CFP: Centennial Reflections on Women’s Suffrage and the Arts, 29-30 June 2018

CENTENNIAL REFLECTIONS ON WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE AND THE ARTS

Local : National : Transnational

 An international, multi-disciplinary public conference

University of Surrey, UK, 29–30 June 2018

Keynote Speakers:

• Irene Cockroft, author of Women in the Arts & Crafts and Suffrage Movements at the Dawn of the 20th Century
• Elizabeth Crawford, author of The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland

Conference website: www.suffragecentennial.wordpress.com

The 2018 centenary of the Representation of the People Act (6 February 1918), which granted the vote to many women in the UK, yields an ideal opportunity for sustained critical reflection on women’s suffrage. This conference seeks to explore the artistic activities nurtured within the movement, their range and legacy, as well as the relationships between politics and art. In striving for an inclusive, transnational reach, it will at the same time seek to move beyond traditional emphases on white middle-class feminism and explore the intersections between the regional, national, and global contexts for women’s suffrage with specific respect to the arts.

While proposals addressing any aspects of women’s suffrage will be welcomed, this conference will focus upon three strands:

1. Women’s suffrage in/and the arts
2. Women’s suffrage in Surrey and the surrounds
3. Transnational networks and flows of texts in relation to women’s suffrage

20-minute papers are invited on any aspect of these strands, including but not limited to:

• Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women’s writing on suffrage;
• Political reflections on the arts and the cultural sphere, e.g. in music;
• Transnational networks and mobilities of political texts and ideas, incorporating suffrage movements in other countries;
• Politically active individuals with strong links to Surrey (particularly in relation to the arts) e.g. Mary Watts, Dame Ethel Smyth, Gertrude Jekyll, Marion Wallace Dunlop;
• Networks such as Ferguson’s Gang, Surrey Hills Group, Surrey Pilgrimage Group, and women who organised suffrage marches;
• Sociological theories of women’s suffrage;
• Contributions of women of colour to suffrage movements in Britain and globally;
• Art (both historical and contemporary) inspired by women’s suffrage.

Proposals for panels of 3–4 papers (1.5–2 hours) are also warmly welcomed, as are proposals for one-hour roundtables of 3–5 participants. We encourage proposals from postgraduate students and independent scholars in addition to institutionally-affiliated established academics.

Planned activities include a panel discussion featuring artists who have been active in performing and creating works based on women’s suffrage and some of its key figures; a recital of the music of Dame Ethel Smyth; and a visit to the nearby Watts Gallery. We envisage that an edited publication will be developed from papers presented at the conference.

Abstracts of not more than 300 words should be e-mailed by 26 January 2018 to suffragecentennial@surrey.ac.uk. Decisions will be communicated to speakers by 23 February 2018. A limited number of student bursaries may be offered to offset costs of attendance.

Conference Committee: Christopher Wiley, Charlotte Mathieson, Lucy Ella Rose (co-chairs)

Enquiries: suffragecentennial@surrey.ac.uk

The conference is supported by the University of Surrey and Feminist and Women’s Studies Association UK & Ireland

Interview: the FWSA virtual conference

I was interviewed by Jade French of Not So Popular on the FWSA virtual conference that we are running this year. I spoke about some of the difficulties of in-person conferences to individuals, the constraints that a traditional 20-minute paper can impose, and how the virtual conference seeks to redress some of these issues. The interview is here – thanks Jade for some great questions!

Election to Chair of the FWSA UK & Ireland

I am delighted to have been elected Chair of the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association UK & Ireland. Having served on the Executive Committee since 2014 this is an exciting opportunity to develop my work with the Association and I am looking forward to the next three years in this position.

More details, including the mission statement that I was elected for, are on the FWSA website.

FWSA Student Essay Competition

There’s 1 month to go until the deadline for the 2016 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association (UK & Ireland) essay competition.

To encourage a new generation of feminist scholars, the FWSA sponsors an annual student essay competition for work which is innovative, interdisciplinary and grounded in feminist theory and practice. The top seven entries will be judged by our judging panel and will be published in the Journal of International Women’s Studies (see here for the 2015 issue). In addition, the winner will receive a year’s free FWSA membership and a publisher’s prize.

Students at any stage of their studies at a British or Irish university are encouraged to submit work that has not been previously published and is not currently under consideration for publication, or for competitions which result in publication elsewhere. Essays should be 6,000 – 7,000 words (including footnotes and bibliography).

