How excited is everyone about the British Library’s new resource ‘Sisterhood and After: An Oral History of the Women’s Liberation Movement’? Let us know how you’re going to be using it in your research. And if you’d be interested in writing a review/report of it for our blog, email s.r.crook@qmul.ac.uk.
Get more information here http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/sisterhood/index.html.
We’re delighted to announce that the reins of the History of Feminism Network have been picked up by two post graduate students at Queen Mary, University of London. We are eager to build on the fantastic work and seminars run by our predecessors, and will be announcing some very exciting events soon. So check back soon!
If you have any questions or ideas, or want to get involved, please email Sarah at s.r.crook@qmul.ac.uk.
Women’s Library Under Threat – Campaign and Petition
Many of you will have heard that The Women’s Library in London is facing closure and transfer of its collections, or being reduced to operating a skeleton service. London Metropolitan University have decided to attempt to find a new home, owner or sponsor for its holdings, and will reduce the service to one day per week if such a sponsor cannot be found by the end of 2012.
At the time of writing, nearly 5,000 people have signed a petition - set up by a concerned member of staff at the University – to save The Women’s Library in its present form (thanks go to everyone who have already signed). Its current home, opened in 2002, is purpose-built on the site of an old wash-house in East London, and received a RIBA-award for its design. It was opened due to the huge efforts and commitment of the Library’s Friends and supporters both inside and outside the University, and a £4m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. As well as housing the collections and operating a Reading Room service, the building is a cultural centre hosting exhibitions, talks, education projects and community events.
The Library was originally founded in 1926. The collections, now officially Designated as ‘collections of outstanding national and international importance’, were saved from dispersal by London Met’s forerunner City of London Polytechnic 35 years ago, and this February it should have been celebrating ten years in its new home. In the lead-up to a major suffrage anniversary in 2018, now is the time to be building on the Library’s successes, fundraising for, and celebrating this important asset – not shutting it down or restricting public access.
London Met UNISON have initiated a campaign to save the Library, and are seeking testimony from its users about the Library’s importance. You can find out more on their blog, follow the campaign on Twitter, and add your name to the petition on the Care 2 website. There is also a ‘Save The Women’s Library’ group on Facebook.
The campaign has so far received coverage in The Guardian, Museums Journal, and Islington Tribune.
You can find out more about The Women’s Library on its website, and Wikipedia page. Its supporters scheme is The Friends of The Women’s Library.
Please help spread the word about the threat to this key resource for our subject.
Registration is now open for the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research Colloquium Thinking Through Time and History in Feminism
Full programme: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/81810179
Registration and payment Details: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bisr/events/bbk-local?uid=d22d9cc1a32a574ffbf57b323c35b9f6
BISR Colloquium: Thinking Through Time and History in Feminism
Friday 23rd March 9am-7.30pm.
Birkbeck College, 30 Russell Sq, Room 101.
£20 Standard rate/£15 concessionary rate (includes coffee/tea, lunch, and wine reception)
Keynote Speakers: Rebecca Coleman (Sociology, Lancaster University) & Lynne Segal (Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck)
There has been an emergent call within the field of gender and feminist studies to consider themes that might be broadly situated under the umbrella term of “temporality”. Nostalgic and apocalyptic narratives of feminism abound in both popular culture and academic writing, with feminism’s death or out-datedness being the dominant narrative. Countering these narratives is crucially about unravelling the logic that makes them viable as well as interrupting their production. Explorations of alternative narratives have productively emerged from work in the field of collective and personal memory, new technologies as they impact feminist organising, and creative activism and archival practices. There is a continued political need to explore alternative mechanisms of telling feminist time, alternative relationships to be forged with the recent and historical past and alternative means for considering how feminism might forge a future for itself both in and out of the academy.
This colloquium aims to provide the opportunity for an interdisciplinary, creative and exploratory approach to time and history in feminism.
Organisers: Carly Guest and Sam McBean – contact them at bisrcolloquium2012
Ethel Carnie Holdsworth (1886-1962) was a working class writer, socialist and feminist who started in the mills in Lancashire at the age of 11. Her poetry brought her to the attention of the editor of The Clarion, Robert Blatchford, who helped her to get work as a writer . She wrote poetry and novels, edited the Woman Worker as well as anti-fascist magazine the Clear Light. One of her novels, Helen of Four Gates, was filmed in 1920 (and has been shown recently).
On Saturday 10 March at 2pm Dr Nicola Wilson will speak about Ethel at the Working Class Movement Library as part of the library’s celebrration International women’s Day. Nicola has written the introduction to the republication of This Slavery , published in 1925. also speaking on this event will be Karen Bosson, NW Women’s Committee, CWI.
For more information about Ethel, This Slavery and this event, please go to
http://lipsticksocialist.wordpress.com
If you find this blog of interest and wish to receive future posts, simply enter your email in the top right box, where it says Follow by email..
Thanks
B
CALL FOR PAPERS – REMINDER
DEADLINE: THIS FRIDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2012
Gendering the history of charity and voluntary effort
A workshop for postgraduate and early-career researchers
University of Huddersfield, 9 March 2012
From medieval and early modern elite understandings of charitable
virtue to industrial cultures of mutual aid or contemporary
understandings of community engagement, gender has been critically
implicated in the history of voluntary action whether through the lens
of experience, performance or social systems.
This one day workshop for postgraduates and early career researchers
is the first of the VAHS New Researchers workshops in 2012 and is
supported by funding from the Economic History Society. The workshop
will explore how gender was figured in voluntary activity at the
levels of individual men’s and women’s lives and senses of self, the
social structures and cultural means through which it was sustained,
and its cultural legacies. We welcome papers which address these
themes across all historical periods and places, and in terms of both
men’s and women’s histories. We particularly encourage paper proposals
that consider methodological and conceptual issues.
Possible themes could include, but are no means limited to:
The role of family and social networks in building voluntary projects
and genealogies
Gendered spaces and politics of voluntary action
Strategies of self- and public-framing in voluntary effort
Cultural and gendered legacies of charitable and philanthropic engagement
Gender, the body and charity
Race, class and gender in charitable and voluntary projects
The workshop will end with an open discussion led by Daniel Weinbren
(Open University) and Jo Laycock (University of Manchester) at which
all attendees are invited to share and discuss issues raised
throughout the day and within their own research.
Download the Call for Papers from
http://www.vahs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/VAHS-CFP-Huddersfield-Final.pdf.
Please email abstracts of 250 words to Tosh Warwick by 3 February 2012
at tosh.warwick
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