Arşivde Kadın ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet Dergisi
(Women and gender in the archives journal)
Aslı Davaz and Başak Öztürk
The first issue of Arşivde Kadın ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet Dergisi (Women and gender in the archives journal) appeared as an open-access e-journal on 8 March 2024. It is planned to be issued biannually, in March and September.1
The idea of publishing such a journal originated with Aslı Davaz, a founding member of the Women's Library and Information Center Foundation2 in Istanbul. The periodical is published by Davaz and Başak Öztürk. Their subsequent discussions on what kind of publication it should be, its content, frequency, and name shaped its final form. The journal started as an independent publication, but it might become a publication of the Women's Library in the future.
Why Is There a Need for Such a Journal?
In Turkey, there is a noticeable lack of research and publications on “women-centered archiving” and “feminism/gender and archiving.” In recent years, private archive institutions, archivists, collectors, antiquarians, and auction houses have shown increasing interest in documents about women, but they lack a theoretical framework that would better reveal the historical roles of women as subjects when studying these documents, interpreting them, and establishing relationships with their creators. Since 1990, the Women's Library and Information Center Foundation in Turkey has offered a place to initiate women-centered archiving, closing the gap caused by the inadequate representation of women in official archives, and starting the preservation of the documentary heritage produced by women. Today, there is a need for a theoretical journal in the field of women-centered librarianship and archiving, and this need laid the groundwork for publishing this journal.
How Did We Plan the First Issue?
We carefully selected articles and interviews that would exemplify and clarify the focus and scope of the journal, aiming to guide researchers interested in studying and working in this field. The content is organized under three sections: Articles, Interviews, and Book Reviews. Since there is still a limited number of studies on women-centered archiving and gender in archives in Turkey, we also include translations of previously published articles in other languages. For this reason, we plan to include at least two translated articles starting from the second issue. To enable researchers to have information about the journal's content and to introduce studies conducted in the field in Turkey, the abstracts of the articles in the first section are also given in English. The interviews in the second section are prepared bilingually in Turkish and English. Our goal for the future is to be able to publish the entire content in these two languages.
The first article,3 “Archive Fever, Resistance and Loss: Re-Reading IAV's Early History,” by Francisca de Haan, addresses the early history of the Internationaal Archief voor de Vrouwenbeweging, IAV (International archives for the women's movement) (now known as ATRIA), founded in 1935 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The second article,4 by Gülşah Şenkol, discusses the Women and Memory Forum, a feminist archive and research center in Egypt focusing on women's archives, and includes an interview with one of WMF's founders, Professor Hoda Elsadda, conducted by Şenkol. The third article,5 by Hanife Karasu, based on documents in the Süreyya Ağaoğlu Private Archive at the Women's Library and Information Center Foundation, is titled “Süreyya Ağaoğlu's Letters to Her Sister Tezer Taşkıran” (Süreyya Ağaoğlu [1903–1989] was one of the first women lawyers in Turkey). Karasu highlights the importance of these letters, which provide additional information not included in Ağaoğlu's autobiography. The fourth article,6 “Looking at the Councilwoman from the City Archives,” by Songül Güneş, examines from the perspective of city archives the official duties undertaken by women in Istanbul in the years following the proclamation of the Republic.
The Interviews section features interviews with women-centered archiving institutions: ATRIA7 (Marianne Boere, Amsterdam), the Women's Library and Information Center Foundation (Füsun Ertuğ, Istanbul), and the Association Archives du Feminisme8 and its long-standing publication Bulletin (Annie Metz, Angers). These interviews provide insight into the activities of these institutions in acquisition, access, preservation, and digitization, as well as their impact on women's history studies.9
The Book Reviews section includes reviews of two publications. The first, Kadın Özel Arşivlerinde 40 Kadın 40 Hayat (Forty women forty lives in women's private archives), is an edited volume by Ayşegül Sönmezay,10 published in November 2022. It is a joint publication by the Women's Library and Information Center Foundation and İBB (Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality). The second book, Bilgi ve Belge Çalışmaları: Özel Arşivlerde Teori ve Uygulama (Information and document studies: Theory and practice in private archives), published by Hiperlink Publications in 2017, is edited by Tûba Karatepe, Elif Yılmaz Şentürk, and Varol Saydam. The introduction, prepared by Seher İnceoğlu Güner, one of the book's contributing authors, points out that the main problems addressed by the authors of the articles are the confusion of concepts in private archives, their transfer to institutions without maintaining their integrity, their descriptions, and access issues.11
What the Journal Aims to Achieve
We hope the journal will encourage articles, writings, and research that will contribute to the visibility of women's archives, and the establishment process, history, and development of women-centered archival collections. In addition, it aims to promote the representation of women in the national archives, to include women's documents in their acquisition policy, and to open up a discussion on the gendered aspects of archiving.
