Monthly Archives: Dezember 2025

Werkstattgespräch: Chiara-Marie Hauser: Sexuelle Gewalt gegen Kinder in der Frühen Neuzeit (5. F*GG LAB), 15.01.2026, Wien

5. F*GG LAB: Geschlecht historisieren. Frauen*- und Geschlechtergeschichte vernetzen: Neue Reihe des Forschungsschwerpunktes F*GG der historisch-kulturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Univ. Wien (Web)

Zeit: Do., 15.01.2026, 18.30 Uhr
Ort: Univ. Wien, Institut für Geschichte, Seminarraum Geschichte 1 (1. Stock), Universitätsring 1, 1010 Wien

Im Zentrum des Dissertationsprojekts von Chiara-Marie Hauser steht die Frage, wie Personen, die an Prozessen wegen sexueller Gewalt gegen Kinder in der Frühen Neuzeit teilgenommen haben – Zeug*innen, Eltern, Ärzte, Hebammen, Juristen und auch Opfer und Täter selbst – über diese Art der Gewalt gesprochen haben. Die Fallstudien werden mithilfe eines diskursanalytischen Ansatzes, unterstützt durch die Historische Semantik, erstellt. Untersucht werden dazu Akten und Gerichtsschreiben zu zwischen 1612 und 1735 geführten Prozessen, bei denen einerseits Kinder, andererseits Erwachsene angeklagt wurden. In einer Kurzvorstellung der Dissertation werden erste Ergebnisse präsentiert, Gewaltverständnisse der Frühen Neuzeit herausgearbeitet und auf die Täterschaft von Kindern aufmerksam gemacht. Daran anschließend folgt eine Diskussion des Forschungskontextes zu Kindheit und Gender in der Frühen Neuzeit.

Anschließend: Café Merkur, Florianig. 18, 1080 Wien – ca. 10 Minuten Fußweg entfernt

Chiara-Marie Hauser ist Universitätsassistentin Praedoc am Institut für Geschichte der Univ. Wien.

CN: Bei dieser Veranstaltung wird explizit sexualisierte Gewalt thematisiert | Der Seminarraum Geschichte 1 ist barrierefrei zugänglich.

F*GG LAB: Natascha Bobrowsky und Paula Lange (Organisatorinnen F*GG LAB), Johanna Gehmacher und Dietlind Hüchtker (Sprecherinnen FSP und Doc-School Cluster F*GG)

CfP: False Freedoms? Reassessing East German Feminisms Before and After the Wende (Publication); by: 31.01.2026

Journal of Women’s History (Web); Alexandria Ruble and Yanara Schmacks (Web)

Proposals by: 31.01.2026

After German reunification in 1990, a popular narrative emerged: in terms of the politics of gender and sexuality, the Wende had been a disappointment for East Germans. Indeed, East German women were dubbed as the ‘losers’ of the reunification process. The absorption of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) had led to the end of many rights that East Germans had taken for granted: generous maternity leave, state-subsidized all-day childcare, and reproductive rights such as abortion, to name just a few examples. West German feminists often dismissed these gains as a result of state socialism, rather than a struggle by autonomous feminists to achieve their own liberation. More recently, scholars have challenged this narrative, arguing for a more nuanced approach to women’s rights activism in the GDR and during the early 1990s. Likewise, a fresh wave of scholarship on queer lives in the GDR has explored gay rights activism and homoerotic spaces in East Germany, challenging long-standing assumptions about a total repression of non-heterosexual experiences. Emerging research on the post-socialist landscape of the 1990s–2000s also highlights the diverse ways East German activists reacted to reunification, contesting West German frameworks while reshaping their own political practices in a rapidly shifting landscape.
This special issue takes up this call to complicate our understanding of the history of feminisms, queer activism, and sexuality during and after the GDR. Contributions will engage with broader themes regarding the relationship between state socialist and liberal-democratic contexts, with issues of gender and sexuality.

