Yearbook for Women’s History (Web); Guest editor: Djoeke van Netten

Proposals by: 25.11.2021

For centuries sailors thought that the presence of women on board would mean bad luck: rough weather, big waves, and other disasters were sure to follow. Through notions like these, women were supposedly excluded from the maritime domain. Therefore, the ship and the sea have predominantly been perceived as a space for men. Yet, the presence of women at sea has increased in the last century. This volume of the Yearbook for Women’s History therefore asks: to what extent was the sea ever a masculine space? This volume examines if and how women were part of seafaring communities, maritime undertakings, and maritime culture.

In the field of maritime history, the role of women and gender have long been understudied. To enlighten our understanding of the influence and presence of women in the maritime past, this volume of the Yearbook for Women’s History will bring together recent research to provide more insight into the contribution of women to the maritime world, including (but not limited to) maritime industries, seafaring communities, naval warfare, (cruise) tourism, art and literature, and imaginary worlds concerning the sea from antiquity to the 21th century.

Besides the role of women, this volume also wants to focus on the broader workings of gender and the role of femininity and masculinity in the maritime world. By doing so, this volume touches on different intersections of gender with other political, socio-economic and cultural phenomena in relation to people’s use, fear, and admiration of the sea. The editors welcome contributions that employ different scales of analysis from all over the world. The editors are looking for articles that vary in length (3000-6000 words) and are written in Dutch or English.

Possible topics include:

•  Masculinity and femininity at sea and/or in the maritime world
•  The sea as a territory for men and/or women
•  Gender and maritime metaphors and myths
•  The sea, gender religion and/or superstition
•  Women and/or men in flags and ship decoration, e.g. figureheads Continue reading →

Barbara Haider-Wilson und Waltraud Schütz; Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies der Österr. Akademie der Wissenschaften

Einreichfrist: 23.12.2021

Politisches Handeln von Frauen* ist ein bisher kaum beachtetes Thema in der Geschichte der  Habsburgermonarchie im „langen“ 19. Jhd. Dass sich die „Neue Politikgeschichte“ mit ihrem ersten Charakteristikum eines breit gefassten, nicht auf den Staat und sein Personal verengten Politikbegriff in den letzten Jahren auch der Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte geöffnet hat, ist kein neuer Befund. Politik steht aus dieser Sicht für jenen Handlungsraum, „in dem es um die Herstellung und Durchführung kollektiv verbindlicher Entscheidungen geht, wobei der Raum des Politischen historisch jeweils unterschiedlich abgegrenzt und ausgestaltet worden ist“ (B. Stollberg-Rilinger).

Themen, Akteur*innen und Medien des Kommunikationsraums des Politischen müssen als dynamisch und historisch variabel verstanden werden, um verstärkt soziale Gruppen mit, in der engen Definition, ausgesprochen begrenzter politischer Einflussnahme in den Fokus der Aufmerksamkeit zu rücken. Frauen werden zu Handelnden der politischen Geschichte, indem einerseits politische Strategien im klassischen Sinne sichtbar gemacht werden, andererseits ihre bislang als „unpolitisch“ kategorisierten Aktivitäten als politische Artikulationsmöglichkeiten im weiteren Sinn verstanden werden (U. Frevert). Weiterlesen … (PDF)

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Women’s political action is an underexplored topic in the history of the Habsburg Monarchy during the “long” 19th century. In recent years the “new political history”, which conceptualises politics in a broader sense not restricted to the state and its official representatives, has also raised the issue of women’s and gender history. In this view, politics encompasses the space of action “in which it is a matter of making and implementing collectively binding decisions, whereby the space of the political has been historically delimited and shaped in different ways.” (B. Stollberg-Rilinger).

Themes, actors and the media of the communicative space of the political must be understood as dynamic and historically variable, hence also highlighting social groups with a markedly limited scope for political action. Women can be understood as actors in political history not only by re-examining political strategies in the classical sense, but also by reinterpreting activities hitherto categorised as “apolitical” – as possibilities of political articulation in the broader sense (U. Frevert). Read more … (PDF)

Isabell Scheele and Christine de Gemeaux (ICD laboratory, Univ. of Tours), and Karine Ramondy (SIRICE laboratory, Univ. Paris I)

Time: 17.-18.03.2022
Venue: Tours
Proposals by: 01.11.2021

The recent transnational and global turn in social sciences [1] has encouraged experts of colonial and imperial history to explore the history of colonial empires in the light of globalising effects [2]. Thus the notion of ‚trans-imperiality‘, conceptualised by Daniel Hedinger and Nadin Heé [3], brings a renewal to the study of empires, to the point of imposing itself as a new field of study. The challenge is to go beyond the comparative analysis of imperial formations to focus on population movements, transfers of knowledge and goods between empires [4], but also to highlight the networks and exchanges of ideas between people fighting for the end of imperial dominations [5].

Colloquia on this new approach have increased in number since 2017, and they have revealed that the evolvement of the various empires did not occur in a vacuum, the territorial analysis to have been reductive and there to have been many exchanges, circulations and transfers influencing their construction and evolution [6].

The sine qua non of this method is to compare at least two imperial powers regarding the concomitant phenomena of connectivity, cooperation and competition. To what extent do these different forms of contact between empires generate transfers, changes and modifications? Furthermore, colonial and postcolonial studies seem to focus on male perspectives (reports, memoirs of colonial administrators, military officers, missionaries, etc.) and on reductive territorial analyses, limited to the study of a specific colony, mostly ignoring African/Western women and the trans-imperial context in which the colonising powers compete and – sometimes – collaborate. The approach favoured here integrates the perspectives developed by … read more and source (Web).