The ASPASIA Editors invite submissions on the theme of gender and empire in Eastern Europe for ASPASIA vol. 9, with Susan Zimmermann (CEU) as guest-editor

Deadline: September 15, 2013

Gendered imperialism within Eastern Europe has received little attention from scholars. We hope this theme section will address this omission and inspire exciting new perspectives on gender and empire in Eastern Europe. We see several particular lacunae in the existing literature. First, while scholars have investigated the entanglement of nation, nationalism, nation-building and gender in Eastern Europe, there is hardly any research on how actors identifying with dominant communities have silently or visibly related to gender, in view of their own and other communities. Second, integrative research into gendered imperialism has been rare in relation to both competing and parallel imperialisms within the region, as well as regarding the consequences of the secondary global status of Eastern European Empires for rethinking empire from Eastern Europe. Third, while there has been an interest in counter-hegemonic intellectual (populist, socialist, “third-worldist” …) traditions in East European history, this research has not focused on the gendered dimensions of these intellectual traditions nor on the politics positively related to these intellectual traditions. The history of state-socialist thinking and politics of course forms one important exception, although also in this case the “anti-imperial” dimension of the related gender project has been rather neglected. Fourth, post-empire has more often than not been investigated in terms of national histories or unspecified “entangled” national histories, with ongoing imperial relationships exiled into “context” or altogether absent. Hence, another research lacuna is the gender of post-empire political settings in both national and imperial, and more recently unequally globalized configurations.

Thinking gender into these and other dimensions of the history and legacies, the continuities and transformations of, as well as challenges to empire, will be an important contribution to the ongoing endeavor to re-think the gendered history of Eastern Europe into more critical perspectives on global history.

Particular foci for contributions to ASPASIA 9 could include:

-The in/visible politics of domination (for example, the silences in the politics of women’s movements identifying with dominant nations; imperial constructions of the gender order; gendered occidentalism; gendered imperial international law; ongoing inequality in East/West relations, etc.).

– Entangled constructions of gender in the relationship between several communities of different status (for example. legal pluralism; mutual gendered constructions and ascriptions; the difference the state makes).

– Periphery as center—decolonial/izing approaches (for example, the gendered dimensions of anti-capitalist and “populist” thought from Eastern Europe; gender beyond the nation in nationalist settings; gender in peripherialized economies; gender without the state, and so on).

– Comparative and entangled imperialism (for example, Habsburg-Ottoman-Russian comparisons; Eastern European vs./in relation to Western empires; the Soviet “empire” in the global order; borderlands; comparative engendering of area studies, etc).

– Imperial orders of post-empire (for example, post/imperial politics of knowledge production; gender order and unequal development, and so on).

In addition to contributions on the theme of gender and empire in Eastern Europe, the ASPASIA editors welcome submissions on all topics related to women’s and gender history in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe on an on-going basis.

Submissions of up to 8,000 words (including notes) can be sent to Francisca de Haan (Aspasia Editor-in-Chief) at dehaanf@ceu.hu or to Melissa Feinberg at mfeinberg@history.rutgers.edu. For more information, please write to one of the editors or visit http://journals.berghahnbooks.com/asp/, where you can also download the ASPASIA Guidelines for Authors.

Source: H-WOMEN@H-NET.MSU.EDU