Call for Papers. Writing and Emancipation: Women Pioneers of Journalism and Chronicle (1850-1950)

Writing and Emancipation: Women Pioneers of Journalism and Chronicle (1850-1950)

Editors: Sandra G. Rodríguez (Universidad de Sevilla, Spain), Maria Mascarell Garcia (Universidad de Córdoba, Spain), and Rocío González Naranjo (Université Bretagne-Sud, France)

Article submission deadline: September 1st, 2026

Publication date: July 2027

Languages: Spanish, English, and Catalan

Instructions for Authors: https://www.e-revistes.uji.es/index.php/asparkia/about/submissions

For further information on the issue: sgrodriguez13@hotmail.com, mariaamascarell@outlook.es, naranjogonzalez.rocio@gmail.com

During the 19th and 20th centuries, the press played a central role in shaping social, political and cultural discourses at both European and international levels. In this context, women began to occupy space within the journalistic sphere, whether as readers, contributors, writers or even founders. Their emergence in the print media not only represented a gain in visibility, but also an exercise in emancipation and political and intellectual agency.

As Nancy Fraser (2008) argues, the struggle for symbolic representation must be understood in relation to other forms of structural injustice, such as economic or political. Similarly, the intersectional perspective proposed by authors such as Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) or, more recently, Patricia Hill Collins (2000), allows us to move beyond a homogeneous view of “woman” as a historical subject, making visible the plurality of experiences and strategies within the field of journalism. Works such as those by Silvia Franchini and Simonetta Soldani (2004), Pura Fernández and Marie-Linda Ortega (2008), Núria Capdevila (2009) or Patrizia Gabrielli (2022) explore the trajectories of the women journalists, activists and writers who took part in feminist or liberal magazines and presses —often, from ambivalent positions regarding burgeois values and the defense of women’s rights. Their research explores the role of women in the literary, political and popular press, highlighting their central role in the formation of intellectual and cultural networks.

The press written by women constitutes a key object of study for understanding processes of identity construction, discursive negotiation and resistance to hegemonic discourses. Publications from this period were neither homogeneous nor exclusively “feminist”: projects with a strong emancipatory character coexisted with magazines that reinforced models of domesticity or motherhood, which, within their own context, were also understood as subversive attitudes. As Rosa Maria Capel Martínez (1992 and 2020) and Carolina Pecharromán de la Cruz (2024) point out, many of these publications functioned as ambivalent spaces where conservative and reformist discourses intertwined, sometimes even within the same publishing house or press, or under the byline of the same author. This ambiguity is not incoherent, but rather a reflection of the social, political and cultural tensions of their time.

Many female contributors had to resort to using pseudonyms, anonymity or adopt “acceptable” styles and themes, such as fashion, education, caregiving or the home, to legitimise their presence in the public sphere. However, as Mary Nash (2012) and Amelia Valcárcel (2012) demonstrate, these discursive strategies should not be interpreted solely as forms of submission, but also as modes of agency, symbolic resistance and appropriation of the codes of the dominant discourse. In this sense, journalistic writing becomes a tool of intervention, capable of subverting normative gender frameworks from within.

This monographic issue aims to explore, from the perspective of feminist and gender studies, the diverse ways in which women used journalistic writing as a tool to challenge the patriarchal order, question gender normativity, articulate discourses of resistance and actively participate in the public debates of their time. The temporal framework addressed in this issue spans from 1850 to 1950.

Despite the growing attention that the study of women writers and journalists has received in recent years, significant historiographical gaps continue to persist. Isabel Morant (2002) points out how Women’s History has been traditionally marginalised within dominant historiographical narratives, and, in the specific case of journalism, studies such as those by Victoria Lorée Enders and Pamela Radcliff (1999) have contributed to making visible the role of women in the processes of modernisation and democratisation, showing how the press was (and still is) a space for the construction of female subjectivities.

 

Research lines:

- The press as a space for emancipation and visibility: studies on how women writers use the press as a means of asserting their public presence.

- Journalistic trajectories: research into women pioneers in the journalistic field, whether as contributors, editors or directors of magazines and/or newspapers, and their strategies of legitimisation and resistance.

- Authorship, anonymity and pseudonymity: analysis of the forms of signature, concealment or collectivisation of discourse as practices for negotiating the intellectual and political recognition of women writers in the press.

- Feminism, politics and labour press: studies on the connections between labour and feminist movements. Journalistic texts written by women as a space for articulating shared demands concerning paid work, education and women’s rights.

- Tradition, modernity and gender discourse: reflections on the tensions between traditional models of femininity and new representations of the modern, working, citizen woman in women’s press.

- Transnational networks and cultural exchanges: research into the circulation of ideas, collaborations, translations or personal ties among women journalists and activists. The press as vehicles for the transmission of international feminist thought.

 

References

Capel Martínez, Rosa María (1992). El sufragio femenino en la Segunda República Española. Horas y Horas.

Capel Martínez, Rosa María (2020). Prensa y escritura femenina en la España Ilustrada. El Argonauta español, (7), s.p.

Collins, Patricia Hill (2000). Black feminsit thought: knowledge,, consciousness and the politics of empowermente. Rooutledge.

Crenshaw, Kimberlé (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, (1), 139-167.

Enders, Victoria Loree y Radcliff, Pamela (Coords.) (1999). Constructing Spanish womanhood: female identity in modern Spain. State University of New York Press.

Fernández, Pura y Ortega, Marie-Linda (2008). La mujer de letras o la letraherida. Discursos y representaciones sobre la mujer escritora en el siglo XIX. CSIC.

Franchini, Silvia y Soldani, Simonetta (Eds.) (2004). Donne e giornalismo. Percorsi e presenze di una storia di genere. Franco Angeli.

Fraser, Nancy (2008). La justicia social en la era de la política de la identidad: redistribución, reconocimiento y participación. Revista de Trabajo, 4(6), 83-99.

Gabrielli, Patrizia (2022). Quotidianità, soggettività: ribaltamenti propettici nella storia della política e del genere. RevHisto. Revista de Historiografía (37), 59-78.

Morant, Isabel (2002). Discursos de la vida buena: matrimonio, mujer y sexualidad en la literatura humanista. Cátedra.

Nash, Mary (2012). Las mujeres en el último siglo. En O. M. Rubio y I. Tejada Marí (Dir.) 100 años en femenino. Una historia de las mujeres en España [eBook]. Acción Cultural Española.

Capdevila, Núria (2009). Mujeres inciertas. Voces olvidadas de nuestro feminismo. Ministerio de Cultura.

Pecharromán de la Cruz, Carolina (2024). Las mujeres en la prensa de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX: redes de colaboración. Pasado y memoria, (29), 160-184.

Valcárcel, Amelia (2012). Cien años de igualdad. En O. M. Rubio y I. Tejada Marí (Dir.) 100 años en femenino. Una historia de las mujeres en España [eBook]. Acción Cultural Española.