We welcome papers exploring a variety of questions and themes across the 1989 caesura, including but not limited to:
– What counts as feminist/queer activism? How were/are women’s, gay, and reproductive rights achieved?
– Feminist, queer, and trans subjectivities under socialism
– Transnational connections of East German women’s and gay rights activism Continue reading →

CfP: Trans Political Visibilities: Innovations from Latin America (Publication); by: 31.01.2026

Alternautas (Web); Helton Levy (London Metropolitan Univ., UK), Flora Rondón (Univ. Del Rosario, Colombia), and Bru Pereira (Federal Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil) 

Proposals by: 31.01.2026

Latin America has had a unique importance for recent trans scholarship, from classic ethnographies of travestidades to contemporary analyses of transfeminism, decoloniality, and policy change. Foundational works (e.g., Kulick, 1998; Ochoa, 2020) foreground embodiment, labour, beauty regimes, and national modernities as terrains where visibility is negotiated. Brazilian and Southern Cone scholarship has advanced trans feminist and decolonial critiques that problematize cisnormativity, medicalisation, and epistemic erasure (Bento, 2006; Pelucio, 2005; Vergueiro, 2019; de Jesus, 2019). These debates situate trans visibility within racialised, classed, territorial, and colonial relations – key to any regional account of “development.”
Legal and policy shifts have also reconfigured the landscape of visibility and recognition—most prominently Argentina’s Gender Identity Law (Law 26.743, 2012), Brazil’s 2018 Supreme Court ruling allowing administrative name/sex marker change without medical/surgical requirements, Colombia’s Constitutional Court jurisprudence since 1993 recognizing name-change rights, protection from gender identity–based discrimination, and access to gender-affirming healthcare; complemented by a 2015 executive decree allowing sex marker correction without medical or judicial requirements, Uruguay’s 2018 Comprehensive Trans Law, and Mexico City’s 2024 typification of transfemicide—each producing new archives of rights, bureaucratic traces, and media discourse to be studied critically. At the same time, violence and precarity remain urgent: regional monitoring and recent reports document disproportionate killings of trans people and LGBTQIA+ communities, demanding analyses that connect visibility to neoliberal “development” agendas with gendered/racialized disposability (TGEU, 2024). Read more … (Web) 

Alternautas, a journal of multi-disciplinary Latin American studies, invites submissions for a special collection on Trans Political Visibilities: Innovations in/from Latin America. We seek critical, empirically grounded, and theoretically informed work that examines how trans, travesti, and transformista lives are made visible—and rendered (in)visible—across media, law, health, urban space, development policy, labour, activism, and everyday life with varying impacts. (Web)

Source: Qstudy-l Digest

CfP: Female Sexual Desire in Women’s Writing (pre-1940) (09/2026, Nova Gorica); by: 31.01.2026

1st international conference of the DARIAH Working Group Women Writers in History (Web)

Time: 23.-25.09.2026
Venue: Nova Gorica, Slovenia
Proposals by: 31.01.2026

Articulations of female sexual desire and eroticism were rare before the advent of modern feminism, largely due to the historically restricted social roles and positions of women. When such articulations did emerge, they were often encoded and veiled in metaphor, reflecting their transgressive nature. Women writers frequently had to invent the language of eroticism and desire anew, often without access to earlier female expressions of similar experiences.
In Catholic contexts in particular, femininity was caught between two extremes: the glorification of Marian virginity and the condemnation of eroticism embodied in Eve. As a result, female sexuality was typically considered sinful unless contained within the heterosexual matrix of marriage. Yet many women writers boldly transgressed social, moral, and aesthetic boundaries in their exploration and expression of desire; whether directed toward men, other women, or the self through narcissistic love.
This conference seeks to explore representations of female desire and its intersections with other emotions, especially pride, joy, and shame, in women’s writing. We invite papers that build on existing scholarship as well as new readings, analyses, and interpretations of women’s writing, particularly from so-called peripheral literatures. The aim is to shed light on how women writers contributed to the discourse on sexual desire up to the interwar period, and how their work shaped cultural understandings of female eroticism and emotion.
As a key point of departure, we draw on the SHE WROTE database (shewrote.rich.ru.nl), which enables users to collect, share, and analyze historical data documenting the international reception of works by women writers before c. 1940. This resource provides evidence of book ownership, readership, re-editions, translations, intertextual references, and commentary on women’s writing. Since representations of sexual desire have historically provoked particularly strong reactions from readers and cultural gatekeepers, we are very interested in the reception of this topic in women’s writing.
We especially welcome contributions that approach women’s writing from comparative, transnational, or digital humanities perspectives. Continue reading →

