This ESWTR Yearbook is the first to be defined geographically. It gathers together articles by Eastern and Central European women theologians, reflecting on their context, their history and their identity. The book gathers papers from Croatia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Slovenia, from Lutheran, Reformed, Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic perspectives. Central for many of the authors is the burning question of how identity is to be defined - for women, for believers, in the post-communist era. To read these papers is to be offered a fascinating glimpse of the multiplicity and complexity of the contexts and traditions which have shaped - and continue to shape - European churches and their theologies.

This is the first comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and multilingual bibliography on "Women and Gender in East Central Europe and the Balkans (Vol. 1)" and "The Lands of the Former Soviet Union (Vol. 2)" over the past millennium. The coverage encompasses the relevant territories of the Russian, Hapsburg, and Ottoman empires, Germany and Greece, and the Jewish and Roma diasporas. Topics range from legal status and marital customs to economic participation and gender roles, plus unparalleled documentation of women writers and artists, and autobiographical works of all kinds. The volumes include approximately 30,000 bibliographic entries on works published through the end of 2000, as well as web sites and unpublished dissertations. Many of the individual entries are annotated with brief descriptions of major works and the tables of contents for collections and anthologies. The entries are cross-referenced and each volume includes indexes.

Building bridges has been and still is the main task of the European Society of Women in Theological Research (ESWTR). It aims to facilitate theological and academic religious debate transcending the borders between languages and countries, as well as those resulting from religions, confessions, cultures or traditions, in order to offer constructive future perspectives. This volume has now adopted "building bridges" as its main theme. It reflects the contributions to the 11th International Conference of ESWTR held in 2005 in the unique historical and cultural setting of Budapest. European women in the lead of theological research discuss the subject on the basis of their different specialist approaches and thus provide a unique spectrum of contemporary discourse from very varied disciplines in theology and religious studies.

This volume with its emphasis on "Southern Europe" is devoted now for the second time to theological research by women in a particular region of Europe. Women doing research in France, Italy, Spain and Greece provide evidence of and reflection on the history of women's theological studies in their countries and present the results of their studies. These reveal an impressive spectrum of theological research which sometimes has been and must be conducted in difficult structural contexts and under very different economic conditions. This makes the vitality of the research presented all the more convincing; in the different contexts of the individual countries it demonstrates specific and very varied emphases in academic theory and method. Precisely because of their complex and diverse points of departure, the articles evidence a fundamental, interdisciplinary approach and a creative way of seeing things which is concerned to ensure a fundamental openness for debate and dialogue. This volume thus provides an insight into the fascinating diversity and complexity of theological research in Europe.

A multidisciplinary, and multilingual bibliography on "Women and Gender in East Central Europe and the Balkans (Vol. 1)" and "The Lands of the Former Soviet Union (Vol. 2)". This two-volume set deals with the topics ranging from legal status and marital customs to economic participation and gender roles.

For the Yearbook of International Organizations, the most up-to-date and comprehensive reference to international organizations, the UIA has selected the most important 31,086 organizations from its extensive database of current and previous organizations. Yearbook provides profiles of 5,546 intergovernmental and 25,540 international non-governmental organizations active in nearly 300 countries and territories in the world today. Organization descriptions listed in Volume 1 are numbere sequentially to facilitate quick and easy cross-referencing from the other Yearbook Volumes. Users can refer to Volumes 2 and 3 to locate organizations by region or subject respectively, and comprehensive indexes are included. Naturally, the high standards of accuracy, consistency and detail set by previous editions of the Yearbook of International Organizations have been maintained for this edition.

This book explores gender issues in the images of God in folk religious traditions. From such an exploration, we are able to form conclusions about the everyday life of the faith community, dominant family structures, relationships between man and woman, gender roles, and the division of labor within the family. At the same time, the oral tradition reflects the influence of ecclesiastical and social expectations, even if in a negative way, resulting in negative attitudes toward the contemporary power politics. Texts relating to religion demonstrate clear gender-based characteristics. All these obvious or hidden expressions of convictions can be explored in the pictorial descriptions of oral tradition. The derogatory female images in biblical stories-interpreted and enforced from a typical point of view of rural story-telling men-inform us unambiguously about male self-preservation and hidden fears of women. The prayers and biographies of peasant women, on the other hand, do not concentrate on men, but rather avoid male elements, and, contradicting the everyday experiences of male oppression, they visualize the absolute female power.