Drawing on family materials, historical records, and eyewitness accounts, this book shows the impact of war on individual women caught up in diverse and often treacherous situations. It relates stories of partisans in Holland, an Italian woman carrying guns and provisions in the face of hostile soldiers, and Kikuyu women involved in the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya. A woman displaced from Silesia recalls fleeing with children across war-torn Germany, and women caught up in conflicts in Burma and in Rwanda share their tales. War's aftermath can be traumatic, as shown by journalists in Libya and by a midwife on the Cambodian border who helps refugees to give birth and regain hope. Finally, British women on active service in Afghanistan and at NATO headquarters also speak.
Lidia D. Sciamais a Research Associate of the Oxford Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and a former Director of Oxford's International Gender Studies Centre, where she is currently a Senior Research Associate. She has conducted long-term research in Italy and England with a focus on women's crafts, city life, narrative, memory and relations between anthropology and literature. Among her publications areA Venetian Island. Environment, History and Change in Burano(Berghahn Books 2003) andHumour, Comedy and Laughter(Berghahn Books, 2016).
Fiona Armitage-Woodward?has held various teaching and research posts, including at Oxfam. She was a founding member of the Swaziland Society (1991). Her publications include contributions toFocus on Swaziland, which she has edited, and Imitating Ethnicity: Land, Territoriality and Identity in a Swazi Christian Church inLand and Territoriality, ed., Michael Saltman (2002).
Shirley Ardener, has carried oul3/