In the post-war decade, daily life and public life changed for women in different national contexts, most notably with the ending of fascist regimes in Germany and Italy, the re-establishment of independence in Austria and Finland, the end of the Occupation in France, Holland, Belgium and elsewhere, the descent into civil war in Greece, the realignment of European states leading to the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact, and the founding of the state of Israel. This text asks about women's part in these changes and how women and men narrate, and looks at the symbolic use made of female imagery and highlights the plasticity of the female form. The contributors use a range of methodological approaches and they encourage the reader to question traditional historiography, the nature of historical evidence, the process of memory, the disparities between official discourse and personal narrative, and between written, visual and oral accounts.
Author Biography
The late Claire Duchen was Honorary Senior Research Fellow in French Studies, Univeristy of Sussex, and author of Feminism in France and Women's Rights and Women's Lives in France 1844-1968. Irene Bandhauer-Schoffmann is a lecturer at the Univeristy of Linz, Austria.
