European Feminisms, 1700 1950: A Political History. Stanford University Press, 2000.
From the Enlightenment to the Atomic Age, Offen takes the reader on a voyage of discovery to rescue the amazing story of European women’s (and men’s) campaigns against male domination and to restore its memory to today’s women and men.
European Feminisms was selected by a Portuguese women’s organization as one of 101 important books by women written in the 20th century. The exhibition of selected books, Mulheres Sécolo XX: 101 Livros, opened on 15 November 2001 at the Palace of Discoveries. It was organized by Maria Antonia Fiadeiro and sponsored by the Department of Culture of the Municipal Government of Lisbon, under the patronage of the President of the Council of Ministers and the Portuguese Ministry of Culture.
Other writers honored in the exhibition, and the accompanying catalog and poster, include Virginia Woolf, Isabel Allende, Anais Nin, Marie Curie, Simone de Beauvoir, Gisela Bock, Luce Irigaray, and Toni Morrison.
Praise for European Feminisms
“In an ambitious history, detailed in both depth and breadth, Offen provides a comprehensive account that re-reads European history from developing feminist perspectives . . . . affordable and interesting enough to appeal to the general reader. . . "
Feminist Academic Press Column
www.litwomen.org/facp/julyo1.html
“The real strength of the book is its comparative work, both in describing the activity of feminist organizations and in debating the differences in theory and practice engendered by different national and regional contexts. . . . Offen does not merely pay lip service to the idea of comparative history, she does it.”
Douglas Cremer, H-NET Book Review (May 2001)
www.h-net.org/reviews
“[Offen’s] crowded chronicle offers a rich account of the aspirations, illusions, disillusions, flounderings, achievements, and advances of a compelling cause.”
Eugen Weber, The Key Reporter (Phi Beta Kappa)
“an extraordinary synthesis. . . . its lucid style also makes it suitable for advanced undergraduates.”
Marybeth Carlson, History: Reviews of New Books
“. . . a beautifully composed, intellectually rigorous re-examination and revaluation of the European past . . . . provocative and intellectually engaging. Students in my undergraduate “Women in Modern Europe” class thoroughly enjoyed the text, voting it their favorite of the five books assigned for the course.”
Carolyn Eichner, University of South Florida
www.amazon.com
“. . . a truly pathbreaking work. . . .rich and informative. . . .”
Ann Taylor Allen, University of Louisville
www.amazon.com
“European Feminisms provides the best-documented (more than one-third of its six hundred pages is notes) and most synthetic survey of the European-wide effort to date.”
Bonnie G. Smith
Journal of Women’s History
“. . . an ambitious and substantially fascinating comparative narrative . . . thoroughly researched, bibliographically impeccable, and interpretatively feisty. . . henceforth essential reading for experts and generalists alike. . . . At the political and economic birth of the new European Union, it is timely for the continent to remember its feminist pasts.”
Judith A. Allen
American Historical Review
“This book is ‘a must’ for every scholar in women’s/gender studies, for present-day women’s activists and political leaders throughout Europe and the world; it is ‘a must’ for both scholars in the humanities and in the sciences, for every personal and public library collection.”
Krassimira Daskalova
Divinatio: Studia Cultorologica (Bulgaria)
“Karen Offen’s encyclopedic compendium of European feminisms deserves to be on the bookshelf of all historians interested in feminism, in women’s rights, and in European political and intellectual history. . . . this book is a tour de force; there is none that compares.”
Rachel G. Fuchs
Journal of Modern History
Last revised: November 4, 2006
Web site by Dave Tilbor
Books: European Feminisms