Arşivde Kadın ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet Dergisi will provide the opportunity to examine the concepts of feminism and archiving, which so far have not been brought together in Turkey. The journal will present the experience of women's history archivists of the last 50–60 years, fostering discussions of alternative archival methodologies and practices. Beyond providing and preserving women-centered collections with new feminist approaches, the journal will ensure that new ideas emerging in this field are discussed.
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Notes
You can access the PDF of the journal by visiting our web address: https://arsivdekadinvetoplumsalcinsiyet.com/ and/or contact us via our e-mail address arsivdekadin@gmail.com.
Kadın Eserleri Kütüphanesi ve Bilgi Merkezi Vakfı [Women's Library and Information Center Foundation], http://kadineserleri.org/ (accessed May 21, 2024).
Francisca de Haan, “Arşiv Humması, Direniş ve Kayıp: IAV'nin Erken Tarihini Yeniden Okumak” [Archive fever, resistance and loss: Re-reading IAV's early history], Arşivde Kadın ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet Dergisi [Women and gender in the archives journal] 1, no. 1 (March 2024): 15–26, https://arsivdekadinvetoplumsalcinsiyet.com/arsiv-hummasi-direnis-ve-kayip-iavnin-erken-tarihini-yeniden-okumak/ (accessed May 21, 2024).
Gülşah Şenkol, “The Women and Memory Forum (WMF): Kahire'de Feminist Bir Araştırma Merkezi” [The women and memory forum (WMF): A Feminist Research Center in Cairo], Arşivde Kadın ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet Dergisi, 27–37.
Hanife Karasu, “Süreyya Ağaoğlu'ndan Kız Kardeşi Tezer Taşkıran'a Mektuplar” [Süreyya Ağaoğlu's letters to her sister Tezer Taşkıran], Arşivde Kadın ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet Dergisi, 38–45.
Songül Güneş, “Kenti Temsil Eden Kadınlara Kent Arşivinden Bakmak” [Looking at the Women's Council from the city archives], Arşivde Kadın ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet Dergisi, 46–55.
ATRIA [Institute on Gender Equality and Women's History], https://institute-genderequality.org/ (accessed May 21, 2024).
Association Archives du Feminisme [Association for archives of feminism], https://www.archivesdufeminisme.fr/ (accessed May 21, 2024).
We would like to once again thank Marianne Boere from ATRIA and Milou Bollen who facilitated this communication, and Annie Metz from the Archives du Féminisme Association and Füsun Ertuğ from the Women's Library for their positive response to our interview requests and their detailed answers to our questions.
Ayşegül Sönmezay, “Kadın Özel Arşivlerinde 40 Kadın 40 Hayat” [Forty women forty lives in women's private archives], Arşivde Kadın ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet Dergisi, 91–99.
Seher İnceoğlu Güner, “Bilgi ve Belge Çalışmaları—Özel Arşivlerde Teori ve Uygulama” [Information and records studies—theory and practice in private archives], Arşivde Kadın ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet Dergisi, 101–103.
Women in Eastern and Southeastern Europe and the Experience of War
An Interconfessional, Interreligious, and Interethnic Perspective
A Conference Report
Alina Pătru
On 23–24 May 2024, an innovative international conference of experts, titled “Women in Eastern and Southeastern Europe and the Experience of War,” was organized by the Foundation for Reconciliation in Southeast Europe (RSEE) in collaboration with the Institute for Peace Studies in Eastern Christianity (IPSEC) affiliated with Harvard University. The event was hosted by the Evangelical Academy of Transylvania at its premises in Sibiu, Romania.
