Shula Marks - Böcker

Established in the 1930s to rescue scientists and scholars from Nazi Europe, the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL, founded in 1933 as the Academic Assistance Council and now known as the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics) has had an illustrious career. No fewer than eighteen of its early grantees became Nobel Laureates and 120 were elected Fellows of the British Academy and Royal Society in the UK. While a good deal has been written on the SPSL in the 1930s and 1940s, and especially on the achievements of the outstanding scientists rescued, much less attention has been devoted to the scholars who contributed to the social sciences and humanities, and there has been virtually no research on the Society after the Second World War. The archive-based essays in this volume, written to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the organisation, are the first to attempt to fill this gap. The essays include revisionist accounts of the founder of the SPSL and some of its early grantees. For the first time, the story examines its relationship with associates and allies, the experiences of women academics and those of the post- war academic refugees from Communist Europe, apartheid South Africa and Pinochet's Chile. In addition to scholarly contributions, the volume includes moving essays by the children of early grantees. At a time of increasing international concern with refugees and immigration, it is a timely reminder of the enormous contribution generations of academic refugees have made - and continue to make - to learning the world over.

" . . . remarkable . . . " —Foreign Affairs" . . . illuminates the workings of institutionalized racism through the correspondence of three South African women in the 1940s and '50s." —Feminist Bookstore News"The history of a place and time is made vivid by the combination of the rich personal record of the letters and the theoretically framed analytic discussion. The result is new insight into the history of black education in South Africa, and a revealing study of the dynamics of women's relations under colonialism across the lines of race, age and power." —Susan Greenstein, The Women's Review of Books"A riveting and revealing book—one in which few of the characters wear hats that are spotlessly white." —Third World Resources"This rich collection of letters deserves its own reading, as do Shula Marks's bracketing essays. They are invaluable for clarifying the myriad ramifications that the letters raise for African women." —International Journal of African Historical Studies" . . . powerful and perceptive. . . .speak[s] eloquently to a Western audience that is poised to deal with the political and personal lives of South African women in an intimate holistic fashion." —Belles LettresThe roots of modern Apartheid are exposed through the painful and revealing correspondence of three very different South African women—two black and one "liberal" white—from 1949 to 1951. Although the letters speak for themselves, the editor has written an introduction and epilogue which tell of the tragic ending to this riveting story.

Explores the establishment of nursing in South Africa as a profession for white, English-speaking "ladies" in the last third of the 19th century, the class and racial tensions that developed as first Afrikaner and then black women joined its ranks, and the way processes of professionalization further divided nurses, so that today it suffers from a "major crisis of identity". The book claims that the history of the nursing profession provides a powerful metaphor for South African society, and examines the connection between the development of nursing and the development of apartheid.