I. An innovative tool

The research platform “Neuverortung der Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte im veränderten europäischen Kontext”(Repositioning of Women’s and Gender History Within the Changed European Context)was initiated in 2006. The name and the year of its creation are both meaningful. The following three points present the history and the reasoning underlying the platform.

1. 1989 not only changed the European political landscape, it also had a momentous influence on the social sciences and humanities. This was also true for women’s and gender history that found both an enlarged (European) sphere of discussion and some newly-shaped research topics. One task was to examine women’s and gender history of the former socialist countries and to integrate it within European history. This research emerged within the larger framework of discussions on virtual spatial orders and descriptive terms that would influence the general perception of Europe.

In 2006, the first six research platforms were founded, following an international peer-review of their proposals. While there were only a few platforms during the first year (including the one presented here), by 2010 there were sixteen. These include: “Ethics and Law in Medicine“, “Centre for Interdisciplinary Research and Documentation of Inner and South Asian Cultural History”, “Sensitive Mountain Limits of Snow and Vegetation”, “Translational Cancer Therapy Research” and “Migration and Integration Research”. Through its independent decisions on funding, the university is able to implement its priorities, and the researchers themselves are given the chance to expand their research activities at the university. Funding consists of core financing, including payroll costs, with differing amounts determined by the research proposal(s) and requirements. The research platform “Repositioning of Women’s and Gender History” received two part-time positions (currently held by Li Gerhalter for the “Collection of Women’s Estates” and Michaela Hafner for “L’Homme. Z. F. G.” and a project entitled “Salon 21”). The funding lasts for three years, but can be extended to a total of six years after undergoing another international review. In 2008 the research platform “Repositioning of Women’s and Gender History” successfully extended its funding until 31 December 2011.

The example of the research platform shows the importance of university-directed funding for university-based research activities in their broadest sense. The tools created then become available for the university as a whole and for teaching and research in particular.

II. “Salon 21”

As a tribute to the salon hostesses of the 18^th and early 19^th century, the research platform “Repositioning of Women’s and Gender History” established the web platform “Salon 21”. Salon 21” presents calls for papers and advertises events (conferences, workshops etc.) in the field of women’s and gender history and gay and queer studies. The categories “Discussions” and “Commentaries” offer additional space for presenting research interests and for feminist or civic involvement. For example, historians discussed the topic “Is a European Women’s History possible?”, and another debate concerned the European Science Foundation’s new practice of evaluating journals in the humanities and social sciences;

Relevant masters and doctoral theses are presented in the section “Archive for the History of European Women’s Movements”, thus offering opportunities for networking among young researchers. Additional categories can be added at any time.

The contributions in the weblog are in German and English. At peak times, the web platform “Salon 21” registers 130 visitors per day. Until now, most users have been located in Europe and North America (top five: Austria, Germany, USA, Italy, and Switzerland).

III. L’Homme. European Journal of Feminist History

L’Homme seeks to connect current events with historical contexts and attaches great importance to topical themes that can concern social or political issues or contemporary working life. Two or three scholars edit each volume, which is structured around a central theme. Chronologically, articles range from the Middle Ages to the recent past. The themes addressed include the ‘classical’ subjects of early women’s history (e.g. care-giving, home industries, marriage or domestic servants) but also more contemporary historiographic issues, as the volumes on “War”, “Violence”, “Soldiers”, “Crisis/es of Masculinity”, “Post/Communism”, “Whiteness”, “Citizenship” or “Gender & 1968” clearly demonstrate. The journal pays close attention to questions of methodology and theory, and has published discussions of “Interdisciplinarity”, “Text-Writing Lives” or “Current Gender History”. The influence of historical anthropology, mentioned in the first editorial, can be seen in the issues addressing nutrition, age(ing), the body or names.

The journal includes “thoughts, reports and discussions on the situation of women” within a section “News and Comments” that reports on research projects and discusses women- and gender-related issues. Book reviews address the volume’s theme, but cover as well important new publications. The section “L’Homme Extra” publishes open texts that are not associated with one of the focus themes, whereas the “Forum” contains reports and sometimes even debates on research questions in women’s and gender history within individual countries. Some issues include sections entitled “In Discussion” and “From the Archives”.

