Constellations of the “rebellious”. Around the biography of Józefa Kodis (Krzyżanowska)

Abstract

Despite the growing attention of scholars studying the history of Polish women’s movement in the 19th and 20th centuries as well as Polish women’s lives and their autobiographical writing, there is still a significant number of female activists and authors who – despite their remarkable personality and/or pioneering work – met with little interest. One of those extraordinary women is Józefa Krzyżanowska-Kodis (1865–1940), one of the first Polish women to receive a doctorate in philosophy (from University of Zurich in 1893), a socialist, feminist, and co-founder of the Polish Section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Although she was unsuccessful in her efforts to obtain a university position in the United States, Józefa Kodis (Kodisowa) was a passionate philosopher, as well as a social activist and publicist. The few scholarly pieces on her focused on her friendship with Carl Hauptmann. By contrast, the author proposes to have a closer look at the memoirs of Józefa and her daughter Zofia Kodis-Freyer and other archival sources in order to present the most important experiences, cultural and interpersonal constellations, and networks that shaped Kodisowa’s biography and perspective on female emancipation, female-male relations, social (in)equality, and pacifism.