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Connecting Women: National and International Networks during the Long Nineteenth Century

The genesis of Connecting Women: National and International Networks dur-ing the Long Nineteenth Century was the second conference of the Inter-continental Cross-Currents Network, titled “The Dynamics of Power: Inclusion and Exclusion in Women’s Networks during the Long Nineteenth Century,” convened at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal, 3–5 November 2016. The conference was organized by the Institute of Arts and Humanities’ Centre for Humanistic Studies and the Department of English and North American Studies. A diverse group of international participants from different disciplinary backgrounds joined together to investigate mechanisms of inclusion and exclu-sion within transatlantic women’s networks that were forged during the period between 1789 and 1939, roughly the so-called long nineteenth century. According to Benedetto Vecchi, the forces of globalization show us the “seemingly random, haphazard and utterly unpredictable shifts and drifts” that threaten our everyday existence in ways we cannot control, today’s networks, con-nections or relationships often being flimsy and really nothing like those of for-mer times.2 Some things do not change, however, for women still strive for gender equality and even basic human rights, and these are easier to achieve collectively. In the nineteenth century, webs of many kinds proliferated in the Atlantic World, and networks made up mainly of women, as supporters and activists, were no exception to this generalized occurrence. But networks are/were sites of exclu-sion as well as inclusion, and it is not always easy to gain access. Indeed, most goal-oriented networks, particularly those with social and political agendas, are personal, national, or transnational in nature, and they often exclude those who do not share the goal. Even sections of those who actually do share a goal may be selective; for example, White, American, middle-class women have openly ex-cluded Black women in the past. Such activist networks and their influences are the main focus of part one, Activist Networks.

SUDOC number: SI 1.60:W 84

Located: ONLINE ONLY

ONLINE version: Connecting Women: National and International Networks during the Long Nineteenth Century