How, in the imagination of Western European societies, the evolutions and respective national specificities of the social identity of Eastern European women have been rendered represents the basic research question on which Qualestoria invites potential contributors to send an article proposal for a monographic issue of the journal.

Editor-in-Chief of Qualestoria

Stefano Santoro, University of Trieste

Editors of the monographic issue

 Emanuela Costantini and Valerio Marinelli, University of Perugia

Argument

In the second half of the twentieth century, the role of women in society, albeit with different intensity and emphasis, was a constantly present theme in public discussion in Western Europe. The issues relating to political citizenship and the economic and social emancipation of women were the subject of a long and at times lively political-ideological debate. While modernity, transforming lifestyles and family profiles, changed the needs, demands and – overall – the social identity of women, the ideological conflicts of the Cold War nourished imagery useful for defining positive or negative reference models, depending on the political-cultural points of view. The image of women in Communist Europe was therefore variously declined, diffused and instrumentally propagandized in the Western mass media. There is no doubt that in the countries of the Soviet bloc women went through several phases with respect to their social role; just as there is no doubt that the diversity of the Eastern countries was fully reflected in the different socio-cultural identities assumed by women in individual national contexts. In other words, the differences between the Eastern European woman of the 1980s and that of the 1940s must be compared with the differences between the Russian woman and the Yugoslav woman, between the Hungarian woman and the Bulgarian woman, between the Romanian woman and the Albanian woman.
How, in the imagination of Western European societies, the evolutions and respective national specificities of the social identity of Eastern European women have been rendered represents the basic research question on which “Qualestoria” invites potential contributors to send an article proposal for a monographic issue of the journal. The point, in essence, is to understand how the national mass media have over time disseminated and conveyed to the disparate sectors of public opinion the image – or rather, the images – of the woman of Communist Europe. The point is ultimately to understand the political and cultural use that has been made of these representations also and above all in relation to the transformations of the role and identity of Western women in the second half of the twentieth century.
“Qualestoria” is therefore interested in evaluating proposals focused on the image and representation of women in Communist Europe in:

• newspapers, magazines, tabloids, memoirs;
• books, brochures, pamphlets;
• cinema, radio, television.

How to submit an article

Authors may submit a proposal to participate in the monographic issue. The abstract, with a maximumnlength of 1500 characters (including spaces) must be sent to qualestoria@irsrecfvg.eu

by 30 June 2025;

acceptance or rejection of the proposal will be communicated by 7 July 2025.The deadline for submitting articles is 15 November 2025. Contributions will be published in issue 1/2026 of the journal.

Abstracts and essays can be written in Italian, English and French. Essays will be subjected to an anonymous double-blind peer review; they should be between 40.000 and 60.000 characters (including spaces) and comply with the editorial rules and instructions for authors that will be provided. For any additional information, please write to: qualestoria@irsrecfvg.eu