Ștefania Mihăilescu
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Ștefania Mihăilescu (also Ștefania Gáll Mihăilescu, born 1938) was a Romanian historian whose work was foundational for the development of
women's studies Women's studies is an academic field that draws on Feminism, feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining Social constructionism, social and cultural constructs of gender; ...
in the country. Her anthologies were awarded the prize for research on the Romanian women's rights movement in 2006.


Early life and education

Ștefania Gáll Mihăilescu was born in 1938 in
Oradea Oradea (, , ; ; ) is a city in Romania, located in the Crișana region. It serves as the administrative county seat, seat of Bihor County and an economic, social, and cultural hub in northwestern Romania. The city lies between rolling hills on ...
, in the
Kingdom of Romania The Kingdom of Romania () was a constitutional monarchy that existed from with the crowning of prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as King of Romania, King Carol I of Romania, Carol I (thus beginning the Romanian royal family), until 1947 wit ...
. She earned a PhD in history.


Career

When Mihaela Miroiu founded the gender studies master's degree program in 1998 at the
National University of Political Studies and Public Administration National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, c ...
, she acquired grants from the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
and the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
along with other organizations to support research and publications for the department. As part of that initiative, Mihăilescu began collecting and compiling documentation of women's movements in Romania. In 2002, she was serving as an associate professor at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration teaching the history of Romanian feminism in the masters program of gender studies. Her anthologies were recognized at the symposium "Women's Interests: Dignity, Autonomy, Self-affirmation" held in October 2006 with the prize for research on the Romanian women's rights movement.


Research

Academic
Maria Bucur Maria Bucur (born 2 September 1968 in Bucharest, Romania) is an American-Romanian historian of modern Eastern Europe and gender in the twentieth century. She has written on the history of eugenics in Eastern Europe, memory and war in twentieth-cen ...
notes that Mihăilescu's ''The Emancipation of the Romanian Woman: Study and Anthology of Texts'' (in two volumes) were pioneering publications for the development of the history of feminism and women in Romania. The massive volumes chronicled women's activism, including a bibliography of works and names of participants from 1815 through 1948. Despite this, Bucur criticized Mihăilescu for rejecting inclusion in the documents selected, works by persons who produced scholarly publications during the communist regime. More problematic to Bucur was the depiction of a pro-democratic spirit among Romanian women of the
interwar period In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period, also known as the interbellum (), lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II ( ...
, when evidence clearly showed that there were fissures between ethnic Romanians and Germans, Hungarians, and Jews as well as other ethnic minorities and that women activists were contrary, behaving inclusively when it was beneficial and at other times behaving in
xenophobic Xenophobia (from (), 'strange, foreign, or alien', and (), 'fear') is the fear or dislike of anything that is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression that is based on the perception that a conflict exists between an in-gr ...
or
anti-Semitic Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...
ways when separation between themselves and others was desired. Roxana Cheșchebec also characterizes Mihăilescu's work in the ''Emancipation Anthologies'' and the two volumes of ''Din istoria feminismului românesc'' (From the History of Romanian Feminism) as being the most influential works on the feminist movement in Romania. Mihailescu took 1815, the year that women first organized in Buda, as the starting point of her work and followed the changes in the women's movement caused by modernization, documenting the shift from philanthropic and cultural efforts towards political goals. Cheşchebec noted that Mihăilescu's analysis spurred other academics, like Bucur and Miroiu, creator of the first graduate program of gender studies in Bucharest, to expand the knowledge feminist history. Later gender scholars such as Oana Băluță and
Krassimira Daskalova Krassimira Daskalova (, born 1957) is a Bulgarian academic and pioneer in gender studies. She served as editor of ''L'Homme: European Journal of Feminist History'' from 2003 to 2011 and is co-editor of ''Aspasia'' since 2007. Between 2005 and 20 ...
working in the twenty-first century have acknowledged Mihăilescu's work on feminism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a fundamental starting point.


Selected works

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References


Citations


Bibliography

* * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mihailescu, Stefania 1938 births Living people People from Oradea Academic staff of the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration 21st-century Romanian historians Romanian feminists Women's studies academics 20th-century Romanian historians Romanian women historians 20th-century Romanian women writers 21st-century Romanian women writers