Introduction

This chapter articulates a number of key contributions made by Constant J. Mews to the field of Medieval Studies over the course of his career. In particular, it focuses upon his expertise in Abelard and Heloise, his insights into musicology and musical communities, and his groundbreaking work in the study of women intellectuals in the Middle Ages. All of his scholarly work, the chapter argues, should be understood in the frame of his devotion to the communities of learning, both of the past and in the present.

Same Goal, Different Paths, Different Class: Women’s Feminist Political Engagements in Kosovo from the Mid-1970s until the Mid-1990s

The year 1989, when Serbia revoked Kosovo’s autonomy, was a break that changed also the course of women’s political engagements. Women had always to negotiate and strategise with different layers of power and against different forms of oppression—state and patriarchal oppression and cultural racism as well as class oppression. The author highlights the convergences and divergences of women’s political activism in the political dynamics of late socialism and then in the 1990s in Kosovo. She looks at gender, class and national dimensions of women’s political engagements with a focus on women who were part of the underground resistance movement commonly known as Ilegalja in the 1970s and 1980s as well as women intellectuals who held high state positions and were considered a part of the elite. After 1989, many engaged in the peacaful resistance movement of the 1990s.

Germaine de Staël (1766–1817)

The excerpts from Staël’s work presented here include her discussion of women intellectuals and gender bias, her original assessment of Kant’s critical philosophy, and her understanding of the significance of German idealism on the scientific thinking of the day. The chapter demonstrates the breadth of Staël’s thought: from an analysis of the prejudices that intellectual women encounter to a detailed consideration of contemporary philosophy and science.

UDRUŽENJE UNIVERZITETSKI OBRAZOVANIH ŽENA 1927–1941.

Throughout history women have been disenfranchised and denied almost every right. Everything concerning political and social life was reserved only for men, while the position of women was almost negligible. Women were condemned to spend their whole lives subordinated to men, only because of their gender, which the patriarchy considered to be on a much lower social level and therefore simply should not have any rights. However, in the period between the two world wars, things started to change for the better for women and the Association of University Educated Women (1927–1941) greatly contributed to that. Initially only a few, surrounded by a society with deep-rooted patriarchal views, they managed to attract a growing number of women intellectuals with a university degree to their organization, but they also prepared students for future activities. Women began increasingly to enroll into colleges, even those that were not socially acceptable for women. The Association set itself the tall task of enabling women to work in science, which was the highest goal of their aspirations, believing that women as intellectuals should not remain confined in their profession, but be able to participate freely in all issues of national and international importance. They believed that the success of women would be achieved.

Dorothea Schlegel and the Challenges of Female Authorship and Identity

In this chapter, I explore the particular social, religious, and gender pressures faced by eighteenth-century women authors by considering these pressures within the context of three stages of the life of Dorothea Schlegel (born Brendel Mendelssohn): first, in her early life and first marriage, secondly, in her emergence as an intellectual and author during the years in Jena with Friedrich Schlegel and the early Romantics, and thirdly, in her post-Jena years when she was active as a translator and story-teller. The chapter looks at the reasons for her dissatisfaction with her first marriage and considers how women intellectuals and writers were viewed in the eighteenth century.