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This article provides a summary of four recent books on the history of global feminisms. The books aim to offer a more inclusive and diverse perspective on feminism, challenging dominant narratives. They explore the development of feminisms in specific historical contexts, highlight the struggles and achievements of women activists, and examine the impact of political and social factors on their activism. While these books make valuable contributions to feminist historiography, there is still a need for a more critical global perspective that recognizes interconnected histories and power relations between different regions. [Extracted from the article]

The Journal of Women's History explores the theme of visibility in this issue. The articles discuss topics such as archival silences and the women who disrupt them, the role of women in medieval warfare, the lives of accused witches, the campaign against regulated prostitution, the involvement of suffragists in world's fairs, and the impact of girls' education in traditional societies. The issue also includes book reviews that examine the history of global feminism and the connections between anarchism and anti-racist and feminist activism. Overall, the articles and reviews highlight the struggles and achievements of women in being seen and heard throughout history. [Extracted from the article]

Andes traces del Valle's family's migration story from France and Spain and is able to credibly recreate her similarly peripatetic childhood, which explains del Valle's native or near-native fluency in English and French, as well as her very Mexican Spanish, which he manages to bring out even in translation. Stephen J. C. Andes begins his biography of the Mexican Catholic activist Sofía del Valle in 1934, when the incoming administration of Lázaro Cárdenas intercepted and willfully misinterpreted private letters she had sent from the United States to church figures in Mexico. Andes recognizes the way del Valle's faith shaped her work from day to day. Andes's biography is, in many ways, the story of what Miranda and del Valle were able to achieve together. [Extracted from the article]

Historian Susan Zimmermann brought to scholars' attention a 1942 protest statement issued by the Liaison Committee of Women's International Organisations (LCWIO) in which they protested Nazi violence and abuses. Zimmermann characterized the protest statement as a "public and united stand" taken by the leading women's organizations. The phrasing of the protest was unusual in its attention to the "extermination" and "spoliation" of the lives, culture, and property of those victimized. I analyze the significance of this women-authored anti-atrocities document in historical context using archival sources. I argue that two refugee women instigated this legally oriented protest statement and that the statement was part of a modestly larger pattern of anti-atrocities campaigns. Rather than being united, as women's groups later claimed, evidence points to divisiveness, challenges building networks of allies to respond to war crimes, and difficulty in making themselves heard once they decided to act collectively on a gender-specific analysis of atrocities. This research bridges the fields of the history of feminism and Holocaust history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on women, work and family in the career of historian and feminist Leila J. Rupp. Topics include the historiography and periodization of women's movement, Rupps' writing about feminism and same-sex sexuality including drag queens, and her interest in history's relevance to contemporary questions.

The article offers the author's tribute to scholar Leila Rupp. Topics include the significance of Rupp's book "Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda 1939-1945," a comparative study of wartime propaganda that focused on analyzing German and U.S. gender mobilization strategies. She also discussed the importance of Rupp's scholarship to her thinking.

The prominence of the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) in the arena of postwar international peace and gender politics is now established. This article focuses on the shifting trajectory of the WIDF's Greek chapter, the Panhellenic Democratic Women's Union (PDEG), as Greece slid from a precarious peace after liberation to a full scale civil war (1946-1949). The PDEG witnessed a dramatic transition from its role as umbrella organization for the mass women's movement spawned by wartime antifascist resistance in Greece, to a vital support apparatus of the communist war effort, especially concerned with the plight of its ever-swelling female ranks. This article argues that the Greek chapter was far less of a "front" organization than a guardian of an increasingly endangered democratization agenda mobilized during the earlier resistance phase, which linked national political regeneration with women's active participation in the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including women in intellectual inquiry in France, social welfare regulations as part of Germany's transition to the Weimar Republic after World War I, and communist feminism in Greece.

