Women Editors and Translators beyond Borders: Women in Anarchist Transnational Print Culture (1890-1939)

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid - Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
Venue: Campus UC3M, Madrid - Puerta de Toledo (Madrid, Spain)
19th - 21st March 2024

In the context of the significant academic development of anarchist studies globally, a renewed interest in anarchist print culture has emerged (Madrid and Soriano 2012; Souza Cunha 2018; Yeoman 2022; Ferguson 2023). This print culture was the basis on which what is considered the first transnational political movement developed in an unthinkable way (Moya, 2009). Anarchist print culture was massive and encyclopedic and, in its eagerness to educate the humble, had the capacity to circulate texts of many different kinds: literary, scientific, technical and, of course, ideological, among many others. With this hectic printing and translating activity, anarchists were pioneering and very active agents in the transfer of transnational knowledge. They participated in networks of exchange and print production that “globalized anarchism” (Prichard, 2022; Eitel 2022) in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century.

In parallel, and although the role that women played in the anarchist movement has been revisited in the last fifty years (Nash 1975; Rowbotham 1992; Enckell 2010; Pezzica 2013), there is still much territory to be explored regarding the way in which anarchist women or women close to the movement participated in that print culture. The anarchist movement addressed, from its earliest writings, issues linked to the relationship between the sexes, the family and sexuality. Many women publishers and translators undertook these tasks with a view to achieving practical and theoretical equality within and outside the movement, calling for equal education and opportunities for women to participate, defending the same passion for freedom and proclaiming that women also possess the conditions and motives for the struggle against the state. This print activism can be considered “feminist”, with all the discussions that the use of the term in anarchist contexts entails (Barrancos 1990 and 1996). 

The work as editors and/or translators of key female figures in internationalist anarchism such as Louise Michel, Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Soledad Gustavo or Virginia Bolten suggests this. It allows us to perceive the importance of the links between women, anarchist movement and print culture. Alongside them, a plethora of anarchist women, or those close to the anarchist milieus, excelled in the tasks of editing, printing and translating libertarian and non-libertarian texts.

This meeting aims to continue reviving the role played by anarchist women in the publishing and translation of texts, rediscovering those who are best known and bringing many others out of the shadows. For the first time, by bringing together a wide range of disciplines, from political, intellectual and book history to translation and periodical studies, among others, this meeting aims to provide answers to the following questions: 

• How did women intervene in the circulation of texts that were essential for the dissemination of anarchist ideas in different languages and territories? How did they build networks between people and publications in order to construct or develop their publishing or translation projects?
• Who among them published books, pamphlets, leaflets or press, or put their linguistic skills to work to make a poem or a declaration known in another language? What difficulties did they encounter and how did they deal with them? 
• How can we investigate the place of women in the often subaltern and invisible activities of publishing and translation? How can we rescue their figures in a print culture where anonymity or the use of pseudonyms sometimes prevailed? How can new methodologies and tools, such as the digital humanities, assist us in this task? 

We are convinced that in the convergence of specialists from different academic fields it will be possible to produce new knowledge about women's agency in the context of anarchist print culture.    

Abstracts on the following topics (non-exhaustive list) will be welcomed:

• Case studies on the incidence of women as editors or translators in anarchist newspapers or publications and in publishing or translation networks; 
• Biographical profiles of anarchist women editors or translators;
• Methodological reflections on the integration of a gender perspective and new research tools in anarchist publishing and translation studies.

Both abstracts and papers may be submitted in Spanish or English; abstracts will have a maximum of 300 words and up to 5 keywords and will be accompanied by a brief curriculum vitae of the author.

Calendar: 
Deadline for abstracts: 15th October 2023
Response on acceptance: 15th November 2023
Holding of the meeting: 19th-21st March 2024

Organizers and contact: 
Lucia Campanella (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain), lcampanella@uoc.edu
María Migueláñez (Universidad Carlos III, Spain), mmiguela@hum.uc3m.es