Forging the Bubikopf nation: a feminist political-economic analysis of Ženski list, interwar Croatia's women's magazine, for the construction of an alternative vision of modernity

This thesis is an examination of enski list, arguably the first magazine published exclusively for women between the wars in Croatia, and Yugoslavia. To fully understand the place, meaning and the impact of this magazine on everyday lives of its readers, with the study of the content I also include examination of the role of its editor and the first Croatian woman journalist Marija Jurić Zagorka. Finally, this thesis examines readers' responses to the content, their opinions, interactions between the readers and the editor, as well as interactions between the readers themselves for the overall assessment of the significance of enski list in the history of popular women's press in Croatia, and Yugoslavia.

This thesis is a historical project which uses two theoretical approaches to study of media: feminist political economic approach, and the feminist critique of the public sphere. By combining these two theoretical standpoints I illuminated some of the ways in which media participate in everyday lives of people, specifically marginalized groups, in this case women. Situating the study within the historical context of the interwar Yugoslavia, and interwar Europe was important for understanding of this project, and its research questions.

In this study I used multiple methods: (a) textual; (b) historical and biographical and, (c) audience study. In the larger part of this study which is a narrative discourse analysis of the content of enski list, I was also inspired by the interpretive ethnography of texts. I connected ethnography to feminist theory and political economy, to circumstances of gendered everyday practices and to circumstances of media culture production, all within the specific historical context.

In this study I found that women in the changing socio-political and economic context expressed their relation to capitalism and modernity in different ways, sometimes exerting their critiques and the refusal of the existing patriarchal structures and sometimes seeking inclusion within the structures, with the intent to practice primarily gender equality by direct participation. Finally, the analysis of enski list has told an important story of the place of media, and the women's press in particular, in initiating, carrying, and challenging traditional and emerging discourses in the hope that they would contribute to the ways in which society can be imagined differently.