a quarterly of women1s studies resources vol. 7, no. 3 spring 1986 TRBE OF CONTENTS AACHIVES.. ................................ 3 Recovering our past: Mathilde Franziska Anneke- (1817-1884), by Margo A. Conk and Renny Harrigan. FEmlNlST VISIONS .............................. 6 Computer equity through gendered software?, by Elizabeth Ellsworth. FE~I~ISTPUBLISHING .............................10 Report on eight presses, five of them new. NEUS FROm UUI-STEVCNS POINT .......................11 By Kathy White NEUlREFERENCEUK)AHSINUKXIIEN'S~DHS ..................I2 New sources on British feminists; Canadian women's periodicals; feminism and language; women in the Progressive era; 1 esbian periodicals ; women's studies resources in microform; women in American history; and women's studies resources at the U .M. Centers. Continued on next page EDITORS: Susan Searing, Womenas Studies Librarian and Catherine Loeb, Ulomen's Studies Specialist. Graphic Artist: moema Furtado. Typist: Alice m. Soben. U~IVCRSITYOF UJISCO~SI~SVST€~ ll2A memorial Library 728 State St. madison, UJI 53706 (608) 263-5754 Continued from page one PEAlODICRl.NOT€S.. ............................ 17 New periodicals on: Canadian gay and lesbian history; Canadian feminism; women against nuclear war; anti-pornography organizing. Special issues on: feminist theory and practice; women and housing; women and space in human settlements; women and the built environment; women's library collections. Transitions: Lesbian Inciter moves to the West Coast. mms OF NOTE ............................... 19 A series of radio programs based on Forum '85, Nairobi, Kenya; taped lectures on Jewish women in history and literature; a videotape on the feminization of poverty in the I4idwest; the Woman Activist Mailing List; educational materials for women in nonacademic settings; a report on gang rape on college campuses; women's studies programs in Japan; Uomen's Equity Action League publications; fashion advertising collection, 1942-1982; and a report on women and media in the Asian and Pacific regions. Women and disability, Part 1, by Deborah Kent. Sex, gender, and the- state, by Virginia Sapiro. Feminist Collections is published by Susan E. Searing, UW fystem When's Studfes Librarian, 112A Memorial Library, 728 State Street, Madison, WisconBin 53706. Phone: (608) 263- 5754. Editors: Susan E. Searing, Catherine Loeb. Graphics: Moema Furtado. ISSN 0742-7441. Publications of the Office of the UW System Women's Studies Librarian are available free of charge to Wisconsin residents. The subscription rate outside Wisconsin is $l2/year for individuals and women's programs, 524lrear for institutions. This fee covers a1 1 oublications of the Office, including Feminist Collections, fminlst Periodicals, New Books on Women & Feminism, and bib11ographles, dl rectories, and occasf onal pub1 ications I produced throughout the year. Speaking to the International Women's Congress held in Berlin in 1904, Susan B. Anthony described German political refugee Mathil de Franzi ska Anneke as the most loyal of colleagues, as a woman who had fought with her for American woman suffrage side by side year after year. To her work, Anthony asserted, American women owed the main part of what had been achieved up until that time. For Anthony, Anneke symbolized the transnational character of feminism; she broke down 'the cultural and language barriers that impeded a broad-based feminist movement in an ethnically mixed Amerlca. A1 though her name 1s Inscribed on the Suffrage Memorial of the League of Women Voters in Washington, LC., today Anneke is a virtual unknown In our country. How could we be so ignorant about such a major figure in American suffrage history? The reason is that Anneke's written work was almost excluslvely in her native German tongue. Because she lived and wrote in the German-speak1 ng community , Anneke's experience has been lost to most twentieth-century Americans. A It Is an American truism that we are a nation of immigrants, a "melting- potn of diverse cultures and races. Today some 12% of our population 1s of Afro-American origin; 6.5% is of Spanish origin. About 6.2% Is foreign-born, and almost 10% of Americans live in homes where there is a language other than Engl ish spoken. Today the mainstream culture is English speaking, mlddle-class in cast and tone, broadly Protestant in religious ambience, and dominated physically by the white European stock of earl ier ~migrations. Nevertheless, minority cultures have in the last thlrty years beconye more visible and outspoken in their struggles to preserve the Integrity of their threatened heritages. In this context, contemporary femi nists are begi nnlng to recognize and affirm the diversity of our sisterhood. For those of us who would understand our history, it is equally Important that we remember what a diverse group Amerlcan women have been in the past. During the period between 1840 and 1920, when the large European migrations to the United States occurred, ten to fifteen percent of the population was foreign-born. Many more