This article charts the rise of Mary Wollstonecraft as a international feminist meme in 1890s Britain, Germany, and the United States as a result of the centennial markers of her 1792 Rights of Woman and 1797 death. To this end, we conduct a comparative rhetorical and ideological study of the symbolic political uses of Wollstonecraft by four leaders of women's movements at the turn of the twentieth century: Millicent Fawcett of Britain, Bertha Pappenheim and Lily Braun of Germany, and Carrie Chapman Catt of the United States. We trace the emergence of two dominant feminist memes of Wollstonecraft between 1890 and 1941: the womanly women's rights advocate and the feminist pioneer. With their mimetic makeovers of Wollstonecraft, feminist leaders and activists exploited intersections of race, class, gender, and nation to build the authority, appeal, and sense of history and purpose of their movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the striking effects of the end of WWI and the Paris Peace Conference on Japanese society was the renewed impetus it gave to women's rights discourses and feminist organizing in the 1920s. These events spurred a new consciousness and assertive attitude of women who began to frame themselves as full members of the nation-state. They also fuelled developments in cultural feminist theories that called for an ethnic awakening to womanhood. In this article, I introduce various feminist stances towards the Japanese state, the family, and by extension the ethno-cultural nation at the end of World War I and argue that these help explain Japanese feminists' varied reactions towards the League of Nations and eventually towards Japan's withdrawal from the international system founded in Versailles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys English-language writings on gender and modernity in Japanese history in the "long twentieth century." The discussion is organized around the themes of gendering the public sphere, feminism and the gendered state, gender and labor, and gender, sexuality, and cultural politics, with some closing reflections on emerging research themes which place the study of Japan's modernity in a transnational frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles on topics related to feminist activism following World War II including United Nations (UN) Conferences on equal rights, the relationship between Cold War tensions and the feminist movement, and Catholic women activists.

Discusses the emergence of the so-called cult of true womanhood in Latin America in the 19th and 20th centuries. Factors which influenced the emergence of new ideologies on womanhood; Social conditions of Latin American women; Details of several campaigns aimed to promote womanhood.

Comments on the essay 'The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860,' by Barbara Welter from her book 'Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century.' Characteristics of the 19th century true women; Analysis of Welter's treatment of the middle-class women; Contribution of the article to the field of women's history study.

Examines the volunteer work of the Union de Damas Catolicas Mexicanas (Union of Mexican Catholic Ladies, UDCM) in Mexico City from the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1917, to the beginning of the Cristero Rebellion, 1926-1929. Historical background; Information on the union of Mexican Catholic ladies; Activities; Confrontation with the state of Mexico; Conclusion.

Explores the impact of psychoanalytical thinking on American feminism in the immediate presuffrage and postsuffrage era according to the writings of feminist psychoanalyst Beatrice M. Hinkle. History of feminism in the United States; Information on the Heterodoxy Club; Significance of formal legal equality; Notion of the personal as political.

Discusses several factors which has influenced the conflict on the role of women in society. Historical accounts of how feminism and lesbianism were introduced; Theories on the conflict among ideologies on women; Social conditions of women from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.

Presents an essay which follows the changing subjects of feminist history in the United States. What women historians were confronted with; Debate between Joan Scott and Linda Gordon relating to feminist history; What a historian's goal and ambition should be according to Bettina Aptheker and Elsa Barkley Brown.

Focuses on books about feminist history. Inclusion of 'Coming to Write and Other Essays,' edited by Deborah Jenson; 'Decolonizing Feminisms: Race, Gender, and Empire-Building,' by Laura E. Donaldson; 'Gender Shock: Practicing Feminism on Two Continents,' by Hester Eisenstein; 'Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity,' edited by Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub.

Introduces essays in the spring 1993 issue of the 'Journal of Women's History,' about the implications of directions in feminist history. Turn to gender history; Difference in feminist analysis; Contention that post-structuralism offers feminists a radical epistemology that relativizes the status of all knowledge.

Discusses the upsurge in women's activism in antebellum America. Development of a major philosophical fault line between equality and difference; Ways that different women experienced and defined the self; Importance of the maintenance of boundaries between 'feminine' and 'masculine' during the 19th century.

The article presents an introduction to the March 2010 issue, highlighting featured articles by Jill Massino, Jennifer Guglielmo, and Marilyn Morris.