New publication "Women at the Front Line"

[Elena Gapova]

your panels -- action planDear Colleagues,

I am sending this information on the new publication to this list, because there is no other way for those who might be interested, to learn about it. 

Elena Gapova
e.gapova at worldnet.att.net 

“Zhenshchiny Belarusi: istoriya v povsednevnosti” Calendar Series
                         Women of Belarus: a Social History
 

Сalendar-2005 "WOMEN AT THE FRONT LINE" Published
Editor: Elena Gapova. Archival search, interviews: Elena Khloptseva, Natal’ya Shcherbina.

European Humanities University, 2004.

 

Calendar-2005 “Women at the Front Line” pursues the topic not too popular with military historians: everyday life during WWII at the front, in the rear, or in the occupied Belarusian/Soviet territories. How did people live day after day in Belarus, which was occupied for three years? Did children go to school? Were there hospitals, or newspapers? How did partisans cook food?  What was the women’s life like, or the “women’s chores”? What images did Soviet posters promote? And how did German propaganda paint the life of those who had been taken to the Reich as workers?

 

The calendar includes WWII photos, posters, maps, and personal letters, accompanied by excerpts from interviews collected during the “Women, War and Memory” project. “Please, recall, - young women-researchers asked the elderly people, - how you lived back then. Talk to us, contact us, find the courage within yourself to tell us about this. Say your words for History. Or – otherwise - no one will ever find out...» This evidence does not usually get into encyclopedias of military history. But this, in fact, IS History.

 

About the series:

In 2001, Centre for Gender Studies at EHU launched a series of historic calendars: “Women of Belarus: A Social History”. The publication was pushed forward by the idea to “imagine” (or reconstruct?) a history of women – as part of a bigger History – in the Belarusian-Lithuanian ethnic territories, and to “visualize” it with the artifacts of the time: old posters and cartoons, photos from museums or family albums, or unpublished archival documents. The women there identified themselves as Polish, Russian, Jewish or Tatar, and, rarely, as Belarusian. Thus, calendars cut across centuries, classes, estates and ethnic groups in the lands which historically were incorporated into various states (the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russian Empire, and the USSR), and in a sense, the series reconstructs their histories as well.

 

Every calendar results from a research project. It starts with the “theme”, or an idea, followed by the search in archives, museums, family albums, and private collections by historians, archival workers or activists of ethnic cultural societies. No single institution – no museum, no archive, and no private collection – exhibits these materials and documents as a complete collection. A lot of artifacts are “discovered” and become recognized as “historical facts” for the first time. The designer looks for the visual concept to render the idea of the issue best. Finally, texts (explanations, citations from documents and interviews) that accompany the visual materials are prepared according to the “new” understanding of what is a “historical fact” and what can be seen as “history”.

 


 

Previous issues (to have a glimpse, go to: http://gender.ehu.by/ru/strip.php?id=525 ):

 

2004: Women of Belarus:  Estates and Classes    

(women’s occupations and ethnicity at the turn of the century in photos: teachers, nurses, telegraphists, nuns and even ballerinas).    

2003: Women of Belarus:  at the Personal Front  

(building the “new world” and a “new women” of the early Soviet State: posters, authentic magazine cartoons and texts on gender equality of the 1920s).  

2002:  Women of Belarus: Creators of Culture       

(works by women-artists – Polish, Belarusian, Jewish, or Tatar – ranging from classical portraits of the 18th century to contemporary experimental art with untraditional materials). 

2001:  Women of Belarus: Roads to Freedom     

 (patrons, poets, revolutionaries –  those who were exiled, imprisoned, and persecuted...).

 

The calendars are available from EastView Publications at http://www.eastview.com/list_advanced_book.asp ; 

if the latest issue is not in the catalogue yet, please, e-mail your order to: gender at ehu.by 

 

 

 

 


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