Centar za ženske studije između dva svetska rata
The Centre for Women’s Studies between the Two World Wars

Author(s): Žarka Svirčev
Subject(s): History, Gender Studies, Gender history
Published by: Етнографски институт САНУ
Keywords: Women’s Movement (Ženski pokret); women scientists and scholars; women’s studies; feminist knowledge; education
Summary/Abstract: The paper will present the alternative, that is to say non-institutional, academic and educational practices of intellectuals who engaged with feminism in the period between the two World Wars in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes / Yugoslavia. These practices were a response to the failure to legitimise the problematic corpus of the “women’s issue” in the academic community in which they acted or sought to act. The focus of the research is Women’s Movement magazine (1920– 1938). The journal represents one of the key institutions of the feminist counterpublic in the Kingdom, and one of its constituent features is the academic discourse and collaborative circle to which prominent female scholars of that era belonged. The journal reported on the activities of members of the Association of University Educated Women, as well as other associations in which women academics worked, and transmitted their articles, studies, and essays. Based on the material provided by Women’s Movement, the representative intellectual preoccupations and research interests of female scholars emerging from feminist positions can be distinguished – this interdisciplinary corpus attests to the persecution of female academics in order to oppose the meritorious knowledge that was spreading from university departments and their microinstitutions in the public sphere. Based on both domestic and international epistemic and interpretative communities, and reflecting thoroughly on their experiences, research into this movement is directed towards the creation of knowledge, and how their achievements transcend the context in which they originated, still being current today. Women’s Movement provides further insight into strategies for disseminating knowledge and creating collaborative networks (public lectures, focus groups and seminars with well-defi ned discussion topics and references), promoting each other through critical texts and presentations (drafting bibliographies, publishing, holding thematic exhibitions, etc.).

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