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.
