Black Lambs and Grey Falcons


Book Description

During the nineteenth century the Balkan countries b ecame the subject of a rather romantic fascination for the public at large. This has had important consequences for the way in which the region has been viewed since then, and the creation of this image has had an impact on the many aspects of West European and North American responses to the Balkans, ranging from diplomatic and military involvement to the burgeoning flow of tourists. This vision of the area has been created in large measure by the writing of women travellers such as those represented in this volume. The achievements of these women are quite remarkable: in many cases their travels were adventurous, and even dangerous, reaching into parts of the countryside which were remote and hardly known to outsiders. Not only as travellers but also in the fields of medical and military service, scholarship and education, journalism and literature, did these travellers contribute in very significant ways to the expansion of women's horizons, and to the attempt to gain greater freedom for women in society in general.




Black Lambs & Grey Falcons


Book Description

Revised and Updated with a New Introduction During the 19th century the Balkan countries became the subject of a rather romantic fascination for the public at large. This vision of the area has been created in large measure by the writing of women travelers such as those represented in this volume. The achievements of these women are quite remarkable: in many cases their travels were adventurous, and even dangerous, reaching into parts of the countryside which were remote and hardly known to outsiders. Not only as travelers but also in the fields of medical and military service, scholarship and education, journalism and literature, did these women contribute in very significant ways to the expansion of women's horizons and to the attempt to gain greater freedom for women in society in general. Contents: Editorial Introduction: Black Lambs and Grey Falcons: Outward and Inward Frontiers - Two Victorian Ladies and Bosnian Realities, 1861-1875: G.M. MacKenzie and A.P. Irby - Edith Durham, Traveller and Publicist - Edith Durham as a Collector - Emily Balch: Balkan Traveller, Peace Worker and Nobel Laureate - The Work of British Medical Women in Serbia during and after the First World War - Captain Flora Sandes: A Case Study in the Social Construction of Gender in a Serbian Context - Rose Wilder Lane: 1886-1968 - Rebecca West, Gerda and the Sense of Process - Margaret Masson Hasluck - Louisa Rayner: An Englishwoman's Experiences in Wartime Yugoslavia - Mercia MacDermott: A Woman of the Frontier - An Anthropologist in the Village - Bucks, Brides and Useless Baggage: Women's Quest for a Role in their Balkan Travels - Constructing 'the Balkans' - Women Travellers in the Balkans: A Bibliographical Guide. John B. Allcock is head of the Research Unit in South East European Studies and is based in the Interdisciplinary Human Studies department at the University of Bradford; Antonia Young is a member of the Department for Sociology and Anthropology at Colgate University, New York




Black Lamb & Grey Falcon


Book Description










Ambiguous Transitions


Book Description

Focusing on youth, family, work, and consumption, Ambiguous Transitions analyzes the interplay between gender and citizenship postwar Romania. By juxtaposing official sources with oral histories and socialist policies with everyday practices, Jill Massino illuminates the gendered dimensions of socialist modernization and its complex effects on women’s roles, relationships, and identities. Analyzing women as subjects and agents, the book examines how they negotiated the challenges that arose as Romanian society modernized, even as it clung to traditional ideas about gender. Massino concludes by exploring the ambiguities of postsocialism, highlighting how the legacies of the past have shaped politics and women’s lived experiences since 1989.




Women of Prague


Book Description

Each of the 12 chapters presents a first-person account, based on letters and autobiography, of a woman who contributed significantly to the cultural life of Prague from the late 18th century to the present. Excellent historical notes accompany each account as well as fascinating but fuzzy bandw photos. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Women, Travel, and Writing in the Interwar Era


Book Description

Women, Travel, and Writing in the Interwar Era engages feminist, temporal, and narrative theories to offer fresh examinations of interwar-era accounts by women about travel and movement and considers the use and limitations of time as a subversive force in their texts. This book makes a significant contribution to the under-examined study of women’s travel writing between the wars and synthesises and applies a variety of feminist, narrative, and postcolonial theories to excavate new understandings of the intersection between women, travel, and time in writing. The book studies the emergence of the aviatrix after the Great War and moves through to the representations of war in women’s travel on the brink of World War II. Each chapter offers a unique theoretical framework and examines how experiences of time impact perceptions of women’s bodies and identities, their engagement with history and discourse, and the problematic influence on colonialism. Women, Travel, and Writing in the Interwar Era is essential reading to any student or researcher in the field of women’s travel writing, as well as scholars of gender studies, war and interwar history, and cultural heritage.




Albania's Mountain Queen


Book Description

Whilst young ladies in the Victorian and Edwardian eras were expected to have many creative accomplishments, they were not expected to travel unaccompanied, and certainly not to the remote corners of Southeast Europe, then part of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. But Edith Durham was no ordinary lady. In 1900, at the age of 37, Durham set sail for the Balkans for the first time. Her trip was intended as a means of recovering from a period of ill-health, and as a break from the stifling monotony of caring for her ailing mother. Her experiences on this trip were to change the course of her life, kindling a profound love for the region which saw her return frequently in the following decades. She became a confidante of the King of Montenegro, ran a hospital in Macedonia and, following the outbreak of the First Balkan War in 1912, became one of the world's first female war correspondents. Back in England, she was renowned as an expert on the region, writing the highly successful book High Albania and, along with other aficionados such as the MP Aubrey Herbert, becoming an advocate for the people of the Balkans in British political life and society. King Zog of Albania once said that before Durham visited the Balkans, Albania was but a geographical expression. By the time she left, he added, her championship of his compatriots' desire for freedom had helped add a new state to the map. Durham was tremendously popular in the region itself, earning her the affectionate title 'Queen of the Mountains' and an enduring legacy which continues unabated until this day. Yet she has been all but forgotten in the country of her birth. Marcus Tanner here tells the fascinating story of Durham's relationship with the Balkans, painting a vivid portrait of a remarkable, and sometimes formidable, woman, who was several decades ahead of her time.




Modernism and World War II


Book Description

World War II marked the beginning of the end of literary modernism in Britain. However, this late period of modernism and its response to the war have not yet received the scholarly attention they deserve. In this full-length study of modernism and World War II, Marina MacKay offers historical readings of Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, T. S. Eliot, Henry Green and Evelyn Waugh set against the dramatic background of national struggle and transformation. In recovering how these major authors engaged with other texts of their time - political discourses, mass and middlebrow culture - this study reveals how World War II brought to the surface the underlying politics of modernism's aesthetic practices. Through close analyses of the revisions made to modernist thinking after 1939, MacKay establishes the significance of this persistently neglected phase of modern literature as a watershed moment in twentieth-century literary history.