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Picturing Modernist Future: Women Illustrators and Childhood Conceptions in Socialist Yugoslavia

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SOC-ILL (Picturing Modernist Future: Women Illustrators and Childhood Conceptions in Socialist Yugoslavia)

Reporting period: 2021-10-01 to 2024-09-30

After the horrors of the Second World War and the anti-fascist fight for freedom in the framework of the People’s liberation war in which socialist Yugoslavia was founded (1945–1991), the idea of childhood as a special stage in life played a decisive role in the reconstruction and development of post-war society at home and abroad. Children, who made up almost half of the Yugoslav post-war population, were given active social protection and were addressed socially and politically, specifically with education. At that time print was the most important medium of public communication, thus children’s magazines and literature played an important role in addressing children with the ideas that would lead to the post-war renewal of society in socialist terms and a more just global order. Hence, children’s literature provided employment opportunities for a range of cultural workers. It has also opened the doors of the art world to those to whom it had previously remained mostly closed: women and children of the broad masses.
The action by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions research fellow dr. Katja Kobolt at the The Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) has introduced the first systematic comparative interdisciplinary investigation into women illustrators in Yugoslav children’s literature. The action has employed a comparative approach, including all of the former Yugoslav republics and regions. It has combined approaches from literary and art history with cultural studies for novel critical insights into artistic work for children, socialist aesthetic education and subjectivation of children, especially in relation to gender. Hereby were particularly considered (i) cultural political, institutional and productional aspects and gendered dimensions of artistic labour, (ii) themes, motifs and images of childhood and gender as well as (iii) the modes and roles of artistic production, aesthetic education and cultural agency in different societal processes of fostering social and economic participation as well as active citizenship.
On the basis of digital catalogues of public libraries in the region, the bibliographies of women illustrators have been gathered for the first time: approximately 190 artists detected to have worked in children’s illustration in socialist Yugoslavia.
Research field work has been done in libraries, artist’s associations and publisher’s archives: in Slovenia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, Bosna and Herzegovina and Croatia (the production in Montenegro was also considered). Thereby artists and other professional profiles, who worked in children’s literature at the time, were interviewed. The interviews and a wide range of historical literature on cultural policy, professional and academic discourses on children’s literature and culture have provided additional sources. Illustrated publications from the different Yugoslav socialist production contexts were ordered and analysed according to general and specific themes and motifs through the different Yugoslav temporalities.

Next to sharing the actions results within academia, the dissemination strategy has aimed at initiative in active canonisation of women illustrators and building regional capacity in art and aesthetic education for emancipatory social reproduction.
The research results have been disseminated through the following activities and project outputs: 6 published peer-reviewed scientific articles in scientific journals covering topics of gendered artistic work, thematic and production aspects of children’s literature as well as literary and cultural agency of children; 4 peer-reviewed chapters on cultural policy and impact of children’s literature, aesthetic education, cultural agency of displaced authors and children. Moreover, the researcher co-edited a thematic issue of a scientific journal on women’s authorship. The publications have been, once published, deposited in open access in the Zenodo repository and are retrievable at researcher’s Orcid site.
In addition, the researcher presented 11 papers at international conferences; 4 guest lectures at international universities and more than 12 presentations at round tables and other events in Slovenia, the region and internationally, as well as organised a cross-disciplinary seminar and a final exhibition titled Biba buba baja. Creating (for) the child of socialism with 22 different events for adults, children and school classes (25 May–14 July 2024 in Center of Illustration, Ljubljana, Slovenia).
Last but not least, a digital repository of illustrations by women artists, who worked in children's illustration during socialist Yugoslavia (1945-1991) has been published: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12102/A2.788(opens in new window). The repository includes selected reproductions of illustrations, biographies of the artists and the metadata linked to publicly available bibliographies, external ontologies and normative directories. In the secured follow up project within the “The Recovery and Resilience Facility by the European Commission”, the repository records with cleared copyrights will continue to be published in open access to provide a useful research tool for researchers as well as practitioners in children’s literature, different art disciplines, literary and art history as well as aesthetic education. The exploitation of research results continues according to the objectives: (i) To explore and contextually interpret distinctive childhood- and gender conceptions within Yugoslav publishing for minors; (ii) To map the practice of women illustrators for children at the intersection between local, regional and international artistic and aesthetic education movements; (iii) To intervene into academic “archiving” by supporting a more complex understanding of socialist modernist aesthetic education and subjectivation.
In view of the research fields in which the research material and topics are simultaneously embedded in – children’s literature and culture; literary, art, cultural and socio-political history; socialist, Slavonic and Yugoslav studies, gender and memory studies – the gathered material has been approached with a novel cross-disciplinary conceptual and methodological apparatus, stemming from the polysystem theory, childism, narrative hermeneutics, social reproduction theory as well as partly the multimodal analysis. The focus on gendered dimensions of artistic work for children has opened new ways in understanding artistic work as productive and reproductive work, the materiality and relationality in production, reception and valuation of artistic production. Moreover, the research revealed past modes of artistic production for children and aesthetic education as well as the roles of cultural agency in subjectivation and different societal processes. The research has targeted impact especially in regard the gendered, generational, geopolitical as well as economic divide in public participation, including scientific and cultural historization processes and memory politics, cultural heritage and societal resilience, cultural strategies for peace, especially in Western Balkans, and bridging historical past and future potential by revitalizing Europe's neglected heritage. Also, in some of the activities of the project (exhibition and the repository) environmental topics are included and thus the gathered material could also be exploitated in regard the environmental issues.
Project’s final exhibition Biba buba baja. Creating (for) the child of socialism (May 25 – July 14 2
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