Description
Creating conditions for peaceful change after WWI was an educational project in which women played significant roles. Women made contributions to the concept of “international-mind” as both an idea and a way of living in the world which sought to grow internationalism through participation in International Summer Schools across the interwar years. Women internationalists fostered cultural understanding and awareness of how the international and its challenges bind humans in a mutual project for collective peace and security. We offer findings from a joint project examining women’s involvement in annual Summer Schools run by a women’s international peace organization (the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom) and an organization of both men and women (the League of Nations Union) in which women predominated as Summer School attendees. Our research provides an overview of the organisational aims, attendees, locations, curricula, and the social and cultural programmes of the schools run by WILPF and the LNU. The Summer Schools of two voluntary international organizations provide a lens to examine convergences and differences in how women internationalists conceived the project of educating and mobilizing an international public.
