Читать книгу Seven Czech Women - Josette Baer - Страница 8

This book[1] is the second volume of my project Slovak and Czech History from a female perspective. I became interested in the history of Slovak and Czech women because of the superb study my friend and colleague Gabriela Dudeková published in 2011.[2] As a political scientist focussing on the history of political thought in Slavic Central and Eastern Europe, and a careful student of Czech, Czechoslovak and Slovak political history, I admired Gabriela’s study; in a tour de force reaching from the 19th to the 21st centuries, she and her fellow authors analysed the political situation of Austrian, Czech, Hungarian and Slovak women, providing copious historical analysis based on archive material in four languages.

Neither the first[3] nor this second volume is a contribution to theories of gender or nationalism studies. I would like to present to the Western reader the history of the Czech lands seen through the eyes of seven women who lived through one hundred and fifty years of the often cruel political waves so characteristic of Central European history. If an interest in women’s lives and a distinct curiosity about how women fared in history is considered a feminist approach – then this volume has a feminist focus and should be considered a modest contribution to feminist historiography with a focus on Czech women.