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Newsletter Editor's Note
To those of you who will be attending the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women at The University of Connecticut in the USA, Greetings! We hope to meet you there. For those not familiar with the group who pick up the newsletter at the Berks, I reprint a short summary of its history that was in the newsletter of the Western Association of Women's Historians in the United States:
Transnational feminism, globalization, international movements-these terms have become part of the vocabulary of even those who study national histories since 9/11. But international exchange is hardly a new activity among women historians. For this generation, organized women's history went global in 1987 with the formation of The International Federation for Research in Women's History/Federation Internationale Pour la Recherche en Histoire des Femmes, an affiliate of the International Committee for the Historical Sciences/ Comité Internationale des Sciences Historiques.
The group aims "to encourage and coordinate research in all aspects of
women's history at the international level, by promoting exchange of information
and publication and by arranging and assisting in arranging large-scale international
conferences as well as more restricted and specialized meetings." Writing
Women's History: International Perspectives (edited by Karen Offen, Ruth Roach
Pierson and Jane Rendall) came out of papers presented at the1989 first meeting
of national committees in Bellagio, Italy. Since then, it has held one conference
in tandem with the ICHS/CISH, which meets every five years, and another conference
in between those larger gatherings. These meetings have covered central topics
within Women's History: "Changes in Women's Life Cycles in a Socio-Economic
and Political Perspective" (1990, Madrid); "Women and the State"
(1993, Bielefeld); "Women, Colonialisms, Imperialisms and Nationalisms
Through the Ages/Femmes, colonialismes, imperialismes et nationalismes a travers
les ages" (1995, Montreal); "Women and Human Rights, Social Justice
and Citizenship: International Historical Perspectives" (1998, Melbourne);
"Conflict and Co- operation in Sites of Cultural Co-Existence: Perspectives
from Women's History" (2000, Olso).
Please send in reports from sessions you attended at the Berks and all other
news by October 15, 2002.
In sisterhood and solidarity,
Eileen Boris