Borders, Boundaries, and the Necessity of Reflexivity: international women activists, Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948), and the shadow narrative

Abstract

How do boundaries of nation, language, memory, and time operate as researchers write the lost history of women? Why and how are subjects chosen, and how do subjects choose writers? What sorts of privilege does the English language give to native speakers on the global stage? Why have I chosen two subjects who spoke Finnish and Hungarian, two of the least known and difficult to learn languages for speakers of English? While trying to answer these questions, I will intersperse a ‘shadow narrative’ of my own borderland crossings into the narrative of one of ‘my’ international border-crossers in the interwar period, Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948) of Hungary and the United States.

Notes

María Lugones (1987) Playfulness, ‘World’-Traveling, and Loving Perception, Hypatia, 2, pp. 3–19.

Gloria Anzaldúa (1999) Borderlands: La Frontera (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books).

Ruth Behar (1993) Translated Woman: crossing the border with Esperanza's story (Boston: Beacon Press), p. 272. See also Ruth Behar & Deborah A. Gordon (Eds) (1995) Women Writing Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press).

Liz Stanley (1999) How Do We Know about Past Lives?, in Pauline Polkey (Ed.) Women's Lives into Print: the theory, practice and writing of feminist auto/biography (New York: St Martin's Press), p. 39.

See cartoon in Wiener Mittags-Zeitung, 13 July 1921, and the illustrations in Susan Zimmermann (1999) Die Bessere Hälfte? Frauenbewegungen und Frauenbestrebunger im Ungarn der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918 (Vienna: Promedia Verlag).

Rozsika Schwimmer, World Patriot (1937), published by International Committee for World Peace Prize Award to Rosika Schwimmer, p. 3.

Jane Addams, Emily G. Balch & Alice Hamilton (2003) Women at the Hague (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books [1915]), pp.123–130.

Emily G. Balch (2003) At the Northern Capitals, in Addams et al., Women at the Hague, pp. 93–98.

For detail on Schwimmer's conflicts with Aletta Jacobs, Jane Addams, and others, see Anne Wiltsher (1985) Most Dangerous Women: feminist peace campaigners of the Great War (London: Pandora), esp. pp. 160–163.

For more biographical details on Schwimmer's early life, see Susan Zimmermann (2006) Roza Schwimmer, in Francisca de Haan, Krassimira Daskalova & Anna Loutfi (Eds) A Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms: Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th centuries (Budapest and New York: CEU Press), pp. 484–489.

For more detail of the fiasco of her diplomatic mission in Switzerland, see Tibor Glant (2002) Against All Odds: Vira B. Whitehouse and Rosika Schwimmer in Switzerland, 1918, American Studies International, 40(1)

Journal of Glenora Belle English, 1927–34 (personal possession).

Letters, Bill McFadden to Glenora English, April 1933, Newburg, IN (personal possession).

See Nancy F. Cott (1987) The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 242.

‘Women's International League for Peace and Freedom’, anonymous undated flyer [1920s ?], Box I 5, WILPF Folders, Schwimmer–Lloyd Collection, New York Public Library.

Rosika Schwimmer to Swedish Section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Stockholm, Sweden, June 18, 1935, Schwimmer–Lloyd Collection, New York Public Library.

The Debris [Purdue University Yearbooks], 1935–1940.

Rosika Schwimmer to Lola Maverick Lloyd, Oct. 14, 1930, Schwimmer–Lloyd Collection, New York Public Library.

‘One Single Insane Man’, September 1935, Box I 16, Mussolini Action, Schwimmer–Lloyd Collection, New York Public Library.

Photograph, ‘Pacifists Open Their International Summer School at University of Chicago’, Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1924.

WILPF Flyer, 1923, Schwimmer–Lloyd Collection, New York Public Library.

Mary Ritter Beard to Rosika Schwimmer, May 12, 1936, in Nancy F. Cott (Ed.) (1991) A Woman Making History: Mary Ritter Beard through her letters (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 151.

‘A World Center for Women's Archives’, Nov. 13, 1935, Jessie Lloyd O'Connor Papers, Box 145, Folder 7, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.

Quoted in Cott (1991), p. 150 (Mary Ritter Beard to Margaret Grierson, May 18, 1951).

Maggie McFadden (1974–5) Women's Studies Comes to the Military: Reflections on a Pilot Project, Women's Studies Newsletter, Fall–Winter, pp. 1–2.

Photograph of Schwimmer and niece, Jessie Lloyd O'Connor Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.

Photograph of Schwimmer and actors, with explanation, Feb. 13, 1946; Jessie Lloyd O'Connor Papers, Box 59, Folder 1, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.

‘We Must Not Fail in Our Pledge to End War’, Peace News for War-Resistance and World Community, July 23, 1948, in Jessie Lloyd O'Connor Papers, Box 143, Folder 9, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.

A long letter from her secretary, Edith Wynner, in March 1948 details the gravity of both Schwimmer's medical and financial situations and their hope for the money from the Nobel Peace Prize in December (Letter to Mary, Mar. 14, 1948, in Jessie Lloyd O'Connor Papers, Box 59, Folder 1; Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Margaret H. McFadden

Maggie McFadden researches and teaches Women's Studies at Appalachian State University (North Carolina, USA). She is the author of Golden Cables of Sympathy: the transatlantic sources of nineteenth-century feminism (1999) and articles in women's history and feminist theory. She is Founding Director of Women's Studies at Appalachian State University (1976). Her current work is on the gendering of food studies, the interwar (1918–39) women peace activists, and the ‘reflexive turn’ of auto/biography.