Tradition and from Preserving Memories? Narratives of the European Women’s Movements during the 19th and 20th Centuries

Conference 19. - 21. March 2018, Stuttgart-Hohenheim

When the second wave of European women’s movements made their voices heard on the political stage during the 1970ies, these movements appeared as having no history and no predecessors. Apparently, the first women’s movement of the 19th and the beginning 20th century did not succeed sufficiently in embedding its goals, actions and achievements into the collective cultural memory. Moreover, the German example shows that, in the first wave, writing on the history of the women’s movement was limited to very few representatives. They established the interpretation of a women’s movement which did not essentially shake the bourgeois gender order and they presented their own agency as an all-party and interdenominational activity which supported the state and the nation. This self-perception may also be responsible for the concealment of the ties and links between the first and second wave of women’s movements. 
Against this background we suggest the following key questions for the upcoming conference: 
- How did the activists of the first European women’s movements work on their own history and the creation of their tradition? 
- Did transnational efforts exist to establish historiography and tradition of the women’s movements? 
- Which parts of the respective European movements were especially active and successful in creating traditions and embedding them into public memory?
- Which images of women’s movements activity were conveyed, which areas were marginalized or even tabooed?
- Which breaks with traditions can be observed in the respective European women’s movements and how can they be explained? 
- How did the second wave of European women’s movements perceive and recognize the history and the historiography of their predecessors?

We invite submission of abstracts for papers to be presented at our upcoming conference on 15 March 2017. We intend this conference to provide an opportunity to highlight contemporary research on women’s movements, and to bring together early career researchers, established scholars, and students to share their ideas. We welcome abstracts on any European region, and hope to explore a wide range of topics and approaches.

Please send abstracts of up to 500 words (in Word format) to angelika.schaser@uni-hamburg.de and sylvia.schraut@unibw.de. Applicants will receive feedback by 1 Mai 2017.