Center for Liberal Strategies (CLS): ‘The Future through the Culture of the Past: Bulgarian Economic and Social History’ Seminar presents:

On the History of Social Movements in Central and south Eastern Europe: Women’s Movements and Feminisms in ХIХ-ХХ century

lecture by Krasimira Daskalova (Sofia University)

Summary of the lecture
The lection presents a collective publishing project and the theoretical and methodological questions set by the publishing of this book. It is: "Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms. Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe, 19th-20th C"., edited and with an Intrdocuction by Francisca de Haan, Krasimira Daskalova, and Anna Loutfi, Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2006.
The biographical dictionary contains 150 precisely written portraits of women and men, who have been politically active, intellectually challenging during the 19th and 20th centuries, or who have been part of the female movements and feminist actions in 22 countries of Central, Eastern andnion that feminism never took place in this part of Europe. By re-creating the lives of these people it suggests that the feminism had not only existed, but the feminist actions in the region had been numerous and diverse and include the work of Romanian princesses, Serbian female philosophers and activists of peasant origin, Latvian and Slovak female writers, Albanian teachers, Hungarian social activists, Austrian female workers, Bulgarian scientists and social-feminists, Russian female radicals and philanthropists, Turkish republican activists and nationalists, internationally recognized Greek feminists and leaders, etc., - men and women with different ideological orientations and predilections. The story, presented in this book shows how rich the feminist manifestations had been, turning down the opinion that feminism had not existed here or had been “brought in by the West”. In all these societies different generations of women (and men) had been protesting against the injustices, justified by the sex difference and any statement of the opposite is negation of the worldly creed and the activity of countless social actors, including those presented in this “Biographical dictionary”. The portraits are not only a good addition to the past of the social movements in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, but also in some cases they demonstrate explicitly the historical continuity between the historical and contemporary feminisms.

The American magazine Choice has selected this Biographical Dictionary for Outstanding Academic Title for 2006.

The seminar is led by Roumen Avramov (Center for Liberal Strategies) and Martin Ivanov (Institute of History, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences).

March 26 (Wednesday) 2008, 5.30 p.m.
Pesha Nikolova hall
In Bulgarian.
Free entrance

back to Lectures