Buchpräsentation: Irene Messinger und Zoe Doye: Verfolgung und Widerstand von Fürsorgerinnen in Wien 1934-45, 15.01.2026, Wien

Institut für Historische Sozialforschung, Arbeiterkammer Wien (Web)

Zeit: 15.01.2026, 18:30 Uhr
Ort: Bibliothek der AK Wien, Prinz-Eugen-Str. 20-22, 1040 Wien
Anmeldung (Web)

Die Mehrheit der Wiener Fürsorgerinnen passte sich im Austrofaschismus und Nationalsozialismus den Vorgaben der Regime an, während zahlreiche Kolleginnen entrechtet, entlassen, in die Flucht gedrängt oder ermordet wurden. Nur eine kleine Gruppe beteiligte sich aktiv am Widerstand. Die Studie untersucht anhand von 80 Biografien politisch und rassistisch verfolgter Fürsorgerinnen deren berufliche und private Netzwerke, die Mechanismen institutioneller Ausgrenzung sowie den Transfer von Wissen ins Exil und erweitert damit die Berufsgeschichte der Sozialen Arbeit um marginalisierte und bislang vernachlässigte Akteurinnen.
Die Recherche wurde durch Familienangehörige bereichert. Zoe Doye, Enkelin der Fürsorgerin Hedy Schwarz und 1934 entlassene Leiterin des Kindergartens im Goethehof, die 1938 nach London fliehen konnte, berichtet über deren Leben im Exil.

Weitere Präsentationen
29.01.2026, 18.30 Uhr, Jüdisches Museum Wien (Web)
10.03.2026, 18.30 Uhr, Fachbibliothek Zeitgeschichte, Institut für Zeitgeschichte der Univ. Wien (Web)

Irene Messinger: Verfolgung und Widerstand von Fürsorgerinnen in Wien 1934–1945. Kollektivbiografische Studie zur Geschichte Sozialer Arbeit, Baden-Baden (Nomos) 2025 (Web)

Irene Messinger ist Professorin für Soziale Arbeit an der Hochschule Campus Wien. Die promovierte Politikwissenschafterin habilitierte sich mit dem vorliegenden Werk am Institut für Zeitgeschichte der Univ. Wien.

Der Vortrag und die Diskussion finden auf Deutsch statt. Die Teilnahme ist kostenlos.

CfP: Early childhood education between differences and convergences since the mid-20th century: towards a European model? (Publication); by: 15.01.2026

Michel Christian and Joëlle Droux, Univ. of Geneva, Psychology and Educational Sciences Faculty, Social History of Education (Web)

Proposals by: 15.01.2026

Education, in its broadest sense, refers to the process of developing human capacities in each individual and is one of the basic conditions of social reproduction in any human group. In many societies throughout history, education has been partially formalized and institutionalized in what we call “schools”. However, it is only in recent history, and especially in Europe, that the idea that young children and even infants could attend educational institutions has emerged. Early childhood education, in its diversity, refers to the many forms of collective care with an educational purpose that emerged essentially in Europe since the the late 18th century, with several distinctive features. It was provided by paid staff who had no family ties or preexisting bonds of solidarity with the children concerned. It was provided in specific places and by specific institutions and, as such, was legally supervised and sometimes even directly administered by public authorities.
From the perspective of the history of education, the history of early childhood education presents the unique challenge of studying education for children who generally do not yet attend school. This specificity is further complicated by the fact that early childhood education has of course not been alone in the field of early childhood. Other approaches, including medical and psychological, have developed their own knowledge and know-how. Consequently, the history of early childhood education is also the story of its establishment as a legitimate institution and practice, in relation to other approaches to early childhood. The historiography of early childhood education in Europe has well developed since the 1990s. Important works have already been devoted to its pioneers and to its first forms of institutionalization in the 19th century (Lascaride 2000), usually on a national basis (see Reyer und Kleine 1997, Franke-Meyer 2011 Konrad 2004 for Germany, and Luc 1997 for France). However, comparative historical works have been less common (Luc 1999, Melhuish and Petrogianis 2006; Scheiwe & Willekens 2009, Hagemann, Jarausch & Allemann-Ghionda 2011; Nawrotzki, Scheiwe, & Willekens 2015; Caroli 2022; Kasüschke, Braches-Chyrek, and Franke-Mayer 2025) while the transnational approach have remained the exception … read more (PDF).