The deadline for this year’s competition is Monday 2nd May 2016.

Full details including coversheet and submission instructions are available at http://fwsablog.org.uk/prizes-and-grants/student-essay-competition/

Please direct any queries to fwsachair@gmail.com or to me, the competition officer at charlotte.mathieson@ncl.ac.uk

 

 

New Writings in Feminist Studies: Journal of International Women’s Studies

Although a little late in writing about this, I’m very pleased to present the winning and shortlisted essays from the 2015 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association essay competition, published in the Journal of International Women’s Studies (17.2). As essay competition officer I had the wonderful job of editing the special issue, and it was a pleasure to work with emerging feminist scholars. The essays cover a fantastic range of issues, from new perspectives on historical writers like Poe, Murdoch and Beckett, to research that responds to recent issues such as same-sex reproductive law or the 2012-13 anti-rape demonstrations in Delhi. The essays are well worth a read – I learnt a lot in editing the issue, and hope others enjoy the finished result as much as I enjoyed working on it.

Travelling between the Centre and Periphery: Creating a Feminist Dialogue for the Diaspora

On Friday 11^th July 2014 the IAS Travel and Mobility Studies Research Network held its second annual conference, “Travelling between the Centre and Periphery: Creating a Feminist Dialogue for the Diaspora”. With the aim of developing discussions of diasporic writing and the centre-periphery framework through a focus on feminism in travel narratives, the one-day event included a keynote presentation by the acclaimed Professor Miriam Cooke (Duke University) as well as ten presentations by academics working on contemporary and postcolonial literary studies, migration studies, history of art and contemporary art theory. The day produced rich and interesting discussions on centre-periphery frameworks, theories of the diaspora, transnationalism, mobility and gender, generating a diverse set of feminist perspectives on these themes.

The day commenced with Professor miriam cooke’s keynote on “Women and the Arab Spring”. miriam cooke provided an overview of the role of women during and after the Arab Spring. She argued that Arab women have a century-long history of participating in their countries’ revolutions, irrespective of attempts to remove them from the public sphere. She provided examples of women who have been forced into exile, and thus continue their activism using social media.

The first panel of the day, “Bodies and Flight”, provided three perspectives on the intersections between gender, mobility and diasporic theories. Lindsey Moore discussed Camilla Gibb’s Sweetness in the Belly (2005) to open up wider questions of female identity formation and travel; exploring issues around the representation of religion and spirituality, literacy and reading, and different spaces, Moore ended by suggesting that the text reiterates travelling across boundaries as productive to the identity of the female traveller. Max Andrucki and Jen Dickinson’s paper argued that while economic models are typically privileged in discussions of the centre-periphery framework, a more diverse and mobile concept of centrality and marginality might be posited as a productive theoretical model; two case studies of migrant experiences demonstrated how a ‘performative’ idea of the diaspora could be conceptualised. Anna Ball looked to challenge centre-periphery frameworks through an exploration of bodies in flight, reading three cinematic works that portray Afghan women’s flight to propose the concept of a ‘mobile periphery’.

In “Transnational Travel Narratives”, Ester Gendusa offered a reading of Bernardine Evaristo’s Soul Tourists (2005) that raised questions of identity and belonging, suggesting that diasporic belonging can be perceived as an issue of self-identification with particular groups, communities or identities. Maryam Ala Amjadi’s paper explored gender and mobility in the Safavid world, analysing the writing of a female traveller who travelled from Persia to Mecca in the late seventeenth century. Demystifying the figure of the Safavid female traveller, Amjadi drew links with contemporary representations of Persian/ Iranian women and explored the historical implications of these ideas.

Panel C on “Feminism and the Diaspora” endeavoured to examine the impact migration has on women. Latefa Narriman Guemar shared her research into highly skilled Algerian women who emigrated during the 1990s. Dr Enaya Othman focused on Palestinian immigrant women and the meaning ascribed to their choice of dress, which is often used to demonstrate belonging and affiliation.

In the final panel on “the Diaspora in Visual Arts” both papers explored the feminine visual diaspora; art reflecting interactions with place and the effects of diasporic movement. Kuang Sheng began the panel by showcasing the artworks of a Chinese female artist Yin Xiuzhen who creates ‘Portable Cities’, unfolded suitcases full of manipulated second hand clothes designed to emulate different geographical places. Dr Maria Luisa Coelho focuses on the Portuguese female artist Maria Lusitano who tries to recreate the experience of being torn between home and abroad through her autobiographical visual work.

