Introduction: Translating and Mediating Feminisms, Travelling Women’s Movements

This study investigates how the emergence of a transnational civil society in the decades before the outbreak of the First World War was supported by, and entangled with, practices of travel, translation, and mediation in various forms of (mass) media. It takes one activist from the transnational women’s movements of the West as a case study to explore how political activists employed a variety of transnational strategies to foment activism at home and abroad. The introductory chapter takes the example of one activist’s speech at the feminist congress in Paris in 1896—one of the first larger congresses of its kind—and the media reaction to this appearance to sketch the position of a mediator in a transnational civil space. Following on from this, it lays out the contexts, concepts, and the research questions of this book and presents its main protagonist, Käthe Schirmacher (1865–1930). In particular, the chapter discusses theoretical frameworks of translation, feminism, activism, and trust; contextualises travel in a transnational history of women’s movements of the West; and reflects on the advantages and limitations of a case study approach.