Source: HSozKult

CfP: Ἀμαζόνες ἀντιάνειραι 1. Tagung des Frauen*Netzwerks in der Alten Geschichte (11/2026, Potsdam); by: 16.01.2026

1. Tagung des Frauen*Netzwerks in der Alten Geschichte; Bettina Reese, Nicole Diersen, Victoria Macura und Lea Fürst (Web)

Zeit: 05.-07.11.2026
Ort: Univ. Potsdam
Einreichfrist: 16.01.2026

Der Initiative unserer Kolleginnen* aus der Klassischen Philologie folgend, möchten wir ab 2026 auch im Bereich der Alten Geschichte ein Frauen*Netzwerk in Kooperation zwischen der Univ. Potsdam und Osnabrück ins Leben rufen. Ziel ist eine stärkere Vernetzung von Frauen* in der Alten Geschichte und ihren Nachbarwissenschaften. Mit der geplanten Tagung reagieren wir zugleich auf den immer noch deutlich geringeren Frauen*anteil in allen Qualifikationsstufen in den Geisteswissenschaften und möchten einen Raum für wissenschaftlichen Austausch, Kooperation und gegenseitige Unterstützung schaffen. Der Call for Papers richtet sich an Wissenschaftlerinnen* aller Karrierephasen. Willkommen sind selbstverständlich auch Kolleginnen* aus Nachbardisziplinen wie der Klassischen Philologie oder der Archäologie.

Zur Wahl stehen zwei verschiedene Präsentationsformate:
– Vorträge (wahlweise zwischen 20 und 30 Min. Vortrag mit anschließender Diskussion)
– Projekt-Pitches (10 Min. Vorstellung des Projekts + 15 Min. Diskussion), geeignet insbesondere für neue Projekte oder einzelne Aspekte laufender Forschungsvorhaben

Besonders willkommen sind Themen der Frauen- und Genderforschung, insbesondere – aber nicht ausschließlich – zu folgenden Aspekten:
– Mutterschaft und Familie
– politische, wirtschaftliche und juristische Stellung von Frauen
– Darstellung von Frauen in antiken Quellen
– rezeptionsgeschichtliche Ansätze
Darüber hinaus können didaktische Ansätze in Form von geplanten oder bereits erfolgreich durchgeführten Lehrveranstaltungen mit ähnlichem Schwerpunkt vorgestellt werden. Grundsätzlich freuen wir uns über alle althistorischen Themen. Continue reading →

CfP: Clio Reframed: Women Writing History, 1500-1750 (06/2026, Univ. of Oxford); by: 28.02.2026

Clio Reframed (Web)

Time: 18.-19.06.2026
Venue: Corpus Christi College, Univ. of Oxford
Proposals by: 28.02.2026

Plenary speakers: Danielle Clarke (Univ. College Dublin), Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille (Univ. de Rouen Normandie), Emilie Murphy (Univ. of York), Sue Wiseman (Birkbeck, Univ. of London)

Early modern historical writing encompasses a wide range of subjects, approaches, and forms, including, to name a few, chronicle histories, verse narratives, drama, pamphlets, and biographical lives. While recent scholarship has paid attention to this variety and generic hybridity by looking beyond major chronicle and humanist histories, the contributions that women made to historical culture have often been overlooked. Women were, however, actively engaged in historical writing, producing a diverse range of texts that have not been adequately incorporated within our understanding of ‘history’ as a genre or mode of writing about the past.
Clio Reframed aims to explore historical writing and historiography produced by women between the sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, asking why, when and to what purpose and effect women chose different historical subjects as their focus; to situate these texts within their social, religious, political, and textual production contexts, with the aim of expanding our critical understanding of historical writing that often elides the participation of women; and to challenge narratives that homogenize women’s interests in history and their writing strategies. It proposes that women’s historical writing is not an essentially gendered or isolated space in which individual contributions and agendas are uniform. Rather, women’s historical writing is diverse, prevalent, and characterized by relational frameworks and networks, involving other writers, patrons, stationers, and readers.
The conference defines historical writing broadly to include any text, in print or manuscript, that purports to offer some account of a historical past or what was once thought to be a historical past. These parameters include political and military histories (what has been conventionally thought of as ‘mainstream’ history), but also biblical and religious histories, legendary histories, such as those linked to a nation’s narrative of origin, and individual histories about specific lives, including memoirs. The conference welcomes global perspectives and Continue reading →