Grounded in history and epistemology, the conference brought together over twenty scholars from various countries, including the United States, Finland, Israel, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, and Serbia, who spoke about the different ways in which women were either peacemakers or receptacles of violence prior to, during, and at the conclusion of military hostilities. Following the extensive and meaningful presentations, a multifaceted epistemological perception of war emerged from an experiential feminine perspective, whereby the participants reflected upon its implications for the future of humanity.
The inaugural speeches were offered by Marian Gh. Simion (IPSEC President and CEO) from Harvard University, and by the prominent Romanian feminist philosopher and political scientist, Mihaela Miroiu from Academia Europea. In his address, titled “Women, Violence and the Selectiveness of Memory,” Simion exemplified how some of the most fundamental forms of violence against women emerge from the denial of a woman's status of equality and from being dehumanized. As psychology demonstrates, dehumanization of another human being removes the sentiment of guilt and opens the door for heinous forms of violence. At the same time, from a religious perspective, Simion explained how memory works selectively, often to a woman's disadvantage. By using the power of ritual, we tend to remember only things that fit our agenda, and even rewrite narratives to reinforce the status quo. Therefore, education and women's empowerment are critical in breaking the vicious cycle in which selectiveness of memory recreates and reinforces the status of woman's inferiority.
Mihaela Miroiu presented Jesus Christ as the archetypal feminist, because he embodies care ethics in the most fundamental way. While the pacifist ethos is not exclusively feminine, she argued, being a woman and having the ability to give birth predisposes women to protect their most valuable investment, human beings.
Following the opening lectures, Marianna Muravyeva from the University of Helsinki explored eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russian military legislation dealing with sexual violence, and showed examples of toxic masculinity.
One section of the conference was dedicated to the horrors committed against women during the Bosnian war (1992–1996). Three researchers contributed to the topic, including Ehlimana Memišević from the University of Sarajevo, Miruna Butnaru-Troncotă from the SNSPA in Bucharest, and Marija Mandić from the University of Belgrade. The audience learned how repeated rape was used as a weapon of war and as a tool for genocide, and how the survivors played a meaningful role both in prosecuting war criminals and in promoting reconciliation in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Memišević). Buntaru-Troncotă engaged legal issues and methods of coping with post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as the relationship between individual and collective experience via the lens of trauma research. Trauma was also one of the keywords of Mandić’s lecture, who, as a Serbian, had the chance to conduct interviews with Bosnian war survivors and hear their stories.
An important number of papers focused on experiences from World War I and World War II, as well as the interwar period in Romania. They reported about the work performed by women as philanthropists and nurses (Maria Bucur, Georgeta Fodor), about representations of female war heroes (Georgeta Fodor), about portrayals of fascist womanhood in the legionary state (Mihai S. Rusu), as well as about the daily life of women during war (Daniela Stanciu-Păscărița). Another section was dedicated to the involvement of women to promote peace and reconciliation (Krassimira Daskalova, Valentina Mitkova), and to the Bulgarian literary works and reflections on this endeavor (Milena Kirova). A series of papers dealt with Jewish women and their everyday lives during wartime (Felicia Waldman, Sylvia Hershcovitz), as well as with the suffering of Roma women during the Holocaust (Adrian Nicolae Furtună).
The conflict in Ukraine was also a subject of engagement. Denisa-Maria Bâlc and Iulia-Maria Ticărău (two PhD students from the University of Sibiu) investigated rhetorical strategies used in the media coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
Victoria Stratan from the State Pedagogical University of Chișinău, Moldova, reflected on the silent wounds and the vulnerable memories of the witnesses of War in Transnistria (1990–1992) and how such memories remain vivid in light of the Russian war against Ukraine and the frozen nature of the Transnistrian conflict.
The conference also had a meaningful visual component through a thematic art exhibition presented by the young Romanian artist Roxana Troacă, who presented a collection, titled “Images of Survival,” of very suggestive images of women affected by war. Thus, the participants had the opportunity to reflect on the theme of the conference on both a rational and an emotional level.
