Jelica Ilić Minić
ORCID 0000-0001-8610-3884
Univerzitet u Beogradu Fakultet za obrazovanje
učitelja i vaspitača – Biblioteka, Beograd
jelica.ilic@uf.bg.ac.rs

Vladimir Brborić
ORCID 0000-0002-5028-1563
Univerzitet u Beogradu Fakultet za obrazovanje
učitelja i vaspitača – Biblioteka, Beograd
vladimir.brboric@uf.bg.ac.rs

doi: 10.19090/cit.2024.45.20-49
No. 45 (November 2024), p. 20-49

Spiritual Workshops of Belgrade Women’s Gymnasiums: the engagement of professor Darinka Stojanović in libraries and for libraries

Summary

The history of modern Serbian culture in the 20th century, which reached its golden age between the two world wars, was enriched by women who laid the foundations for future generations through their active engagement, professional development, and contributions. However, despite this, they have often been marginalized from history, and their contributions have frequently been overlooked. It was only at the end of the century that works appeared about women who worked and were creative before the Second World War, illuminating their achievements and contributions to Serbian culture. This text presents a comprehensive professional biography of Darinka Stojanović (1892–1971), a professor, librarian, literary critic, and a feminist whose work was never researched and who belonged to the circle of universityeducated women of the interwar period. She was twice honoured with the Order of Saint Sava, 5th class, and the Order of the Yugoslav Crown, 5th class, and was one of the first women to serve as a school principal. She was involved in the administration of the „Association of University-Educated Women”, a member of the „Society for the Education and Protection of Women”, later known as the „Women’s Movement”, and active in the „Association of Secondary and Vocational School Teachers”. She served as the editor of the magazine “Ženski pokret” (1927–1938, coediting with Aloizija Štebi); in the “Glasnik” of the Teachers’ Society, she was part of a three-member editorial board (1926–1936, co-editing with Vojislav Mladenović and Andrija Franičević) and she contributed to “Contributions to Literature, Language, History, and Folklore” (founded and edited by Pavle Popović). As she signed the Appeal to the Serbian People in 1941, and during the war, did not hide her anti-communist views, in 1945, she was sentenced to loss of national honour and the right to work and was unjustly marginalized from cultural history. The central part of the text focuses on her triple engagement in librarianship. First, it examines her ten-year period (1928–1938) in the libraries of the Third Women’s Gymnasium, during which she organized the teachers’ library and participated in establishing and running the library of the student society „Šantić”. As the director of the newly opened the Sixth Women’s Gymnasium in Belgrade, she established libraries that began operating immediately upon enrolling the first students. She also contributed to the library profession through her involvement in associations and editorial boards of magazines. Although she did not fully dedicate her professional career to librarianship, Darinka Stojanović deserves a place on the library map due to her efforts and contributions to the work of the first women’s gymnasium libraries. This work aims to present the achievements of D. Stojanović while highlighting the lack of data on the work of many female teachers and professors who managed libraries in higher and secondary schools during a period when education for girls was gaining momentum. They certainly should deserve a rightful place in research that would honour the legacy of these remarkable women. The research and writing of this work utilized heuristic methods and content analysis of archival sources from the State Archive of Serbia, the Historical Archive of Belgrade, published historical sources, periodicals, and other available materials.

Keywords:

Darinka A. Stojanović (1892-1971), Third Women’s Gymnasium, Sixth Women’s Gymnasium, library, Appeal to the Serbian People, signatories

Submitted: 2nd October 2024
Correction to the manuscript: 28th October 2024
Accepted for publication: 4th November 2024

Spiritual Workshops of Belgrade Women’s Gymnasiums: the engagement of professor Darinka Stojanović in libraries and for libraries by Jelica Ilić Minić i Vladimir Brborić is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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