Women’s Religious Schools in the Ukrainian Lands (1854–1918) in Modern Historiography

Abstract

The historiography of women’s religious schools began to emerge simultaneously with the creation and functioning of these educational institutions in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Individual works from this period contain ample and interesting factual material, including statistical data on the numbers of students and teachers. In the Soviet period, the study of this subject ceased, because women’s religious education was not among historians’ research interests at this time. The current period in the historiography of the problem began with the first years of Ukrainian independence. During the past three decades, a number of works of various formats on the history of education have been produced, but neither diocesan women’s schools nor women’s schools of the Department of Religious Affairs receive much attention in these studies. Usually, authors either limit themselves to listing the basic facts from the history of these institutions or do not mention them at all. The development of gender studies and the appearance of works on women’s history also have failed to significantly affect the historiography of women’s religious schools, as researchers continued to use approaches traditional for history of education, such as the study of the educational process or characterization of an institution’s student body and faculty. Since the 2000s, works begin to appear that focus specifically on the system of women’s religious education in the Ukrainian lands. A significant achievement of these works has been the accumulation of various statistical materials important for the comparative analysis of women’s religious schools. However, they also for the most part reproduce methods and approaches characteristic of 19th-century historiography, enumerating the basic facts from the history of these schools without proper analysis. Further, we may sometimes come across characterizations of women’s religious schools that are not grounded in careful analysis or backed by appropriate sources. Still, in recent years there have been positive changes in the study of the diocesan schools and schools of the Department of Religious Affairs, such as attention to new themes and the use of interdisciplinary approaches. Overall, the subject remains promising for further research.