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Abstract The phenomenon of female cross-dressing and gaining the social role of a man has been witnessed in the tribal patriarchal society of the remotest parts of the Dinaric region since the nineteenth century. Once found within both Slavic and Albanian populations, today sworn virgins have been rapidly vanishing, and are rarely still found in northern Albania. The fact that occurrence was equally common among Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim populations in the remotest mountain regions points to the phenomenon's ancientness. As women who aspired to the social status of men, sworn virgins did not cease to be women; only the “degree” of their womanhood or manhood varied. Examining this social phenomenon as a third gender, this article contextualizes it through Judith Butler's theory of performativity. It also focuses on the relatedness of the phenomenon to the ancient past, turning to existing theories, but also providing an original contribution to the third gender debate.

Cristina A. Bejan, Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania: The Criterion Association, Cham, Switzer land: Palgrave, 2019, 323 pp., €74.89 (hardback), ISBN 978-3-030-20164-7.Chiara Bonfiglioli, Women and Industry in the Balkans: The Rise and Fall of the Yugoslav Textile Sector, London: I. B. Tauris, 2020, 232 pp., £85 (hardback), ISBN: 978-1-78533-598-3.Aslı Davaz, Eşitsiz kız kardeşlik, uluslararası ve Ortadoğu kadın hareketleri, 1935 Kongresi ve Türk Kadın Birliği (Unequal sisterhood, international and Middle Eastern women’s movements, 1935 Congress and the Turkish Women’s Union), İstanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası, 2014, 892 pp., with an introduction by Yıldız Ecevit, pp. xxi–xxviii; preface by the author, pp. xxix–xlix, TL 42 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-605-332-296-2.Biljana Dojčinović and Ana Kolarić, eds., Feministički časopisi u Srbiji: Teorija, aktivizam i umetničke prakse u 1990-im i 2000-im (Feminist periodicals in Serbia: Theory, activism, and artistic practice in the 1990s and 2000s), Belgrade: Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, 2018, 370 pp., price not listed (paperback), ISBN: 978-86-6153-515-4.Melanie Ilic, ed., The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Gender in Twentieth-Century Russia and the Soviet Union, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 572 pp., $239 (e-book) ISBN: 978-1-137-54904-4; ISBN: 978-1-137-54905-1.Luciana M. Jinga, ed., The Other Half of Communism: Women’s Outlook, in History of Communism in Europe, vol. 8, Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2018, 348 pp., USD 40 (paperback), ISBN: 978-606-697-070-9.Teresa Kulawik and Zhanna Kravchenko, eds., Borderlands in European Gender Studies: Beyond the East-West Frontier, New York: Routledge, 2020, 264 pp., $140.00 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-367-25896-2.Jill Massino, Ambiguous Transitions: Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania, New York: Berghahn Books, 2019, 466 pp., USD 122 (hardback), ISBN: 978-1-785-33598-3.Gergana Mircheva, (A)normalnost i dostap do publichnostta: Socialnoinstitucionalni prostranstva na biomedicinskite discursi v Bulgaria (1878–1939) ([Ab]normality and access to publicity: Social-institutional spaces of biomedicine discourses in Bulgaria [1878–1939]), Sofia: St. Kliment Ohridski University Press, 2018, 487 pp., BGN 16 (paperback), ISBN: 978-954-07-4474-2.Milutin A. Popović, Zatvorenice, album ženskog odeljenja Požarevačkog kaznenog zavoda sa statistikom (1898) (Prisoners, the album of the women’s section of Požarevac penitentiary with statistics, 1898), edited by Svetlana Tomić, Belgrade: Laguna , 2017, 333 pp., RSD 894 (paperback), ISBN: 978-86-521-2798-6.Irena Protassewicz, A Polish Woman’s Experience in World War II: Conflict, Deportation and Exile, edited by Hubert Zawadzki, with Meg Knott, translated by Hubert Zawadzki, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, xxv pp. + 257 pp., £73.38 (hardback), ISBN: 978-1-3500-7992-2.Zilka Spahić Šiljak, ed., Bosanski labirint: Kultura, rod i liderstvo (Bosnian labyrinth: Culture, gender, and leadership), Sarajevo and Zagreb: TPO Fondacija and Buybook, 2019, xii + 213 pp., no price listed (paperback), ISBN: 978-9926-422-16-5.Gonda Van Steen, Adoption, Memory and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo?, University of Michigan Press, 2019, 350 pp., $85.00 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-472-13158-7.D imitra Vassiliadou, Ston tropiko tis grafi s: Oikogeneiakoi desmoi kai synaisthimata stin astiki Ellada (1850–1930) (The tropic of writing: Family ties and emotions in modern Greece [1850–1930]), Athens: Gutenberg, 2018, 291 pp., 16.00 € (paperback), ISBN: 978-960-01-1940-4.Radina Vučetić, Coca-Cola Socialism: Americanization of Yugoslav Culture in the Sixties, English translation by John K. Cox, Budapest: Central European University Press, 2018, 334 pp., €58.00 (paperback), ISBN: 978-963-386-200-1.Nancy M. Wingfield, The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, xvi + 272 pp., $80 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-19880-165-8.Anastasia Lakhtikova, Angela Brintlinger, and Irina Glushchenko, eds., Seasoned Socialism: Gender and Food in Late Soviet Everyday Life, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019, xix + 373 pp., $68.41(hardback), ISBN: 978-0-253-04095-4.

