Periodic Reporting for period 4 - EIRENE (Post-war trasistions in gendered perspective: the case of the North-Eastern Adricatic Region)
Período documentado: 2022-06-01 hasta 2023-11-30
The aim of the EIRENE project was to surpass challenging conceptual deficiency in understanding post-war transitions in light of gender and to offer novel research concepts and perspectives at the intersection of political, social sciences and gender studies, and history. The project was comparatively exploring how crucial transitional periods in a longer historical perspective after both World Wars and after the Yugoslav wars affected women in the territory of the North-Eastern Adriatic. In doing so, four broader thematic fields, namely Politics, Political violence, Work, and Family were addressed.
The EIRENE project understands the longer historical perspective as a crucial conceptual choice, for many perspectives remain in shadow, if each post-war transition (after 1918, after 1945 and in the 1900s) is dealt with separately. Naturally, each of the three period has its own temporal specifics, but there are many continuities and interpretative dependencies among them. It is well apparent through the existent empirical sources, that their comparison from the gender perspective is well-grounded.
The objectives refered to:
• Introducing a novel interdisciplinary approach that combines conceptual perspectives of political sciences and historiography, the EIRENE project will create a new understanding of the profound consequences of wars in the twentieth-century North-Eastern Adriatic region, focusing on gender relations and on processes of their memorizing.
• The project examined the modes of exclusion, disempowerment and marginalisation as well as to hitherto much less studied modes of inclusion and empowerment of women in the post-war transition periods.
• The project evaluated the construction of women’s identities, which are under particular pressure in the post-war transitions – by an intriguing combination of top-down/bottom-up aspects in longue durée perspective and by analysing public representations and normative aspects as well as changes on the collective and individual levels.
• The project will justify the choice of the North-Eastern Adriatic region as a remarkable and yet overlooked European case (“laboratory environment”) to study gender positions and interrelations during post-war transitions in transnational perspective.
The EIRENE project understands the longer historical perspective as a crucial conceptual choice, for many perspectives remain in shadow, if each post-war transition (after 1918, after 1945 and in the 1900s) is dealt with separately. Naturally, each of the three period has its own temporal specifics, but there are many continuities and interpretative dependencies among them. It is well apparent through the existent empirical sources, that their comparison from the gender perspective is well-grounded.
The objectives refered to:
• Introducing a novel interdisciplinary approach that combines conceptual perspectives of political sciences and historiography, the EIRENE project will create a new understanding of the profound consequences of wars in the twentieth-century North-Eastern Adriatic region, focusing on gender relations and on processes of their memorizing.
• The project examined the modes of exclusion, disempowerment and marginalisation as well as to hitherto much less studied modes of inclusion and empowerment of women in the post-war transition periods.
• The project evaluated the construction of women’s identities, which are under particular pressure in the post-war transitions – by an intriguing combination of top-down/bottom-up aspects in longue durée perspective and by analysing public representations and normative aspects as well as changes on the collective and individual levels.
• The project will justify the choice of the North-Eastern Adriatic region as a remarkable and yet overlooked European case (“laboratory environment”) to study gender positions and interrelations during post-war transitions in transnational perspective.
One of the first tasks within the EIRENE project was to elaborate a website with crucial information about the project. It mediated information about project-related events, media appearances, scientific articles and participation in conferences, workshops, providing open access options to scientific papers and video of events, etc.
Regular project meetings enabled the research team an exchange on various information about the regime in the relevant research-related institutions (archives, libraries, museums) and with various experts, which reflected the international composition of the project team and its transnational aspirations. Such a contribution lies in pointing to the necessity and importance of a transnational approach in a region where nationally-centered historicization has been prevalent and where political history in the 20th century is often subject to political use and abuse, thus causing nationally divided (multidirectional) memories.
During the EIRENE project, we altogether organized 7 international scientific workshops and conferences: three in Ljubljana, one in Trieste (in cooperation with the University of Trieste) and one in Rovinj, Istria (in cooperation with the Historical institute in Rovinj). Two workshops – on oral history (1), and transitions and women in the Iberian Peninsula (2) – took part on-line during the pandemic. By now we published 4 books and over 30 articles in scientific journals.
Apart from scientific deliverables we addressed broader public. Under supervision and participation of the PI Marta Verginella, a bilingual theater performance Vite sospese. Testimonianze di donne sui dopoguerra / Negotova življenja – Povojna pričevanja žensk, based on the material collected in the project, was staged in Trieste. Project member Teresa Bertilotti was a historical consultant on Paola Cortellesi's C'è ancora un domani, a film about women in the post-war, seen by millions in Italy, France and Great Britain. A documentary Donne che oltrepassano il limite by Sabrina Morena with Marta Verginella as the main historical narrator will be released soon.
A special mention deserves Marta Verginella's monograph Donne e confini (Roma: ManifestoLibri, 2021). It presents a unique "hybrid genre" combining women's historiography with autobiographical sources. The book was translated into Slovenian as Ženske in meje (Ljubljana: Založba ZIFF, 2022).