CfP: Coping with Disappointments: Female Mobility between Expectations and Experiences (17th to 20th Centuries) (05/2026, Paris); by: 31.01.2025

Jan Simon Karstens, Eva Seemann, and Hannah Tulay; German Historical Institute Paris (Web)

Time: 29.05.2026
Venue: Paris – and virtuel space
Proposals by: 31.01.2026

It is indisputable that experiences of mobility and migration have been part of the reality of life for many women and girls – not only in recent history. The mobility of women, whether as daughters, wives, or widows, as workers, nuns, entrepreneurs, or activists, was associated not only with gender-specific expectations, but often also with specific experiences that varied depending on factors such as social and geographical origin, status, age, religious, ethnic, and family affiliation.
The planned workshop at the German Historical Institute in Paris picks up on this and asks how historical actors reflected on, interpreted, and communicated experiences of mobility that contradicted previous expectations. We want to engage in a trans-epochal dialogue and therefore invite contributions from the early modern period to contemporary history.
The history of gender-specific mobility, especially female mobility, has become an established topic of historical research over the past twenty years. In contrast to older assumptions, recent research has not only revealed the extensive extent of female mobility but has also highlighted the wide range of different experiences of women and girls. The spectrum ranges from female educational and marital mobility, to urban-rural migration of female servants and other forms of labor mobility, to mobility in the context of family migration or political activism, whether in local or cross-border settings. Recent work has mostly emphasized female agency and the opportunities and possibilities associated with mobility, such as securing a livelihood, social advancement, and self-determination. However, women’s mobility often came with particular constraints, challenges, and disappointments that influenced their experiences and decision-making processes and, in turn, shaped future expectations and retrospective memories. Explicit forms of forced mobility (e.g., expulsion, flight, slavery) are not to be included here.
The tension that arises between individual and societal expectations and contradictory experiences will be explored in greater depth during the workshop. Continue reading →

CfP: Agents of change: Folk cultures in the long 20th century (06/2026, Brno); by: 19.12.2025

„Beyond the Village. Folk Cultures as Agents of Modernity, 1918-1945,“ a project funded by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) (Web)

Time: 18.-19.06.2026
Venue: Masaryk Univ. Brno
Proposals by: 19.12.2025

Folk art and cultures have often been seen as passive, unchanging, and frozen in a preindustrial era, linked with ideas such as nostalgia, decoration, and kitsch. From this point of view, grounded in late 19th and early 20th-century nationalist and modernist discourses, folk art seems to be a relic of the past that cannot respond to the challenges of modern societies, let alone contribute to social change.
There is another perspective – one that, admittedly, has received much less attention: numerous publications, exhibitions, institutions, and movements around the globe have recognised folk art as a continuous and contemporary practice with the potential to emancipate and activate individuals and groups. Ranging from projects dedicated to wellbeing and mental health to activist interventions from all sides of the political spectrum, folk art is connected to class, gender, and ethnic divisions, regional and national identities, as well as decolonial and economic emancipation. Far removed from the limiting associations with preindustrial traditionalism and decorativeness, it instead can be understood as an agent of change in both past and contemporary practices.
The workshop turns attention to folk craftspeople and artisans that have actively engaged with social upheavals, market shifts, government policies, and technological advances around the globe from the late 19th century to the present. Building on the idea of agency in folk art, the workshop welcomes papers that offer new perspectives on the meanings of folk art throughout the long 20th century in various geographical and political contexts. With the goal of developing new theoretical frameworks for the study of folk art across disciplines, the workshop seeks to open a long-overdue debate about the role of folk art in contributing to political, social, and economic change during the long 20th century. It asks:

– How do folk cultures interact with politics and ideologies through specific actors, from the extreme right to alternative subcultures, from conformity to resistance?
– How does folk art serve as a tool for emancipation and oppression? Continue reading →