“You wanted to interview yourself. Why?There are many reasons. First of all, I am an experienced researcher and I understand well the power of the one who shapes questions and gives an implicit interpretative framework. Second, the envisaged scope for my life story is simply not sufficient, and my life cannot be easily formatted using general questions. I want to tell my life story when, how, and how much I want and how much I believe it to be good and necessary. My life has had a matrix too complex to be reduced or placed into a simple and trivial, most often chronological, course of events. Instead of having someone who does not know me ask me questions that are some kind of general points, I want to talk about myself primarily in order to convey a message. So, this is not about a simple process of reconstructing events and facts, but about my intention to say what I believe to be important and what makes up just one of many “red threads” in my life. The risk of inadequate questions is very big and I keep reassuring myself of this time and again.

Slobodanka Peković, Časopisi po meri dostojanstvenog ženskinja: Ženski časopisi na početku 20. veka (Journals suited for respectable women: Women’s journals from the early twentieth century), Novi Sad-Beograd: Matica srpska, Institut za književnost i umetnost, 2015, 378 pp., RSD 550 (paperback), ISBN 978-86-7946-154-4.Stanislava Barać, Feministička kontrajavnost: Žanr ženskog portreta u srpskoj periodici 1920–1941 (The feminist counterpublic: A genre of woman’s portrait in the Serbian periodical press from 1920 to 1941), Beograd: Institut za književnost i umetnost, 2015, 436 pp., RSD 1100 (paperback), ISBN 978-86-7095-224-9.