languages were spoken. To put the matter in perspective, some 51,000,000 Americans (twenty- three percent) considered themselves of German ancestry as of 1980. Yet in the past sixty years, these descendants of German immigrants have by and large been asslmilated into the Engl ish-speaking culture, and much of their cultural heritage has been forgotten with the loss of their language. In trying to recapture women's history, today's feminists are not only hampered by the androcentrlsm of the written record. Educated and trained in the mainstream language and culture of our society, we are ourselves handlcapped in our efforts to understand the experiences of our culturally diverse foremothers. It Is to recover something of this submerged past that we have undertaken the dlfflcult task of researching the life and work of Mathilde- Franziska Anneke. ' Mathilde Franzlska Giesler was born in 1817 to an upper-mlddle-class German-Catholic family. She marrled In 1836 at the age of nineteen, dlvorced a year later, and was successful after a long battle in gainlng custody of her daughter -- an unheard-of event In early nineteenth-century Germany. When the divorce removed her socially from the class into which she was born, she turned to writing to support herself and her daughter. In 1847, she marrled Frltz Anneke, a former Prusslan Army officer, and they clrculated in the heady radlcal soclety of prerevolutionary Germany. When the 1848 revolution broke out and Fritz Anneke joined the revolutionary army, Mathilde accompanled him on the fleld of battle In Baden. Together they publlshed the Neue Kolnlsche Zeltun , a radical newspaper that traded articles wlth Karl Marx' -Neue de n sche Zeitunq. In 1849, after the fallure of the Baden-Palatinate campalgn, Fhthllde and Frltz were expelled from Germany. They went to the United States with their d children and settled in Milwaukee in 1850, where they Immediately rose to prominence as speakers, journal ists and educators wl thin the clty's burgeon1 ng German community. Mathilde gave her first public lecture in Milwaukee in 1850 in Military Hall before a crowd reputed to be the largest ever gathered in the city for a publlc event. Her topic was "Polltical Events and Poetry in .Germany ," and it reflected the role she was to play as both political reformer and transmitter of German culture for the rest of her life. Hathllde combined a mid-nineteenth-century commitment to social and political reform -- republicanism, abolitionism and femi nism -- with a professional interest in education and cultural crltlcism. In 1852, Mathllde began the first women's newspaper In the U.S., the Deutsche Frauen-Zeitun . She conceived-of the paper as a purely women's effort, and even Used !emale typesetters. The local male typesetters were outraged, and pressured her to stop publication. In response, she and Fritz resettled in Newark, New Jersey, another community wlth a large German- American population, where the paper resumed publication. In 1858, two of the Anneke children died of smallpox. Grieving, the Annekes returned to Milwaukee, but a year later Fritz went to Italy to report on the Italian wars of liberation. Mathilde joined him in Europe in 1860. When the American Civil War broke out, Frltz again crossed the Atlantic, thls time to fight in the Union Army. Mathllde remained In Europe, writing anti- slavery tracts, fiction and German newspaper propaganda. In 1865, Mathilde returned to Milwaukee. Though she and her husband maintained lovlng relatlons untll his untimely death in 1872, they were in fact separated for most of their married life. Mathllde bore seven children (only three of whom llved to adulthood), and Frltz seemed unable to secure employment that would provide the financial support needed by the family. Their final separation was caused by Mathllde's decision to establish a school for girls in Milwaukee (the Milwaukee Tochterschule) , which would provide her with a steady but meager income for the rest of her life. She continued to be active in feminist and other social reform causes, and to act as a local spokeswoman for the German educational model. She served, for example, as the German delegate to the National Women's Rights Convention, the Vice President from Wisconsin to the National Women's Suffrage Association and keynote speaker at the fourth annual convention of the Gennan Pmerican Federation of Teachers. Throughout her later life, Anneke worked to bridge the gap between German and Pmerican culture: she fought an uphill battle to interest the German-speaking community in women's rights, and she tried to convince her fellow suffragists that German women would not endorse suffrage as long as it was connected to the frequently anti-immigrant causes of temperance and sabbatarianism. Despite the radicalism of many of her ideas, Mathilde Anneke was a respected member of her local community. The German community continued to patronize and support her school financially, and In 1882, her play Oithono (written in 1842) was produced in an honorary performance in Milwaukee.