1st Edition

Women in Transnational History Connecting the Local and the Global

Edited By Clare Midgley, Alison Twells, Julie Carlier Copyright 2016
    220 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    220 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Women in Transnational History offers a range of fresh perspectives on the field of women’s history, exploring how cross-border connections and global developments since the nineteenth century have shaped diverse women’s lives and the gendered social, cultural, political and economic histories of specific localities.

    The book is divided into three thematically-organised parts, covering gendered histories of transnational networks, women’s agency in the intersecting histories of imperialisms and nationalisms, and the concept of localizing the global and globalizing the local. Discussing a broad spectrum of topics from the politics of dress in Philippine mission stations in the early twentieth century to the shifting food practices of British women during the Second World War, the chapters bring women to the centre of the writing of new transnational histories.

    Illustrated with images and figures, this book throws new light on key global themes from the perspective of women’s and gender history. Written by an international team of editors and contributors, it is a valuable and timely resource for students and researchers of both women’s history and transnational and global history.

    List of figures. List of contributors. Introduction.  Part 1: Gendered histories of transnational networks and connnections.  1. Indian feminist Pandita Ramabai and transnational liberal religious networks in the nineteenth-century world Clare Midgley  2. The International Labour Organisation, transnational women’s networks, and the question of unpaid work in the interwar world Susan Zimmermann  3. Reimagining Greenham, or the transnationality of the nation in activist women’s narratives in 1980s Japan Ulrike Wöhr  Part 2: Women’s agency in the intersecting histories of imperialisms and nationalisms  4. ‘New women’, American imperialism and Filipina nationalism: The politics of dress in Philippine mission stations, 1898-1940 Laura R. Prieto  5. The Woman Question and the National Question in the Russian Empire: Interconnections between central and borderland women’s suffrage organizations during the First Russian Revolution, 1905-1907 Olga Shnyrova  6. The Italian Empire ‘at home’. Fascist girls, imperial propaganda and the racialized memory of Italy, 1937-2007 Barbara Spadaro  Part 3: Localizing the Global / Globalizing the Local  7. Total war, global market, and local impact: British women’s shifting food practices during the Second World War Natacha Chevalier  8. The Local and the Global in Women’s Organizing in the Pacific Region, 1950s-1990s Patricia Grimshaw and Hannah Loney  9. Women at the intersection of the local and the global in schools’ and community history in Britain since the 1980s Alison Twells. Index.

    Biography

    Clare Midgley is Research Professor in History at Sheffield Hallam University, UK, and was President of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History (IFRWH) between 2010 and 2015. Her publications include Feminism and Empire (2007), Gender and Imperialism (1998) and Women Against Slavery (1992/1995). She is currently completing a new book on Liberal Religion and the Woman Question, which explores collaboration between Indian, British and American reformers.

    Alison Twells is Reader in History at Sheffield Hallam University. Her publications include The Civilising Mission and the English Middle Class, 1792-1850 (2009). She has extensive experience of working with public and community-based historians and has written resources for school history.

    Julie Carlier is the research coordinator of the Ghent Centre for Global Studies, an interdisciplinary research network at Ghent University in Belgium, where she also teaches on the transnational history of feminism. Between 2010 and 2015 she was a board member of the IFRWH. Her publications include contributions to Women's History Review and to the edited volume Gender History in a Transnational Perspective: Biographies, Networks, Gender Orders (2014). 

     

    "Just as women have always been at the nexus of the local and the global, women’s history has been and remains a matrix of transnational methods and approaches. These essays showcase a range of timely examples of why and how this has been so, offering students pathways into new ways of thinking about the networks, connections, and intersections that have shaped women’s lives."

    Antoinette Burton, University of Illinois, USA

    "Women in Transnational History demonstrates the wonderful results emerging from historical inquiries into the coincidence of gender and geography. The essays concern international political efforts, migrating cultural trends, traveling activism, and much more. This collection is a reminder of the continuing contribution to the vitality of transnational gender history of  the International Federation of Research in Women’s History."

    Ellen Dubois, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

    "Women in Transnational History does exactly what it promises to do: it offers not only important contributions to a number of questions in the area of gender history, but also proposes a different approach to transnational history. Any work of late modern transnational history will henceforth need to engage with this significant work and the innovative understandings presented here of gendered forms of political and cultural agency at the global level. The case studies, although spanning two centuries and four continents, form a meaningful whole and propose fresh, critical analyses of migration, nationalism, imperialism, and how the local and the global constitute each other."

    Maud Bracke, University of Glasgow, UK

    "Overall, this volume was satisfying and thought-provoking and a significant contribution to the field. I enjoyed the range of material and the varied styles and was challenged to think
    about transnationalism in new ways. The introduction promised 'fresh perspectives and innovative conceptual approaches. (3)' It delivered."

    Dr. Catherine Bishop, University of Sydney, Australia