An Archipelago of Stories: Gender History in Eastern Europe

When I think about the young field of gender history in Eastern Europe, the following metaphor comes to mind: gender historiography as an archipelago of individual efforts, often disconnected and emergent, erupting periodically like so many volcanic islands, connected with the institutional seats of power of academia by rafts rather than ocean liners or solid bridges. While in 1986 it was possible for Joan Scott to write about the need to reject the essentialization of women's experiences, to deconstruct representations of the past as mediated forms of articulating specific social and cultural realities, and to call for gender to become an all-prevailing vantage point from which to rearticulate historical analysis, there is still not much to essentialize, deconstruct, and reframe in the East European field. The focus on women and gender is still emerging. This picture should not...