Suchergebnisse

In this essay, I reflect on the use of oral history and participant observation as tools for researchers of the contemporary past. I want to argue that these approaches must, as Nietzsche has stated, "serve life" by pushing traditional guidelines and by considering the rich cultural fabrics not recorded in oral or written form. Feminist scholars must experiment with methodologies that allow them to consider identities by continually reflecting on their own. But, they should neither become trapped by the narrow definitions of identity politics nor indulge solely in personal exploration. I first discuss briefly the relationship of oral history to feminism and postmodernism and examine the role of meta-narratives in framing research questions. I then draw on my study of the women's movement in Italy and consider how, in the process of conducting research, I was influenced by written narratives, oral accounts, participant observations, and casual exchanges.

This article examines the activism and performativity of Muslim women's associations in France and Italy. It argues that decolonization, immigration, and secularity must be taken into consideration to understand the different approaches Muslim women have used in the public sphere in these countries. The recent popularity of the French women's organization Ni Putes Ni Soumises must be understood within the context of the broader phenomenon of public favor for ethnic minority women who promote republican values of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In Italy, no ethnic minority or Muslim's women's association has entered the national spotlight. Associations such as Trama di Terre in Imola include Muslim women among their leaders and members, but they have resisted assimilation and used difference as a starting point. Even as they engage in initiatives to provide educational and professional opportunities for women and to end discrimination and violence, Muslim women in both Italy and France are consistently called upon by the public to represent the Muslim viewpoint and comment on a range of "Muslim" issues, from headscarves to polygamy and terrorism, even when these are not central to their agendas and the work of their associations.

This article examines the significance of two large Italian women's associations in the immediate postwar period. The Unione Donne Italiane (UDI) and the Centro Italiano Femminile (CIF) led Italian women through years that would be vital to the construction of new female identities and roles in a modernizing Italian state. I argue that despite pressures from political parties and the Catholic Church in Italy, the UDI and the CIF acted as mass autonomous associations while they set and met ambitious goals for women. Their opposed positions revealed nonetheless some of the tensions and challenges of the postwar Italian political climate and influence of the Cold War.

The women of the Socialist/Communist Unione Donne Italiane (UDI) and the lay Catholic Centro Italiano Femminile (CIF) are the protagonists in this keen study of the relationship between national Italian women's associations and international women's movements from 1944, when the associations became active, to 1968, when another generation of activists led women's movements in a new direction