Introduction

Krassimira Daskalova

After publishing a two-part Forum about women's and gender studies in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) in Aspasia (vols. 4 and 5), this and the next issue of Aspasia will host a Forum about the "state of the art" of women's and gender history in the same region. Women's history as we know it as an academic discipline appeared in Western countries in the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Many practitioners in this period came from social history and/or were influenced by the overall progressive political climate of the 1960s and 1970s. Another important characteristic of the earlier period is that women's history was one of the forerunners in women's studies. But as important as this period was for the formation of our field, in many countries around the world women's history is much older and was practiced by women and men in many different contexts and different ways, as the work of both Western--Gerda Lerner, (1) Bonnie Smith, (2) Natalie Zemon Davis, (3) to name but a few, and East European historians has shown. (4) Although we do not exclude the earlier developments in the field, the major aim of this Forum is to bring together contributions about the situation of women's and gender history in CESEE during the past few decades. Regarding the historiography we asked the following questions: When and how did the interest in women's and gender history develop? Which international networks and scholars helped establishing the field in your country? What were the initial philosophies and political goals of women's and gender history in your country and what are the current ones? Did women's and gender history draw its energy from social and political action, similar to what happened in Western countries? What are the current connections between academic feminisms and scholarship, and women's activists? What are the connections between the developments of women's and gender history and women's and gender studies in your country, either contents-wise or institutionally? What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of women's and gender history in your national setting? What is their degree of theoretical elaboration? What is the state of the empirical research? What are the relations between mainstream history and the field of women's and gender history in your country? How would you characterize the status of women's and gender history vis-a-vis mainstream historical research--is it more than an appendix? In your view, how important is the field of women's and gender history to the future course of East European (and European) higher education?

We also asked more concrete questions regarding the institutionalization of women's and gender history at the universities of CESEE about the curricula, courses and specialized programs, and about journals, pioneers in the field, and the use of "gender." Our questions included the following: Is women's and gender history taught in the main institutions for the production of historical knowledge in your national context? Are there some significant developments in this respect or there are still difficulties with...