“Fotografia si mjet i përhapjes së propagandës së emancipimit të gruas në Shqipërinë komuniste”

Author(s): Irida Vorpsi / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 32-33/2014

This paper analyzes the visual representation of women in Albania from 1945 to 1990, as especially in ´the pictures magazine "New Albanian", organ of the Organization of Women's Union of Albania. The study is based on the theory of analysis and synthesis of photography, Manfred Lueger, and proposes the analysis visual through the concept of "glorification symbolic", to accept the latter as part of the necessary effort of the ideological regime to prove that participation of women in politics and in the labor force was a sign of their emancipation. By analyzing the pictures, there is a kind of "neglect" aspects linked to femininity, and the female identity compacted with contemporary ideological purposes.

“Geisha Girls Strike”: An Overlooked Aspect of the Women's Labor Movement in Modern Japan

Author(s): Yuhei Yambe / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

This paper analyzes a geisha strike that occurred in Osaka on February 26, 1937. At Nanchi Gokagai (Osaka), the largest geisha district in modern Japan, about sixty geisha went on strike because the manager of the call-office refused to recognize the union they had formed. All geisha had to register with the call-office, but they had no voice in deciding the call-office's policies. The geisha strikers climbed Mount Shigi and stayed at Gyokuzō Buddhistt emple for several days. At the time, the strike caused a sensation. However the strike has not been the focus of attention in studies of Women's Labor Movements by Women's Studies scholars in Japan until recently. Geisha have seldom been viewed as 'regular' female workers. Rather, they are often treated only as victims of human trafficking and thus are marked by the stigma of 'being a prostitute.' Therefore, focusing on the geishas' self-representations and the high level of self-awareness seen in them, my paper discusses the Osaka geisha strike as a significant moment in the history of the women's labor movements that helped geisha to acquire confidence as women workers.

“I Stand Out Like a Raven”: Depicting the Female Detective and Tudor History in Nancy Bilyeau’s The Crown

Author(s): Charlotte Beyer / Language(s): English / Issue: 28/2017

This article examines the portrayal of female identity and crime in the Tudor period in Nancy Bilyeau’s contemporary historical crime fiction novel, The Crown (2012). Featuring a female detective figure, Joanna Stafford, Bilyeau’s novel forms part of the wealth of contemporary fiction using Tudor history as context, reflecting a continued interest in and fascination with this period and its prominent figures. This article examines Bilyeau’s representation of the Tudor period in The Crown through the depiction of English society and culture from a contemporary perspective, employing genre fiction in order to highlight issues of criminality. My investigation of The Crown as crime fiction specifically involves analysing gender-political questions and their portrayal within the novel and its tumultuous historical context. This investigation furthermore explores the depiction of agency, individuality, religion, and politics. The article concludes that Bilyeau’s suspense-filled novel provides an imaginative representation of Tudor history through the prism of the crime fiction genre. Central to this project is its employment of a resourceful and complex female detective figure at the heart of the narrative.

“Routes Rather than Roots”

Writing women’s literary history from a transnational perspective

Author(s): Ana Kolarić / Language(s): English / Issue: 5/2015

Women telling nations / Amelia Sanz, Francesca Scott, Suzan van Dijk. – Amsterdam–New York, NY, 2014. – 472 pp. ISBN: 978-90-420-3870-7; E-book ISBN: 978-94-012-1112-3.

“The Heroine from Shipka Who Took Part in Four Wars and Helped Thousands of People.” The Russo-Ottoman War 1877 – 1878 as Symbolic Capital in the Female Biography

Author(s): Milena Angelova,Anastasiya Pashova / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2016

The article elaborates on the mechanism used to construct the memory and to mythologize the figure of Hristina Hranova (1851/52 - 1922) who allegedly has taken part in the Russian-Ottoman War of 1877 – 1878. The major focus is on her biographical narrative, created by herself (and latter on used by her "biographers" during different historical periods since 1878 until today. Hristina Hranova’s image has been not only promoted in popular historical writings with more and more exotic nuances. Lately she has been also tacitly institutionalized, which is a significant step towards her mythologization.

