Exhibit and Conference Reviews

Abstract

Since the establishment of women's history as an academic research and educational field in the 1960s–1970s in the Western context—a field contesting traditional historical narratives (political, diplomatic, institutional) that located women on the periphery of historical processes—efforts have concentrated on the discovery and analysis of neglected facts of the past, the historical representation of gender interdependence, and the reconstruction of a credible male–female sociohistorical reality. Since the 1990s, in the context of changed political, social, and cultural realities, interest in the problems of the “second sex,”1 its experiences and representations, and its role in historical events has intensified and gained greater public visibility in the east as well. Interpreted as a significant tool for drawing a comprehensive picture of women's past in Europe, scholarship on women's history in Eastern and Southeastern Europe has focused on various aspects of women's emancipation in the modern era, the relationships among power, gender, identity, modernization, nationalism, and national formation, women's role in the processes of cultural and civilizational construction, and their place in the context of traditionally established intellectual hierarchies. Conducting a productive dialogue between history and social anthropology, filling numerous gaps in historical memory (regarding traditionally marginalized social groups such as women), feminist studies in the region have produced collections of documents and primary sources, innovative publications, and monographs, all sharing the belief that women have their own history subject to complex analysis.