Editor's Introduction

This volume of Aspasia is dedicated to Ann Snitow, scholar, feminist, and activist, who passed away in August 2019. Although Snitow was not trained as a scholar of our region, she devoted much of her career and her activism to fostering transnational connections and providing tools for empowering women within the former socialist bloc. After helping to found the Network of East-West Women (NEWW) in 1990, Snitow worked tirelessly to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information among feminist scholars in the East and the West, supporting and encouraging an entire generation in their academic and activist pursuits. It is fitting, therefore, that Aspasia is able to honor Ann Snitow’s legacy with this volume. As a yearbook of women’s and gender history of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, Aspasia’s mission is to make more accessible the scholarship being conducted within and about the region. By fostering transnational connections, Aspasia, like Snitow herself, encourages intellectual exchanges across boundaries, provides opportunities for academic engagement, and expands access to scholarship from regions where such access might be limited by language and other barriers.