“Yuliya Vrevskaya” – the Other Movie about the Russo-Ottoman War 1877 – 1878

Author(s): Mariyana Piskova / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2016

The first Soviet-Bulgarian movie devoted to the Russo-Ottoman War was created in 1954 as a Soviet model for the Bulgarian national cinema. "The Heroes of Shipka" is historical chronicle of the war whose messages were directed also to the new enemies of the Cold War. At the beginning of the “golden years” of the Bulgarian cinema (1970 – 1980s) the Russian-Ottoman War became a subject of two co-productions with the Soviet cinematography – the two series movie “Yuliya Vrevska” (1878) of the director Nikola Korabov and the TV movie “The Route to Sofia” (1979) of the director Nikolay Mashchenko. The present analysis is based on the movie archives and the reviews about it in Soviet and Bulgarian official press.

”Живимо ли ми само у садашњости?”

О покушају стварања женске културне заједнице у раду Јелице Беловић Бернаджиковск

Author(s): Biljana Dojčinović / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 1/2011

The text is about Jelica Belović Bernadzikowska, a writer, ethnographer and teacher, and about her work on self-affirmation and the affirmation of her contemporaries. Bernadzikowska’s effort to describe and present the work of Serbian women in the cultural domain is seen in the light of the specific notion of culture she uses in her monograph on textile art (1907) and connected to the work and reception of her contemporaries who were presented in the almanac Serbian Woman (1913).

„...Magyar menyecskét szeretnék én otthon látni”

Család, házasság és politika a dualizmus korában Magyarországon

Author(s): Eszter Bartha / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2016

Review of the book "A budapesti úrinő magánélete (1860–1914)" by Noémi Szécsi, Eleonóra Géra (Budapest, 2015)

„A házaséletet férje mellett megszokta vagy legalábbis eltűri, de néha még élvezi is”

A leszbikusság képei a Kádár-korszak pszichiátriai irodalmában

Author(s): Anna Borgos / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 66/2016

The paper presents and analyzes the representations of women’s same-sex desires, sexualities and relationships in state socialist psychiatric and sexology literature. These texts constitute a significant corpus of images of gays and lesbians, both reflecting on and contributing to the discourse on homosexuality. Within the psychological discourses on homosexuality, the case of women shows special characteristics. Women usually appear along a continuum, in which their sexual choices are linked to emotional factors and a general need for intimacy in the first place. There is no “need” for therapeutic conversion for women since the socially prescribed scripts for getting married are strong enough and the lack of sexual pleasure with men is not considered to be a problem. Psycho-medical accounts seem to lack the recognition of lesbian identity or life perspective altogether; lesbianism is interpreted as an early attachment disorder or a substitute for unsatisfying relationships with men. The fundamental therapeutic aim is to achieve good social adaptation and adjustment. In this process, psychology experts are influential representatives of the heteronormative society, reinforcing gender norms and straight family ideals. Scholarly and popular psy- and sexology literature suggests that even though transgressing sexuality was a stronger taboo for men, women’s transgression of marriage was considered a more serious social threat.

„A rendszerváltás előtt titokként kellett megélni”

Életútinterjúk meleg férfiakkal a hatvanas–nyolcvanas évekről

Author(s): Péter Hanzli / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 66/2016

The book entitled Hot Men, Cold Dictatorships was published along the documentary of the same title in 2015. This is the first collection of interviews that presents the lives of older gay men who were socialised in the Kádár era. Thirteen participants, their photos and names supplied, relate their lives and experiences living as gay men in the Kádár regime. The paper shows that although their lives are very different, they also show similarities. It gives an insight into the process of self-acceptance of homosexual men in the 1960s and 1970s, the type of information at their disposal, as well as the terms they used to describe themselves. In addition, the study also sheds light on the typical life strategies of closet homosexuals and men who came out at least in certain circles, as well as their most popular ways and places to meet and socialise. The paper also examines the establishment’s attitudes towards homosexuals and vice versa, police monitoring and the beginnings of the LMBT movement in Hungary.

„Beteg szerelem” – a queer szubkultúra a rendőri és a sajtódiskurzusban a 20. század első felében

Author(s): Roland Perényi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 66/2016

The paper examines the main features of the image of queer subculture in the first half of the twentieth century based on police and press discourses. Queer subculture in the modern metropolis was a very diverse and complex phenomenon at the time, with a number of various sub-types. This complexity is not only observed by historians of queer culture but was also evident for contemporary analysts like police officers and journalists. As indicated in the title, the discourse about male homosexuality in this period is characterized by a gradual medicalisation. After the 1900s homosexuality began to be interpreted as a disease and a perversion that can be cured and healed.The primary sources of the study are police documents, books published by police officers and articles in Budapest newspapers. In addition to the daily press Perényi examines books of urban reportage first appearing in Budapest in the 1900s, which are closely linked to the discourse in the press. The joint works of reporter Kornél Tábori and head of the police press office Vladimir Székely give an especially sharp insight into urban queer culture of Budapest.The analysis of police and press discourses of same-sex sexuality supports the thesis that from the 1900s until the end of the Horthy era, regardless of the political system, attitudes toward queer culture were generally tolerant, which can be largely attributed to the fact that non-normative forms of sexual behavior were interpreted in a medicalised way.