The Working Group on Women’s History in the Department of History of the University of Vienna initiated L’Homme in the late 1980s. Eight Austrian scholars, including a philosopher and a political scientist, were the founding members. In 1995, German and Swiss scholars joined the board of editors; today the board is international and includes nineteen scholars from eight European countries (Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and Switzerland). The editorial office has remained within the University’s Department of History. Articles are first assessed by the editors and then peer reviewed.

In its commitment to encouraging different cultures of language and scholarship, L’Homme has always included texts in German and in English. From the beginning, it also included translations from other languages, especially Italian or French. More recently, the journal has included an increasing number of articles by scholars from Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, an initiative the editorial board encourages providing it has funding for translation.

Two book series complement the journal; L’Homme Schriften (L’Homme Writings) and L’Homme Archiv (L’Homme Archives). The Writings series welcomes monographs and anthologies presenting new results in feminist historiography. Publication include books on female partisans in the Yugoslav resistance, unmarried bourgeois women and men of the 19^th century, and a study of the political companionship of German feminists Helene Lange and Gertrude Bäumer. The anthologies contain articles on “Letter-writing Cultures and Their Gender”, “Women’s Movements in Post-Communist Countries” or “Gender Politics in Central Asia”. The publications concern mainly works from German-speaking countries, but also German translations of important books and English-language anthologies. Eighteen volumes have been published since 1995 and six manuscripts are currently being assessed or edited.

The Archives series contains editions of selected sources for research and teaching. In the past thirty years, women’s and gender historians have brought to light many new and existing sources. The series presents documents that are at the heart of current research while also seeking to preserve the memory of classic texts. Ideas for the future include new editions of out-of-print writings. In 2010, three new Archives volumes were published: an edition of the diaries of Therese Lindenberg, who lived and survived the Holocaust in Vienna with her Jewish husband; the diary of Wetti Teuschl, whose records offer insight into the (working) life of a small-town bourgeois woman from the second half of the 19^th century, and the volume “Aushandeln von Ehe (Negotiating Marriage)”, which compares various Central European marriage contracts from the early modern period. The edited diaries of Therese Lindenberg and Wetti Teuschl came from the “Collection of Women’s Estates” which is also part of the research platform.

IV. The “Collection of Women’s Estates”

The Collection’s estates vary greatly as do the life stories of their authors. The “Collection of Women’s Estates” archives these historical sources, processes them and makes the contents available for research. In addition to their historical value, the documents can also lead to a modification of genre-related discussions and assumptions; the auto/biographical records, that have also been treated – and evaluated – according to strict criteria of literary studies.

Most of the archival sources were written in the late 19^th and in the first half of the 20^th century. All in all, however, the estates inventoried cover a period of three hundred years, the earliest record being an official document from 1738, the most recent a diary from 2002. Most have a regional focus on what is today Austria, but numerous items come from the crown lands of the former Habsburg monarchy and some correspondences span continents.

The archive has concentrated its collecting activities on various themes, the most recent being migration. Historically the focus on “great events” and “important men” from the fields of politics (or art, science, economy, and the military) had established a standard by which sources were considered to hold historical value and importance or not. Ego documents and documents by women –but also by men from the middle and lower classes and by members of so-called minorities– were often neglected in state archives and museums.

At the same time, scholars have long underestimated the prevalence of writing as a social practice, especially among the strata of society with little or no education. They simply did not know how much had really been written, or how many of these personal notes, letters, etc. were kept in private attics. New interest in such sources developed in the 1970s under the influence of the new social history, women’s history and microhistory. As scholars have looked for ego documents, more and more records have been unearthed, written at times by authors who would otherwise have been considered illiterate.

As an academic institution, the “Collection of Women’s Estates” illustrates a changing sense of history that involves the emergence of new historical questions and an intensified interest in research on auto/biographies. Its establishment highlights the growing importance and institutionalisation of women’s and gender history. With its primary interest in the estates of women who did not exercise a special profession or belong to a special group, political movement or party, the archive is unique in all Europe.