Regular project meetings enabled the research team an exchange on various information about the regime in the relevant research-related institutions (archives, libraries, museums) and with various experts, which reflected the international composition of the project team and its transnational aspirations. Such a contribution lies in pointing to the necessity and importance of a transnational approach in a region where nationally-centered historicization has been prevalent and where political history in the 20th century is often subject to political use and abuse, thus causing nationally divided (multidirectional) memories.
During the EIRENE project, we altogether organized 7 international scientific workshops and conferences: three in Ljubljana, one in Trieste (in cooperation with the University of Trieste) and one in Rovinj, Istria (in cooperation with the Historical institute in Rovinj). Two workshops – on oral history (1), and transitions and women in the Iberian Peninsula (2) – took part on-line during the pandemic. By now we published 4 books and over 30 articles in scientific journals.
Apart from scientific deliverables we addressed broader public. Under supervision and participation of the PI Marta Verginella, a bilingual theater performance Vite sospese. Testimonianze di donne sui dopoguerra / Negotova življenja – Povojna pričevanja žensk, based on the material collected in the project, was staged in Trieste. Project member Teresa Bertilotti was a historical consultant on Paola Cortellesi's C'è ancora un domani, a film about women in the post-war, seen by millions in Italy, France and Great Britain. A documentary Donne che oltrepassano il limite by Sabrina Morena with Marta Verginella as the main historical narrator will be released soon.
A special mention deserves Marta Verginella's monograph Donne e confini (Roma: ManifestoLibri, 2021). It presents a unique "hybrid genre" combining women's historiography with autobiographical sources. The book was translated into Slovenian as Ženske in meje (Ljubljana: Založba ZIFF, 2022).
The challenging aspects of women’s simultaneous exclusions and inclusions in times of transitions, of their inclusions that paradoxically derive from or relate to exclusions and the contrary, are generally not researched. The EIRENE project filled in the gap by introducing a daring and novel analytical concept, defined as the “exclusion/inclusion dynamics” and argued its applicability to various aspects of women’s lives.
Women’s empowerment in times of conflict or post-conflict situations can be ascribed to housemaids, costermongers and other workers, who were crossing severely controlled national borders on a daily basis in order to work in the places they used to work before the border redefinition. Their role of semi-legal border transgression, by means of which they actually built a (microeconomic) bridge between the places, where official international relations were deficient, can be conceived within a novel ‘cross-boundary mediators’ concept.
The basic methodology of the EIRENE project is a comparison, which is being carried out on three levels; on temporal, spatial, and gender level. Women’s positions are set within a gender framework, which pays close attention to gender roles and ideologies and is regularly compared with men’s positions. Although the analytical category ‘gender’ is a central element of the project, gender is to be observed in relation to other social factors, such as race, class, generations, educational and religious background etc. by employing the concept of intersectionality.
Regular meetings and multiple informal conversations among team members demonstrated the importance of teamwork in which the concept of multiple burden was elaborated, suitable predominantly for understanding women’s participation in the field of labor history. It seems to be particularly useful when embracing longitudinal perspective and the intersectional approach, which takes into insight social status, place of origin and family status This concept will first be presented in the EIRENE volume on Work (CEUP, 2024).
The transnational analysis of teaching practices in the post-war period has shown the utmost importance of taking gender into account. Namely, in the observed spatial and temporal framework, young and unmarried women teachers were important actors of the national and ideological homogenization after both World Wars in the area, which was/is particularly multiethnic.
Women’s empowerment in times of conflict or post-conflict situations can be ascribed to housemaids, costermongers and other workers, who were crossing severely controlled national borders on a daily basis in order to work in the places they used to work before the border redefinition. Their role of semi-legal border transgression, by means of which they actually built a (microeconomic) bridge between the places, where official international relations were deficient, can be conceived within a novel ‘cross-boundary mediators’ concept.
The basic methodology of the EIRENE project is a comparison, which is being carried out on three levels; on temporal, spatial, and gender level. Women’s positions are set within a gender framework, which pays close attention to gender roles and ideologies and is regularly compared with men’s positions. Although the analytical category ‘gender’ is a central element of the project, gender is to be observed in relation to other social factors, such as race, class, generations, educational and religious background etc. by employing the concept of intersectionality.
Regular meetings and multiple informal conversations among team members demonstrated the importance of teamwork in which the concept of multiple burden was elaborated, suitable predominantly for understanding women’s participation in the field of labor history. It seems to be particularly useful when embracing longitudinal perspective and the intersectional approach, which takes into insight social status, place of origin and family status This concept will first be presented in the EIRENE volume on Work (CEUP, 2024).
The transnational analysis of teaching practices in the post-war period has shown the utmost importance of taking gender into account. Namely, in the observed spatial and temporal framework, young and unmarried women teachers were important actors of the national and ideological homogenization after both World Wars in the area, which was/is particularly multiethnic.