Boiko Penchev, Nikolay Papuchiev, Noemi Stoichkova, Bilyana Borisova, Kristina Iordanova, Nadezhda Stoyanova, and Sirma Danova, eds., Literaturata: Udovolstvia i predizvikatelstva. Jubileen sbornik v chest na prof. Milena Kirova (The literature: Pleasures and challenges. Anniversary collection in honor of Prof. Milena Kirova), Sofia: University Press St. Kliment Ohridski, 2018, 728 pp., BGN 26 (hardback), ISBN: 978-954-074-573-2.Kamelia Spasova, Darin Tenev, and Maria Kalinova, eds., Parachoveshkoto: Gracia i gravitacia. Jubileen sbornik v chest na prof. Miglena Nikolchina (The parahuman: Grace and gravity. Anniversary collection in honor of Prof. Miglena Nikolchina), Sofi a: University Press St. Kliment Ohridski, 2017, 976 pp., BGN 30 (hardback), ISBN: 978-954-07-4268-7.Lyudmila Malinova, Kristina Iordanova, and Marineli Dimitrova, eds., Zhenite v bulgarskata literatura i kultura (The women in Bulgarian literature and culture), Sofia: University Press St. Kliment Ohridski, 2018, 526 pp., BGN 22 (paperback), ISBN: 978-954-07-4363-9.
AbstractThis article focuses on Bulgarian women writers' activities, their reception, and their problematic existence in the context of the modernizing and emancipatory trends in Bulgarian society after the Liberation (1878–1944). The analysis is based on the concept of the (intellectual) hierarchy of genders and mechanisms of gender tutelage, traced in the specifics of women's literary texts, their critical and public resonance, and the authors' complicated relation with the Bulgarian literary canon. The question is topical, given the noticeable absence of women writers in the corpus of Bulgarian authors/ literary texts, thought and among those considered representative in terms of national identity and culture. The study is based on primary source materials such as works by Bulgarian women writers, the periodical press from the period, various archival materials, and scholarly publications relevant to the topic.
Since the establishment of women's history as an academic research and educational field in the 1960s–1970s in the Western context—a field contesting traditional historical narratives (political, diplomatic, institutional) that located women on the periphery of historical processes—efforts have concentrated on the discovery and analysis of neglected facts of the past, the historical representation of gender interdependence, and the reconstruction of a credible male–female sociohistorical reality. Since the 1990s, in the context of changed political, social, and cultural realities, interest in the problems of the "second sex,"1 its experiences and representations, and its role in historical events has intensified and gained greater public visibility in the east as well. Interpreted as a significant tool for drawing a comprehensive picture of women's past in Europe, scholarship on women's history in Eastern and Southeastern Europe has focused on various aspects of women's emancipation in the modern era, the relationships among power, gender, identity, modernization, nationalism, and national formation, women's role in the processes of cultural and civilizational construction, and their place in the context of traditionally established intellectual hierarchies. Conducting a productive dialogue between history and social anthropology, filling numerous gaps in historical memory (regarding traditionally marginalized social groups such as women), feminist studies in the region have produced collections of documents and primary sources, innovative publications, and monographs, all sharing the belief that women have their own history subject to complex analysis.
Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics 4, no. 2, "East European Feminisms, Part 1: The History of East European Feminisms," eds. Maria Bucur and Krassimira Daskalova, 2020.Maria Bucur, The Nation's Gratitude: World War I and Citizenship Rights in Interwar Romania, London: Routledge, 2022, vi–viii, 231 pp., $160.00 (hardback), $48.95 (ebook), ISBN: 978-0-367-74978-1.Sanja Ćopić and Zorana Antonijević, eds., Feminizam, aktivizam, politike: Proizvodnja znanja na poluperiferiji. Zbornik radova u čast Marine Blagojević Hughson (Feminism, activism, politics: Knowledge production in the semiperiphery. Collection in honor of Marina Blagojević Hughson), Belgrade: Institute for Criminological and Sociological Research (IKSI), 2021, 621 pp., ISBN: 978-86-80756-42-4.Krassimira Daskalova, Zhorzheta Nazarska, and Reneta Roshkeva, eds., Ot siankata na istoriata: Zhenite v bulgarskoto obshtestvo i kultura, volume 2, Izvori za istoriana na zhenite: Dnevnitsi, spomeni, pisma, beletristika (From the shadows of history: Women in Bulgarian society and culture, volume 2, Sources of women's history: diaries, memoirs, letters, fiction), Sofi a: Sofi a University Press, 2021, 621 pp., BGN 30 (paperback), ISBN: 978-954-07-5180-1.Melissa Feinberg, Communism in Eastern Europe, New York: Routledge, 2022, 229 pp., $44.75 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-8133-4817-9.Fabio Giomi, Making Muslim Women European: Voluntary Associations, Gender, and Islam in Post-Ottoman Bosnia and Yugoslavia (1878–1941), Budapest: CEU Press, 2021, 420 pp., €88.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-963-386-369-5.Yulia Gradskova, The Women's International Democratic Federation, the Global South and the Cold War: Defending the Rights of Women of the "Whole World"? London: Routledge, 2020, 222 pp. £29.59 (e-book), ISBN: 9781003050032.Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl and Oana Hergenröther, eds., Foreign Countries of Old Age: East and Southeast European Perspectives on Aging, Aging Studies, vol. 19, Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2021, 386 pp., €45 (paperback), ISBN: 978-3-8376-4554-5.Wendy Z. Goldman and Donald Filtzer, Fortress Dark and Stern: The Soviet Home Front During World War II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, 528 pp., $34.95 (hardback), ISBN: 9780190618414.Oksana Kis, Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag, Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021, 652 pp., 78 color photos, 10 photos, €84.50 (hardback), ISBN: 9780674258280.Yelena Lembersky and Galina Lembersky, Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour: Memories of Soviet Russia, Boston: Cherry Orchard Books, 2022, 247 pp., $17.19 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-64469-669-9.Mihaela Miroiu, Povestiri despre Cadmav (Stories about Cadmav), Bucharest: Rocart, 2021, 270 pp., RON 31.00 (paperback), ISBN: 978-606-95093-0-2.Mie Nakachi, Replacing the Dead: The Politics of Reproduction in the Postwar Soviet Union, New York: Oxford University Press, 2021, 352 pp., $39.95 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0190635138.Olga Todorova, Domashnoto robstvo i robovladenie v osmanska Rumelia (Domestic slavery and slave ownership in Ottoman Rumelia), Sofia: Gutenberg, 2021, 444 pp., BGN 30 (paperback), ISBN: 978-619-176-195-1.
