Womens International Activism
during the Inter-War Period,
19191939
In historical writing the interwar years are often associated with the rise of extreme forms of nationalism. Yet paradoxically this period also saw significant advances in the development of internationalism and international-mindedness. This collection examines previously under-researched aspects of the role played by womens movements and individual female activists in this process. Women campaigners contributed to, and helped to (re)define, what constituted international work in myriad ways. For some, particularly those coming from a radical pacifist background, the central theme after 1919 was the eradication of war and the preservation of world peace. Yet others were more interested in the sharing of medical knowledge across borders, in the promotion of new causes such as physical fitness or the cultural assimilation of immigrants, or in finding fresh and innovative ways of battling for old causes, such as female suffrage and womens access to education. It was even possible for nationalist women to use the language and practices of internationalism to further their own conservative, illiberal or anti-communist agendas, or to argue for revision of the peace treaties of 191920. The volume addresses these different kinds of activism, and the many links between them, by way of particular examples.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Womens History Review.
Ingrid Sharp is Professor of German Cultural and Gender History in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds, UK. Her research interests are in the area of gender representation and cultural history in Germany, and she is currently working on a study of German resistance to the First World War.
Matthew Stibbe is Professor of Modern European History at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. He has written and co-edited books on a variety of themes in twentieth-century German, Austrian and European history, and is currently working on a global study of civilian internment during the First World War.
Womens International Activism
during the Inter-War Period,
19191939
Edited by
Ingrid Sharp and Matthew Stibbe
First published 2018
by Routledge
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Contents
Citation Information
The chapters in this book were originally published in Womens History Review, volume 26, issue 2 (April 2017). When citing this material, please use the original page numbering for each article, as follows:
Introduction
Womens International Activism during the Inter-War Period, 19191939
Ingrid Sharp and Matthew Stibbe
Womens History Review, volume 26, issue 2 (April 2017), pp. 163172
Chapter 1
Peace at any Price: the Visit of Nazi Womens Leader Gertrud Scholtz-Klink to London in March 1939 and the Response of British Women Activists
Julie V. Gottlieb and Matthew Stibbe
Womens History Review, volume 26, issue 2 (April 2017), pp. 173194
Chapter 2
A woman so curiously fear-free and venturesome: Eleanor Franklin Egan reporting the Great Russian Famine, 1922
David Hudson
Womens History Review, volume 26, issue 2 (April 2017), pp. 195212
Chapter 3
War, Transnationalism and Medical Womens Activism: the Medical Womens International Association and the Womens Foundation for Health in the aftermath of the First World War
Kimberly Jensen
Womens History Review, volume 26, issue 2 (April 2017), pp. 213228
Chapter 4
Catholic Women, International Engagement and the Battle for Suffrage in Interwar France: the case of the Action Sociale de la Femme and the Union Nationale pour le Vote des Femmes
Emily Machen
Womens History Review, volume 26, issue 2 (April 2017), pp. 229244
Chapter 5
An Unbroken Family? Gertrud Bumer and the German Womens Movements Return to International Work in the 1920s
Ingrid Sharp
Womens History Review, volume 26, issue 2 (April 2017), pp. 245261
Chapter 6
Out of her Time? Rosika Schwimmers Transnational Activism after the First World War
Dagmar Wernitznig
Womens History Review, volume 26, issue 2 (April 2017), pp. 262279
Chapter 7
From International to National Engagement and Back: the YWCAs communicative techniques of Americanisation in the aftermath of World War I
Zornitsa Keremidchieva
Womens History Review, volume 26, issue 2 (April 2017), pp. 280295
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Notes on Contributors
Julie V. Gottlieb is Reader in Modern History at the University of Sheffield, UK. She has published extensively on UK womens political engagement across the political spectrum. Her most recent publications include Feminists and Feminism After Suffrage (Routledge, 2015) and Guilty Women, Foreign Policy and Appeasement in Inter-war Britain (2015). Her current work includes an ongoing project about Conservative women.
David Hudson is Professor of English at Hamline University, St Paul, MN, USA, where he teaches literature and journalism. He has written on soldier narrative and its relation to the canon of First World War literature; the intersections between journalism, propaganda, and literary and personal responses to the war; and the pioneering journalist Eleanor Franklin Egan.
Kimberly Jensen is Professor of History at Western Oregon University, USA. She is the author of Mobilizing Minerva: American women in the First World War (2008) and Oregons Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a life in activism (2012), and co-editor of