The organisers would like to thank the Humanities Research Centre, Institute of Advanced Study, Faculty of Arts and Connecting Cultures Global Research Priority for their support.

Roxanne Bibizadeh and Charlotte Mathieson

• you can also read a storify of my tweets from the conference
• recordings of the conference presentations will soon be available on the website

Joining the FWSA executive committee

I’m very pleased to be joining the Executive Committee of the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association, where I’ll be taking the post of Essay Competition Officer. I have written an introductory post on the FWSA blog; this year’s essay competition winners have also just been announced.

The next FWSA event is the Rethinking Sisterhood conference in Bristol in September, programme and registration are available now.

“Women & the Arab Spring” at Travelling between Centre & Periphery conference

Travelling between the Centre and Periphery: Creating a Feminist Dialogue for the Diaspora

Keynote: Professor Miriam Cooke (Duke University): “Women and the Arab Spring”

c. Leila Bibizadeh 2013

The full programme and abstracts are now online for this one-day conference at the University of Warwick on Friday 11th July 2014, including details of Professor Miriam Cooke’s keynote on “Women and the Arab Spring”.

This one-day symposium seeks to develop discussions of centre-periphery frameworks through a focus on feminism in travel narratives, examining how centre-periphery discourses are complicated, challenged, subverted or reinforced through gendered accounts of migration, ethnicity, identity conflicts and political connections. The symposium will explore how migration and diaspora formations are gendered to develop a centre-periphery narrative which juxtaposes traditional and conventional discourses often associated with the marginalised experience.

 

Registration is £15 standard (£10 student/Warwick staff) and details of how to register are on the website.

Registration open for “Creating a Feminist Dialogue for the Diaspora”

The provisional programme has been announced and registration is now open for “Travelling between the Centre and Periphery: Creating a Feminist Dialogue for the Diaspora”, the annual symposium of the Travel and Mobility Studies Network.

Keynote address will be given by Professor Miriam Cooke (Duke University) and panel speakers include Dr Lindsey Moore, Dr Anna Ball, and Dr Jen Dickinson. 

Registration is £15 standard or £10 for students/ Warwick delegates.

Please see here for more details.

CFP: Travelling between the Centre and Periphery: Creating a Feminist Dialogue for the Diaspora

IAS Travel and Mobility Studies Network Conference

Friday 11th July 2014

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Key-note address: Professor Miriam Cooke, Duke University

Guest speakers include Professor Haideh Moghissi and Professor Evelyne Accad

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Call for Papers

c. Leila Bibizadeh 2013; http://www.iwantthatpainting.com/

In recent years, discussions of travel narratives have examined the creation of the diaspora, highlighting themes of loss and exile using the centre-periphery framework. This symposium seeks to develop discussions through a focus on feminism in travel narratives, examining how centre-periphery discourses are complicated, challenged, subverted, or reinforced through gendered accounts of migration, ethnicity, identity conflicts and political connections. The Symposium will explore how migration and diaspora formations are gendered to develop a centre-periphery narrative which juxtaposes traditional and conventional discourses often associated with the marginalised experience. Questions to be addressed include: how does travel through forced or voluntary migration create new opportunities to liberate or oppress women? How do women of different socio-cultural and historical locations/parameters formulate their relationship to feminism? We also invite papers to reflect anew on the “centre” and “periphery”. Where (if anywhere) are they located and what is at stake in mapping these spaces today? What does peripheral status imply? How can we re-imagine the centre-periphery dynamic for the current age?

The organisers invite proposals for 20 minute papers which seek to respond, but are not limited to the following topics:

• Multifaceted journeys with(in) feminism
• Geographies of diasporic spaces
• Geographies of feminism
• Transnational feminism
• The transnational exilic and migratory experience
• Body politics in the diaspora
• Forced migration and displacement
• Pedagogies of crossing
• Political mobilisations
• Labour and the economics of migration
• Dismantling stereotypes of the Muslimah
• Debates on Islamic Feminism
• Historiography of third world feminism
Please send 250 word proposals by Friday 25th April 2014 to travelmobilitynetwork@gmail.com

Further information will be added to the conference website in due course.