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Report by Ida Blom
The 1997 meeting of the General Assembly of the ICSH was held in Spoleto, Italy, September 1st - 2nd. Since Nancy Hewitt, vice-president of IFRWH did not have the possibility to attend, Ida Blom was commissioned to act as representative of our federation. She worked in close cooperation with IFRWH president Pat Grimshaw who also attended the meeting in the capacity of delegate of the Australian Historical Association.
Most of the first day was taken up by matters strictly pertaining to the work of the ICSH board. The report of ICSH activities since the General Assembly meeetingin 1995 was accepted and so were the accounts. Special attention was given to establish cooperation among the multitude of historical journals world-wide. Brasil, Marokko and Bielorussia were accepted as new members of ICSH and a couple of internal commissions, among them IFRWH, were admitted as Affiliated Organisations with a vote, paying a member fee. National Associations as well as affiliated organisations were urged to submit news about the actvities for publication in the Bulletin, the newsletter of ICSH.
The most important item on the agenda was the presentaton of prepartions for the ICSH congress in 2000 in Oslo. The head of the Norwegian Organisation Committee reported on the financing of the congress partly through government funds, partly through private funding and through congress fees. Ordinary registration fees will amount to NOK 1200, for students NOK 600. The committee is working to find possibilities to establish a number of grants for third world participants, to be distributed to paper presenters and to doctoral students, as full grant or partial allowances.
The conference will be located at the spacious Oslo University campus, where ample capacity is fond for 25 paralell sessions in auditoriums of various sizes. The campus is situated near the town center and may be reached by foot, bus or underground in ten minutes or less.
Accomodation may be found in hotels, ranging from classes A at Usdoll. 130-170, to class C at Usdoll 65-95. Student dormitories will cost Usdoll. 30 for a single, Usdoll.15 for a double room. Simultaneous translation will be available at main sessions.
To facilitate an instructive presentation of the conference program, organisors of main and special sessions are requested to send in presentations of their themes by January 2000. Information on this procedure til be sent out early in 1998 along with the final program. The preliminary program, as agreed on the second day of the meeting, will contain three main themes, lasting a full day:
1. Perspectives on global history . Concepts and methodology
2. Millenium, time and history
3. The uses and abuses of history, past and present. From more than 200 proposals, a preparatory committee had chosen a number of special themes and workshops, lasting each three hours. The General Assembly discussed and reformulated the themes, finally including 20 special themes and 25 workshops. It was a pleasure to find IFRWH proposals either included in some of the broader themes, such as in main theme 1, or accepted without change, such as specal theme Gender and Religion. In the discussion, IFRWH representative - and a few other delegates - pointed to the importance of applying a women’s and gender perspective to the broad range of themes accepted.
Proposals for convenors and discussants will be forwarded to the General Secreatr of ICSH by National committees and affiliated organisatons by October 31. The final program should then be ready some time during 1998.
As one of the main themes incorporate some of the ideas suggested by IFRWH, IFRWH officers will now rephrase the theme of our 1 1/2 days program during the Oslo conference. Information will be sent out with the next newsletter.
Satellite conferences before and after the ICSH conference are already announced in other Norwegian cities. Information on this point will be given later. To reach as many historians as possible with information, the Norwegian organisors asked national committees and affiliated international organisations for lists of names and addresses to further complement the already substantial mailing list.
On request, all affiliated organisations, of which IFRWH is one, are given auditoriums and smaller rooms for their 1 1/2 day programs. IFRWH will nominate a local arrangements committee to take care of this and other practical matters pertaining to the IFRWH program and facilitation contact among historians working on women.s and gender history.
One item aroused considerable animosity - the composition of a nomination committee for the election, to be held at the conference in 2000, of new members of the ICSH board. The low representation of women - 1 of 7 - on the slate was met with strong protests from a number of female as well as of male delegates. The final result was 2 women out of 7 committee members. Howeve, the General Assembly strongly requsted that the nomination committee insure a balanced gender representation on the future ICSH board.
Another recurring discussion - surfacing repeatedly during discussions - was the absence of representatives of historians from the southern hemisphere within ICSH institutions as well as in ICSH activities. One of many explanations forwarded was the predominantly western perspectives reflected in conference programs as well as in responsible ICSH institutions. The General Assembly therefore attempted to formulate themes for the conference 2000 in ways that precluded strictly western approaches and admonished the nomination committee to suggest a more global composition of the future board.
Taking part in the General Assembly of ICSH all in all offered IFRWH the possibility to expose a number of issues of importance to our federaton and to support initiatives from other quarters to further develop women’s and gender history. To follow up, we urge national committees of IFRWH as well as individual historians to contribute to make women’s and gender history resonnate through the program of the ICSH conference in Oslo in 2000, by proposing papers within as many themes as possible. As soon as the name of convenors for the individual themes are known, IFRWH shall give information on the procedure of proposing papers.