Following its conclusion, the conference garnered significant recognition for the high quality of the presentations and for the degree of personal engagement by the organizers and participants, all of whom are committed to raising awareness about women as silent healers, working to repair a broken world. I look forward to seeing these papers available to the wider audience in a dedicated volume.
IFSGen. The Romanian Network for Women's and Gender History
Daniela Deteșan, Georgeta Fodor, Claudia Septimia Sabău
The network IFSGen. Rețeaua pentru cercetarea istoriei femeilor și promovarea studiilor de gen în spațiul românesc` (The Romanian Network for Women's and Gender History) emerged from discussions during the conference panel “Romanian Women between Tradition and Modernization (the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century and the Beginning of the Twentieth Century): Dilemmas, Achievements, and Perspectives,” organized during the Cluj Academic Days by the Romanian Academy's Cluj-Napoca Branch on 13–15 October 2021. The conference catalyzed scholars researching women's and gender history, highlighting the need for an ongoing dialogue among the Romanian scholars who are conducting research in this field.
IFSGen was formally established in 2022,1 and functions based on an institutional partnership between several entities: The George Emil Palade University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science, and Technology of Târgu-Mureș; Babeș Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, the Academic Cultural Heritage Department; the Research Center for Territorial Identities and Development within the Faculty of Geography; and the Institute of History “George Barițiu” of the Romanian Academy in Cluj-Napoca. The founding members and coordinators are Georgeta Fodor, Associate Professor; Claudia Septimia Sabău, Senior Researcher; Daniela Deteșan; and Oana-Ramona Ilovan, Associate Professor.
Currently, IFSGen includes over forty-five scholars from various disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, geography, museology, archival science, and demography, who share a common research interest in women's past and the history of gender relations. Membership in the network is free of charge, and it intends to be an open forum for discussion, project cataloging, and attracting specialists with shared interests into a dynamic, specialized community. It also aims to raise awareness about the necessity of incorporating this field into school curricula.
The network's activities include organizing an annual conference; publishing articles and collective volumes; organizing periodic meetings (morning coffees, workshops); disseminating information to network members; highlighting the latest editorial releases in Romania; and listing ongoing doctoral theses in the field.
The inaugural IFSGen conference, “De la istoria femeilor la gender history și studii de gen: Dezbateri și direcții de cercetare” (From women's history to gender history and gender studies: Debates and research trajectories), was held online on 7–9 December 2023, with fifty-three participants from various institutions across Romania. The primary goal was to assess the current state of Romanian historiography and the main sources, themes, and methodologies used in researching women's and gender history. Among the key topics discussed were the need for a Southeast European methodology for women's and gender history and the challenges in introducing gender history and gender studies in school curricula. New results were also presented related to topics such as women's emancipation during the communist period, the representation of women in national archives, and the intersection between national and gender identity.
The conference featured keynote speakers Alin Ciupală, Professor, University of Bucharest; Constanța Vintilă, Senior Researcher at Nicolae Iorga Institute of History, Bucharest; Ionela Băluță, Professor, University of Bucharest; Oana Băluță, Associate Professor at the University of Bucharest; and Petruța Teampău, Lecturer at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj. A roundtable for students, titled “Why Should We Study Gender Relations? The Importance of Including Women's History and Gender Studies in School and Academic Curricula,” highlighted the significance of integrating these fields into educational programs.
A selection of conference papers will be included in an upcoming volume, part of IFSGen's editorial series dedicated to women's and gender history themes. The first volume, Perspectives on Gender in Romania, which has already appeared, is reviewed in this issue of Aspasia.
IFSGen is open to collaboration with similar European networks, aiming to develop an inclusive and extensive network of scholars with similar expertise and research interests, possibly in partnership with the International Federation for Research in Women's History (IFRWH). By fostering international dialogue, IFSGen hopes to advance women's and gender history in Romania, where these fields still remain relatively marginal.
Notes
For more information, please, visit our website: https://ifsgen.umfst.ro/en/.