„Coraz to nowe żądania, coraz to nowe grymasy” – relacja władzy i podporządkowania między Polakami a Żydami w kryjówkach po aryjskiej stronie

Author(s): Justyna Kowalska-Leder / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 12/2016

This texts talks about three single, uneducated Polish women living alone (a dressmaker, servant, and kitchen worker), who during the war sheltered Jews in their apartments in Warsaw and Drohobych. All three of them helped the Jews for money, but – as far as we know – none of them resorted to financial blackmail or any other major abuse of a financial character. Nevertheless, the war circumstances became an opportunity for them to fulfill their emotional needs, otherwise impossible to satisfy. They derived pleasure from having power and control over another person and their actions towards the Jews they sheltered also bore traces of a class revenge. The authors analyze the relations between the helpers and helps mostly on the basis of Jerzy Feliks Urman’s diary and memoirs of Karol Rotgeber and Calek Perechodnik. Aside from the sociological theory of exchange systems, another useful tool facilitating comprehension of the Polish women’s behavior and their interactions with the Jews in hiding, which are described in those texts, is Erich Fromm’s concept of human cruelty as a highly complex phenomenon that cannot be reduced to openly violent actions.

„Dzieci w widowisku mężczyzn”? Realizacja biernego prawa wyborczego przez kobiety z województw południowo-wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej

Author(s): Tomasz Pudłocki / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2017

On November 28, 1918, Chief of State Józef Piłsudski signed a decree prepared by the government of Jędrzej Moraczewski granting active and passive voting rights to women. At the same time, throughout the whole interwar period, civil law remained contrary to the principle of gender equality enshrined in the Constitution of March 1921. It resulted from the provisions of the legal codes of pre-war empires and was under requisition until 1939. Moreover, it is worth remembering that in the world of distribution and power relations, connections and distinguishing the “assigned” roles of male and female were more important than equality in parliamentary elections. The author of the article tries to show that there was a huge gap between the law and the actual political practice during the whole period. He examines pre-election calls for voting articles, reports from political meetings as well as articles on suffrage written by men and women. Different political parties had one thing in common – women were treated by their representatives as a beautification of politics, not as equal partners. It appears that not only men believed that they were better prepared for public world offices – the majority of women, even from the upper classes, shared this vision. The example of the south-eastern provinces of the Second Polish Republic shows huge conservatism of the elite’s mentality.

„Ha pormentes levegőt akar, vegyen Vampyr porszívót!”

Hermann Alice és a reklámlélektan kezdetei

Author(s): Anna Borgos / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2019

Alice Hermann was a versatile theoretical and practical psychologist: before the war she was a psychoanalyst of the Budapest School, who also dealt with experimental psychology and the psychology of giftedness, after the war she worked in the field of educational psychology and kindergarten pedagogy. It is a little known fact that Hermann Alice can be considered the first Hungarian psychologist of advertising. In 1927 she published a book on the psychology of advertisement, and in the thirties she published regularly in the monthly magazine Reklámélet (Advertising). The interdisciplinary nature of the field met with her diverse background and interests; she applied several psychological trends and methodologies in the analysis of advertisements. The study reveals this slice of Alice Hermann’s oeuvre, paying special attention to her writings on women and advertisement and her implied view of women and society.

„Lost everyday life" – problems using materials diaries in research on occupational everyday life, based on the example of Krakow – observations on the margins of the study

Author(s): Anna Czocher / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2014

Materials about the nature of personal relationships are an important source of information about everyday life. This article bring information on daily life and attention is focused on the city of Krakow. In addition leading themes, personal relationships contain a lot of information about the difficulties with the supply and quality of housing, the attitude towards the changes taking place in the city, functioning within the official public life and privacy. The purpose of this article is not to criticize source materials such as memoirs, or reflections on the formation and functioning of the memory of the war and occupation.

