The Center for Research of Nationalism and Culture (CINIK), is conducting a research project in the field of women’s history titled “Invisible Archives”. It is a continuation of the eponymous project from 2021, in a sequential chronological direction: towards a thematic study of the first periodical designed and dedicated to women – “Makedonka – Organ of the Anti-fascist Front of Women”. The primary perspective of the study is the history and currents of the emancipation of women within the socialist project after the Second World War, but also the historical experiences from the processes of emancipation in cultural memory in the Macedonian society. The results will be published in a collection of texts prepared by a research team.
This project is a continuation of last year’s project “Invisible Archives”, which focused on the (in)visibility of women in the press that was printed or circulated on the territory of Vardar Macedonia in the period between the two world wars (1918-1941). This year, the research will focus on reviewing and targeting narratives that testify to the social and institutional processes of women’s emancipation. The research starts from the premise about “Makedonka” as a first-rate primary source for research on various aspects of the history of women and the currents of socialism in the Macedonian context after the Second World War. Consequently, the question about the position of the magazine “Makedonka” arises: what’s its position in the politics of memory today? The research will examine the situation with the marginalization of this periodical in the historiographical canon, as well as the conditions of its preservation and institutional treatment, in correlation with its importance as an unique historical source.
The aim of the research is to offer authorial perspectives on the historiographical, gender, symbolic, cultural and linguistic aspects of the researched periodical. The team consists of Ivana Hadјievska (political history of the magazine), Jana Kocevska (social aspects); Darko Leitner-Stojanov (educational and didactic aspects); and Manja Velichkovska (linguistic and semantic aspects). The editors of the collection are Ivana Hadјievska and Jana Kocevska. Part of the project is an artistic articulation and communication of the research, in the form of an exhibition, authored by the artist Hristina Ivanoska, in collaboration with Tiiiit! Inc. Skopje. Collaborators of the team during the research process are the historian Ivana Pantelić from the Institute of Contemporary History of Serbia in Belgrade and Jelena Milinković research associate at the Institute for Literature and Arts in Belgrade – acclaimed representatives of academic research in the field of women’s studies and gender.
The research is supported by the Heinrich Boell Foundation from Sarajevo and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of North Macedonia.