Athena Athanasiou, Agonistic Mourning: Political Dissidence and the Women in Black, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017, xii + 348 pp., £19.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-4744-2015-0.Maria Bucur and Mihaela Miroiu, Birth of Democratic Citizenship: Women and Power in Modern Romania, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2018, 189 pp., $35.00 (рaperback), ISBN 978-0-25302-564-7.Katherina Dalakoura and Sidiroula Ziogou-Karastergiou, Hē ekpaideusē tôn gynaikôn, gynaikes stēn ekpaideusē: Koinônikoi, ideologikoi, ekpaideutikoi metaschēmatismoi kai gynaikeia paremvasē (18os–20os ai.) (Women’s education, women in education: Social, ideological, educational transformations, and women’s interventions [18th–20th centuries]), Athens: Greek Academic Electronic Manuals/Kallipos Repository, 2015, 346 pp., e-book: http://hdl.handle.net/11419/2585, ISBN: 978-960-603-290-5. Provided free of charge by the Association of Greek Academic Libraries.Melissa Feinberg, Curtain of Lies: The Battle over Truth in Stalinist Eastern Europe, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, 232 pp., $74.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-19-064461-1.Christa Hämmerle, Oswald Überegger, and Birgitta Bader Zaar, eds., Gender and the First World War, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, 276 pp., £69.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-349-45379-5.Oksana Kis, Ukrayinky v Hulahu: Vyzhyty znachyt’ peremohty (Ukrainian women in the Gulag: Survival means victory), Lvіv: Institute of Ethnology, 2017, 288 pp., price not listed (paperback), ISBN: 978-966-02-8268-1.Ana Kolarić, Rod, modernost i emancipacij a: Uredničke politike u časopisima “Žena” (1911–1914) i “The Freewoman” (1911–1912) (Gender, modernity, and emancipation: Editorial politics in the journals “Žena” [The woman] [1911–1914] and “The Freewoman” [1911–1912]), Belgrade: Fabrika knjiga, 2017, 253 pp., €14 (paperback), ISBN 978-86-7718-168-0.Agnieszka Kościańska, Zobaczyć łosia: Historia polskiej edukacji seksualnej od pierwszej lekcji do internetu (To see a moose: The history of Polish sex education from the first lesson to the internet), Wołowiec: Czarne, 2017, 424 pp., PLN 44.90 (hardback), ISBN 978-83-8049-545-6.Irina Livezeanu and Árpád von Klimó, eds., The Routledge History of East Central Europe since 1700, New York: Routledge, 2017, 522 pp., GBP 175 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-415-58433-3.Zsófia Lóránd, The Feminist Challenge to the Socialist State in Yugoslavia, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan 2018, 270 pp., €88.39 (hardback), €71.39 (e-book), ISBN 978-3-319-78222-5.Marina Matešić and Svetlana Slapšak, Rod i Balkan (Gender and the Balkans), Zagreb: Durieux, 2017, 333 pp., KN 168 (hardback), ISBN 978-953-188-425-9.Ana Miškovska Kajevska, Feminist Activism at War: Belgrade and Zagreb Feminists in the 1990s, London: Routledge, 2017, 186 pp., £105.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-138-69768-3.Ivana Pantelić, Uspon i pad “prve drugarice” Jugoslavij e: Jovanka broz i srpska javnost, 1952–2013 (The rise and fall of the “first lady comrade” of Yugoslavia: Jovanka Broz and Serbian public, 1952–2013), Belgrade: Službeni glasnik, 2018, 336 pp., RSD 880 (paperback), ISBN 978-86-519-2251-3.Fatbardha Mulleti Saraçi, Kalvari i grave në burgjet e komunizmit (The cavalry of women in communist prisons), Tirana: Instituti i Studimit të Krimeve dhe Pasojave të Komunizmit; Tiranë: Kristalina-KH, 2017, 594 pp., 12000 AL Lek (paperback), ISBN 978-9928-168-71-9.Žarka Svirčev, Avangardistkinje: Ogledi o srpskoj (ženskoj) avangardnoj književnosti (Women of the avant-garde: Essays on Serbian (female) avant-garde literature), Belgrade, Šabac: Institut za književnost i umetnost, Fondacij a “Stanislava Vinaver,” 2018, 306 pp., RSD 800 (paperback), ISBN 978-86-7095259-1.Şirin Tekeli, Feminizmi düşünmek (Thinking feminism), İstanbul: Bilgi University, 2017, 503 pp., including bibliography, appendices, and index, TRY 30 (paperback), ISBN: 978-605-399-473-2.Zafer Toprak, Türkiye’de yeni hayat: Inkılap ve travma 1908–1928 (New life in Turkey: Revolution and trauma 1908–1928), Istanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2017, 472 pp., TRY 40 (paperback), ISBN 978-605-09-4721-2.Wang Zheng, Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1964, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016, 380 pp., 31.45 USD (paperback), ISBN 978-0-520-29229-1.

Jelena J. Dimitrij ević, Sedam mora i tri okeana: Putem oko sveta (Seven seas and three oceans: Traveling around the globe), edited by Biljana Dojčinović, Belgrade: Laguna, 2016, 445 pp., price not listed (paperback), ISBN 978-86-521-2306-3.Jelena J. Dimitrijević, Pisma iz Indije (Letters from India), second edition, edited by Ana Stjelja, English translation by Željko V. Mitić, Hindi translation by Latika Chawda, Belgrade: A. Stjelja, 2017, 106 pp., price not listed (paperback), ISBN 978-86-918903-6-0.