„Megtettük-e azt, amit az eszményeink szerint meg kellett volna, hogy tegyünk?”

Az államszocializmus demokratikus ellenzékének elmaradt nőemancipáció-reflexióiról

Author(s): Judit Acsády / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2016

Following the transition the question was raised by a number of researchers whether the soviet type emancipation policies of the state socialist countries had indeed resulted in women’s liberation and equality with men? (Corrin 1994, Einhorn 1993, Funk-Mueller 1993, Adamik 2000, Bollobás 2006, Fodor 2003, Schadt 2003, Takács 2015) This study raises the question whether the issue of women’s emancipation was part of the themes articulated by the democratic opposition under the Kádár regime or not. How did feminist voices emerge within the dissident circles, and how did samizdat publications deal with the question or silence it? Were activists in opposition different in this sense in Hungary from the activists of other ex-state socialist countries? Following a brief overview of the characteristic features of the democratic opposition in Hungary and the overview of the literature analysing women’s situation and gender relations both before and after the transition, some ex-activists’ memoires (manifested in recorded interviews) will be examined. How did they reconstruct gender relations and attitudes within opposition circles? Were these promoting or silencing initiatives concerning women’s issues?

„Mit ér a szavazati jog, ha elvész az ország ahol szavazhatunk?” A brit nők és a munka világa, 1914-1918

Author(s): Anita M. Madarász / Language(s): Hungarian / Publication Year: 0

From the beginning of the call for the first petition in 1866 until 1914 the lesser or greater groups were unable presenting considerable results. The government regarded the potential consequences – sometimes mentioned extremely ridiculous exceptions - and the members declined the suffrage for women until 1918. The breaking out of the First World War (or Great War) and the events of the four years following it contributed the fact that changing in the women’s social role and their political role should occur: the roles were changed, there was a need for the women and their work. It was necessary to say thanks to them for their vague work made in the course of four years and their voluntary willingnesses to make sacrifice somehow. So, the government granted the franchise, the opportunity that the women should be allowed to interfere in the establishment of the country’s politics among other things.

„Nie chcę, aby płodzili oni synów i córki” – średniowieczny dualizm a prokreacja

Author(s): Adam Krawiec / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 06/2014

The text discusses the phenomenon of abstaining from having progeny in the Middle Ages in the broader context of the attitudes of that time towards procreation. It points to the overwhelming dominance of pronatalist attitudes in society, which are supported by the Catholic Church. It also points out that the choice to abstain from having children almost never constituted a value in itself, but was mostly either forced upon people by external factors, or was a manifestation of practicing the virtue of chastity. Presented are a spectrum of views of adherents to dualistic religious, esp. the Cathars, whose rejection of procreation was a spontaneous and ideologically conditioned value.

„Sestras Americana” – америчке медицинске сестре у Србији у Првом светском рату

Author(s): Biljana Vučetić / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 67/2018

The importance of the American Red Cross humanitarian activities in Serbia during WWI is well known. The aim of this paper is to further consider American relief work in Serbia, mainly based on a number of reports made by American nurses who stayed in Serbia at the beginning of WWI. American doctors and nurses had a prominent place in the evacuation and reoccupation of Belgrade in 1915. The role of nurses during WWI was somehow neglect ed in historiography. Still, their letters, reports and diaries provide a unique research material. They pictured war surgery and war nursing with terrible reality. American nurses perceived Serbia as a land of peasant soldiers, which was ravaged during the previous wars of 1912–1913, without any chance of renewal. Texts dedicated to Serbia were mostly written with great affection, representing it as a country in need of the United States’ help for survival. Un sanitary conditions and extreme poverty did not stop members of the American medical mission from performing an outstanding job of saving thousands of lives in Serbia during WWI.

„Szerelemből” – a törvény elé

Author(s): Gyöngy Kovács Kiss / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 12/2016

Indoor and outdoor feasts have become increasingly frequent with the spread of the Renaissance way of life in 16th century Kolozsvár – Cluj. These were held at trade fairs, in taverns, and also in private houses, etc. Among their regular participants, we can find the male musicians called “fiddlers” and the women “meretrices” or “fiddler wives”. The study presents criminal lawsuits against prostitutes on the basis of the recorded testimonies, some of them prosecuted not only for fornication, but also for practicing witchcraft.