Intelligent Compassion
Feminist Critical Methodology in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
Catia Cecilia Confortini
Reviews and Awards
"In this superbly sensitive and conceptually innovative book, we see the constitutive nature of women's peace activism and the radically changing international political context of the period from World War II to the mid-1970s in action. This is no small feat, but Confortini goes further, clearly articulating a productive relationship between feminist methodology, constructivism, and international relations theory that should be read by all students of feminism, international relations, and peace studies."--Cecelia Lynch, University of California, Irvine
"Catia Cecilia Confortini has written a critical history of a thinking, political, activist organization. The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom survives the devastation of World War II and remains an organization engaged with the world's pressing threats to peace. In this well-researched book, Confortini writes candidly about the challenges of a women's organization that was practically, by definition, marginal to world politics at its founding. She asks how can peace activists transcend the values of their times given that they are in part shaped by those values. Confortini reveals WILPF to be an organization that needs to challenge itself by confronting the relative privilege of its members and identifies the methods by which WILPF does this through disarmament, decolonization and the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict."--Brooke Ackerly, Vanderbilt University