Aspasia. The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History (Web)

Abstracts due: September 15, 2014

In the early decades of women’s and gender history as an academic discipline, feminist historians devoted a lot of time and effort to finding historical sources by and about women and making those sources available to a wider audience. It turned out that women’s absence in the historiography was not primarily due to a lack of sources but was rather a consequence of (mostly male) historians’ conceptual frameworks and assumptions about what counted as “history.”There is currently a strong interest in rethinking archives, both as official institutions and repositories of documents and in the broader sense of collections holding “traces of the past,” sometimes put together with the help of new technologies.[1] Recent publications challenge the older assumption that archives are neutral and fixed repositories of information and instead reconceptualize them as “artifacts of history” (in Antoinette Burton’s words), shaped by material circumstances, state interests, war and politics, the decisions of those who deposit materials and of archivists, and much more. In addition to historians rethinking archives, the on-going digital revolution has a huge impact in the archival world. More and more archival descriptions and primary sources are becoming available on-line.

We invite historians of women and gender in the region of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe to reflect on their archival experiences and the issues mentioned above. Questions we are interested in include, but are not limited to:

• What is the state of the archives in the country you are working on and how has this influenced the questions historians ask, the kind of narratives they can tell and, in general, what counts as proper history? How has the archival landscape shaped research on women’s and gender history?
• How and to what extent has the specific nineteenth- and twentieth-century history of the region influenced the state and availability of archives, both more generally and specifically with respect to the history of women?
• Have efforts been made to make women’s records visible and available?
• Have you developed specific research strategies to find traces of women or to work around the limited sources available?
• Did you make exciting discoveries when looking for women in the archives? Sometimes a single document is enough to change our historical understanding of women’s presence and agency; are there examples of such findings in CESEE and their impact on our interpretations?
• What is the role of oral history research and the creation of oral history archives in developing women’s and gender history in the region?
• What counts as an archive, what do historians regard as “reliable sources,” and how do they deal with different forms of “evidence”?
• Are efforts being made to create and maintain archives of other previously marginalized groups?
• Does the digital revolution lead to a greater availability and visibility of women’s archives/sources relevant for women’s and gender history?

In addition to the specific theme of Finding Women in the Archives, we welcome submissions on all topics related to women’s and gender history in CESEE 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.

[1] ( about:blank#_ftnref1 )See for example A. Burton, ed.,Archive Stories (2005); N. Chaudhuri et al, eds., Contesting Archives (2010); and T. Zanish-Belcher and A. Voss, eds., Perspectives on Women’s
Archives (2013).

Francisca de Haan
Central European University
dehaanf@ceu.hu

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