Intimate Internationalism: Women Transforming the Political in Postwar Europe

Organizers: Dr. Celia Donert (ZZF Potsdam) and Dr. Janou Vorderwülbecke (Leibniz Universität Hannover)
 

The Workshop is sponsored by: Gerda Henkel Stiftung

This workshop aims to explore the gendered dimension of international politics, norms and institutions, as well as ideologies, perceptions and critiques of internationalism, in eastern and western Europe from 1945 to the mid-1960s. We aim to bring together historians working on the history of women's transnational organising, the gendering of international projects and processes of integration, the connections and transfers between ideologies and practices of gender equality and difference across geographic and political divides, and transnational approaches to gendered histories of post-war Europe that move beyond the conventional focus on the western part of the continent.

Potential topics might include, amongst others, the gender relations of post-war reconstruction and rehabilitation; the gendering of political and economic integration in western and eastern Europe; the traditionally ‘feminine’ yet increasingly complex and controversial fields of peace, philanthropic, humanitarian and development work; and the responses and contributions of social actors to international legal norms and institutions (eg UN, ILO, EEC) that either promised or limited equality between the sexes.

We seek to discover who was speaking in the name of 'women' and defining gender at the international level, and to explore the social, cultural and political processes that contributed to the gendering of international politics and projects. By inserting gender as a category into historical studies of international norms, organisations and processes of integration, we hope to trace the connections between intimacy and internationalism in a deeply divided post-war Europe.

Programme (PDF)

Report by Nikolaos Papadogiannis (University of Cambridge) (PDF)