on the Women's Library and Archives in Turkey where a conference was held to celebrate its twentieth anniversary.

In the years after the fall of communist governments in Central, Eastern, and South- eastern Europe (CESEE), a flood of memoir literature began to fill bookstores around the region. The turn to autobiography and personal narrative inspired the theme section in this volume of "Aspasia" women's auto-biographical writing and correspondence. Articles in this section examine women's autobiographical writing in the second half of the nineteenth century and women's written memories of epochal moments in the Soviet past: the Holodomor (or Great Famine) that convulsed Ukraine in the aftermath of forced collectivization, and the experience of women soldiers during World War II.

Also in this volume, we present the continuation of a fascinating forum on women's and gender history in CESEE, "Clio on the Margins," edited by Krassimira Daskalova (the first five essays appeared in Aspasia volume 6]). The eight essays in this section provide a comprehensive look at the state of the field of women's and gender history in Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia.

The volume concludes with two more general articles, two book review essays, twenty book reviews, and a conference report.

This Handbook addresses the role of women in communism as a global, social and political movement for the first time, exploring their lives, forms of activism, political strategies and transnational networks. Comprising twenty-five chapters, based on new and primary research, the book presents the lives of self-identified communist women from a truly international perspective and outlines their struggles against fascism and colonialism, and for women's emancipation and national liberation. By using the lens of transnational political biography, the chapters capture the broader picture of these women's lives, unpacking the links between the so-called public and private, the power structures and inequalities of their societies, the formal networks and politics in which they were involved, and the informal connections and friendships that supported their activism both at the national and international level. Challenging androcentric and Eurocentric narratives about communism, this Handbook reveals the active and significant roles of women in nineteenth- and twentieth-century communist movements and regimes, and highlights the importance of communist women in shaping the agenda for women's rights worldwide.

Women's Activism brings together twelve innovative contributions from feminist historians from around the world to look at how women have always found ways to challenge or fight inequalities and hierarchies as individuals, in international women's organizations, as political leaders, and in global forums such as the United Nations. The book is divided into three parts. Part one, brings together four essays about organized women's activism across borders. The chapters in part two focus on the variety of women's activism and explore women's activism in different national and political contexts. And part three explores the changing relationships and inequalities among women. This book addresses women's internationalism and struggle for their rights in the international arena; it deals with racism and colonialism in Australia, India and Europe; women's movements and political activism in South Africa, Eastern Bengal (Bangladesh), the United Kingdom, Japan and France. Essential reading for anyone interested in women's history and the history of activism more generally

Women's Activism brings together twelve innovative contributions from feminist historians from around the world to look at how women have always found ways to challenge or fight inequalities and hierarchies as individuals, in international women's organizations, as political leaders, and in global forums such as the United Nations. The book is divided into three parts. Part one, brings together four essays about organized women's activism across borders. The chapters in part two focus on the variety of women's activism and explore women's activism in different national and political contexts. And part three explores the changing relationships and inequalities among women. This book addresses women's internationalism and struggle for their rights in the international arena; it deals with racism and colonialism in Australia, India and Europe; women's movements and political activism in South Africa, Eastern Bengal (Bangladesh), the United Kingdom, Japan and France. Essential reading for anyone interested in women's history and the history of activism more generally

Volume 6 2012

A Hundred Years of International Women's Day in CESE

The year 2010 marked the centennial of International Women's Day (IWD); the year 2011 marked the centennial of its first celebrations, which took place in Austria, Denmark, Germany, partitioned Poland, Switzerland, and no doubt other places. Inspired by these events, the theme section of this volume deals with "A Hundred Years of International Women's Day in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe," with articles focusing on Russia, the Polish lands, and Greece. These three articles discuss the different meanings of and narratives about IWD, its changing agendas, the different forms of cooperation and contestation that surrounded its celebrations, and the various ways in which it has been remembered, which are all related to the changing historical context. This volume's other sections include a review on the book Frauentag (Women's Day ), a collection of essays that accompanied an exhibition in Vienna on the occasion of IWD's first centennial; and the News and Miscellanea section features a report on recent IWD-related events in Ukraine, including two exhibitions.

Volume 5 2011

Gendering the History of Spiritualities and Secularisms in Southeastern Europe

Guest Editors: Pam Ballinger and Kristen Ghodsee

Scholars of religion have increasingly brought secularism within the framework of critical studies of spirituality, analyzing the dialogic relationship between religions and secularisms past and present. This emerging field of "postsecularist" studies examines the multiple meanings and practices that different cultures and societies attach to the concepts of "religion," "faith," and "piety." The pieces presented in this special issue of Aspasia contribute to these larger academic debates by focusing on the multiethnic and historically pluralistic region of Southeastern Europe, an area too often ignored in larger scholarly discussions that have focused primarily on Western Europe and the so-called Third World. More important, this volume demonstrates how secularization projects are intricately interwoven with gender relations in any given society. Collectively, the contributions urge readers to draw connections between the shifting spiritual cartographies, state formations, and definitions of appropriate masculinity and femininity of particular Southeastern European societies.

Additional sections of this volume include nine Forum contributions about regional women's and gender studies, two review essays, book reviews, and an In Memoriam of Richard Stites, the influential historian of women in Russia.