Search

16 May 2023

BOOK: Immi TALLGREN (ed), Portraits of Women in International Law: New Names and Forgotten Faces? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 560 pp, ISBN 9780198868453, £140

 

(image courtesy: Oxford University Press)

Book description: 
Current histories seem to suggest that men alone have been capable of the development of ideas, analysis, and practice of international law until the 1990s. Is this the case? Or have others been erased from the collective images of this history, including the portrait gallery of notables in international law?

Portraits of Women in International Law: New Names and Forgotten Faces? investigates the slow and late inclusion of women in the spheres of knowledge and power in international law. The forty-two textual and visual representations by a diverse team of passionate portraitists represent women and gender non-conforming people in international law from the fourteenth century onwards around the world: individuals and groups who imagined, developed, or contested international law; who earned their living in its institutions; or who, even indirectly, may have changed its course.

This rich volume calls for a critical identification of the formal and informal institutional practices, norms, and rituals of (white) masculinities, both in the past and in the research of international law today. By abandoning reductive histories, their biased frames, and tacit assumptions, this work brings previously unseen glimpses of international law and its agents, ideas, causes, behaviour, norms, and social practices into the spotlight.
Table of contents: 
Foreword: Looking at Portraits, Karen Knop
I. OPENING THE EXHIBITION
1:Re-curating the Portrait Gallery of International Law: The Objectives, Process, and Floorplan of the Exhibition, Immi Tallgren
II. THE VESTIBULE OF THE LEGENDARY ANCIENTS
2:Christine de Pizan: The Law of Warfare as Seen by a Medieval Woman, Franck Latty
3:Olympe de Gouges: Beyond the Symbol, Anne Lagerwall and Agatha Verdebout
4:The Reign of Order and the Rights of Siege According to Rosa Luxemburg, Deborah Whitehall
5:Maria van Reigersberch: Wife of Hugo Grotius, Henk Nellen
III. FIGUREHEADS OF FIGHTING FOR PEACE
6:Bertha von Suttner: Locating International Law in Novel and SalonJanne E. Nijman
7:Jane Addams: Positive Peace from the Everyday to the International, Kate Grady and Gina Heathcote
IV. THE WINTER GARDEN OF ABOLITION AND RESISTANCE: WOMEN AGAINST SLAVERY, RACISM AND IMPERIALISM
8:Anna Julia Cooper: A Voice from the (Global) South, Christopher Gevers
9:Homelands of Mary Ann Shadd, Sarah Riley Case
10:Avabai Wadia: A Gentle Rebel of (Other) Nations?, Vasuki Nesiah
V. THE HALL OF DIVERSITY OF FEMINIST ACTIVISM IN INTERNATIONAL LAW
11:Ghénia Avril de Sainte-Croix: Abolitionism and the League of Nations, Frédéric Mégret
12:Yayori Matsui: Challenging the Silences of International Law through Pan Asian Feminist Solidarity, Keina Yoshida
13:Canonizing the Memory of Annie Ruth Jiagge in the Global Efforts Toward Gender Equality, Michael Addaney
VI. THE HALL OF WOMEN FOR SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT BY INTERNATIONAL LAW: A NORDIC DREAM?
14:Alva Myrdal: The Rise and Fall of Social Democratic Internationalism, Anne Orford
15:Ester Boserup: Women and Development on the Margins, Miriam Bak Mackenna
16:Helvi Sipilä: Advocating Women's Rights at the UN, Raimo Lintonen
VII. THE BREAKERS OF THE GLASS CEILING: THE 'FIRST AND ONLY' IN INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
17:Suzanne Bastid: The First of the 'Firsts', Immi Tallgren and Antoine Buchet
18:Marguerite Frick-Cramer: A Life Spent Shaping the Geneva Conventions, Boyd van Dijk
19:Vijayalakshmi Pandit: Gendering and Racing against the Postcolonial Predicament, Parvathi Menon
20:The Timing of Felice Morgenstern, Jan Klabbers
21:Paula Escarameia: Envisioning the Humane Face of International Law in the Twenty-first Century, Ana Caldeira Fouto, António Pedro Barbas Homem, and Pedro Caridade de Freitas
VIII. THE OTHER GROUP PICTURES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW
22:Forgotten Female Actors in Private International Law: The International Social Service, Roxana Banu
23:Female Staff in the Legal Section of the League of Nations, Benjamin Auberer
24:The 'Indigenous Women' Behind the 'Other' Beijing Declaration, Bérénice K. Schramm
25:The Women's Caucus for Gender Justice: Writing Gender into International Criminal Law, Anna van der Velde
IX. THE MISSING FACES OF THE FACULTY CORRIDORS
26:Sarah Wambaugh: Life at the Frontiers of International Law, Imogen Saunders
27:Exile and Access: Lilly Melchior Roberts and the Infrastructures of International Law, Alexandra Kemmerer
28:Lea Meriggi: A Fighter For the Wrong Cause, Serena Forlati
29:Isabella Diederiks-Verschoor: (A Life) Creating Spaces, Christiaan Verwer and Anna van der Velde
30:Gezina van der Molen: A Journey from Universalism to Pluralism, Sarah MH Nouwen and Wouter Werner
31:Elisabeth Mann Borgese: Ecology, Relationality, and Law of the Sea, Sara Seck
32:Marie Theres Fögen: The Universalization of a Rotten Deal, Reut Paz
33:Kalliopi Koufa: First Greek Female Academic of Public International Law, Marilena Papadaki
X. THE ROOF-TOP GALLERY OF DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
34:Thomas Baty in Japan: Seeing through the Twilight, Shinya Murase
35:Zheng Yuxiu and the Diplomacy of Nationalism and Feminism, Margaret Kuo
36:Marjorie M. Whiteman: Not Flowers but a Medal, Hatsue Shinohara
37:Aleksandra Kollontai: 'New Woman', Sergey Vasiliev
38:The Role of International Law in Paulina Luisi's Activism, Andrei Mamolea
39:Working from 'Rooms of Their Own': For a Realistic Portrait of Joyce Gutteridge CBE and Other Trailblazing Women, Luiza Leāo Soares Pereira
XI. PORTRAITS OF ARTISTS, JOURNALISTS AND VISIONARIES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
40:"If Only They Listened to Simone Weil": From Rights to Roots, Outi Korhonen
41:Helene Halperin-Ginsburg: The Social Function of International Law, Ksenia Shestakova
42:Human Rights and Communist Internationalism: On Inji Aflatoun and the Surrealists, Mai Taha
43:Fearless Speech: A Portrait of UN Typist Shirley Hazzard , Dianne Otto
Epilogue: Exit through the Gift Shop, Hilary Charlesworth
About the author: 

Immi Tallgren is Adjunct Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and Senior KONE Research Fellow at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights. She has previously worked at the Finnish MFA, the Legal Affairs Unit of EUROPOL, the European Space Agency, and the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg. Her research interests are primarily in international criminal law, history of international law, law and cinema, and feminist approaches to international law. Her recent publications include The Dawn of a Discipline: International Criminal Justice and its Early Exponents (with Frédéric Mégret, CUP, 2020) and Retrials: The New Histories of International Criminal Law (with Thomas Skouteris, OUP, 2019).
More information can be found here

No comments: