BIOGRAPHIES OF CYPRIOT WOMEN

VOICING THE SILENCES OF HISTORY

A PROJECT CONNECTING CIRCUS ARTS AND WOMEN’S HISTORY!

*The complete publication will be uploaded here in a few days

For many years women have been invisible in historiography leading historians to describe women as the “silences” of history. This has resulted in the―often unconscious―assumption that women have been passive throughout the making of society; that is, a distorted vision of the past reinforcing gender stereotypes in the present. Although since the 1970s, European historians have done an extraordinary work in bridging this gap, there is still much ground to cover. In Cyprus, the invisibility of women’s stories continues to be a depressing fact. Cypriot historians are still struggling to find one or two women for whom a solid biography has been written and could be promoted as a positive role-model, or as a means to understand more about the history of women’s contributions and women’s challenges. At the same time, the stories of women who had not been “in line” with social norms and expectations are even more neglected. This project has made a fundamental first step towards putting Cypriot women back in history through the publication of an e-book with selected biographies of Cypriot women along with the production of an innovative and open-to-the-public performance, inspired by women’s history, created by a joint group of Spanish and Cypriot artists. 

The project was implemented by the Center for Gender Equality and History in association with the Spanish Association Vortex and the circus company La Fem Fatal, and funded by the Erasmus+ Project of the European Union.