Gender and Authority
About
This network was funded from March 2016 to March 2018.
The Gender and Authority project, jointly supported by TORCH and the Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute, aimed to explore and question received notions of social and cultural authority, specifically as they intersect with issues of gender. Provoked initially by the idea of the canon, ‘the list of works considered to be permanently established as being of the highest quality’ (OED), we aimed to consider three points: how do social and gender norms determine ‘quality’? How permanent is authority? What is ‘work’? We proposed an expansive definition of work that includes all forms of cultural production, individual or collaborative. We also sought to examine spaces in which gender, as it intersects with other vectors of power, has led to the marginalisation of intellectual and artistic creation or labour.
This interdisciplinary project was founded in 2016, with seminars on a bi-termly basis featuring presentations of research in progress from scholars from Humanities and Social Sciences and from both within and outside the University of Oxford.
We also hosted a series of podcast produced by our Podcast Co-ordinator Kira Allmann, which can be accessed through the University Podcast site, on SoundCloud. and our blog.
The Network was also supported by Buongiorno e Buonasera.
Contact: genderauthority@torch.ox.ac.uk
Website: http://torch.ox.ac.uk/gender-and-authority
Twitter: @womencanonox
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/genderandauthority/?ref=ts&fref=ts
Blog: https://womenandthecanon.wordpress.com
Podcast: https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/gender-and-authority https://soundcloud.com/gender-authority-network/
Contact:
People
Events
Past Events
Gender and Authority Seminars: A series of 9 seminars were held between May 2016 and January 2018.
May 2016
'Gender, Self-Determination and Authority: Homeless Young Women Navigate Life on the Road' Amy Donovan Blondell (University of Oxford)
'Labour and Capital in Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons' Kristin Grogan (University of Oxford)
June 2016
'Teena and the Musical Canon: Music in Seventeen Magazine, 1944-1953' Lynn Ellen Burkett (Western Caroline University)
'Lady Lazarus: Textual Authority in Christine Jeff's Sylvia (2003)' Alexis Brown (University of Oxford)
October 2016
'The Confirmation of Gender & Authority through Literary Imitation: Poems Attributed to Ṭāhere Qorrat al-'Ayn’ Sahba Shayani (Oriental Institute, University of Oxford),
'Subsumed Autobiography: English Convent Self-Writing' Victoria Van Hyning (English Faculty, University of Oxford).
November 2016
'”Feminism has at last tinged the ballet": Bronislava Nijinska’s ballets Les Noces (1923) and Les Biches (1924) as feminist canon' Katherine Watson (University of Roehampton)
‘The Subject of Women’s Music Has Bitched Me All My Life’: Elisabeth Lutyens, Edward Clark, and the Complexity of Canonicity’ Annika Forkert (University of Bristol)
January 2017
‘Women Artists and Italian Futurism: Questions of Absence and Inferiority’ Jennifer Griffiths (American University of Rome)
‘Gender, Authority and the British Empire in the Second World War’ Yasmin Khan (University of Oxford)
February 2017
‘Re-writing the canon and re-thinking the myth’ Serena Alessi (British School at Rome)
‘Perceiving Female Authority: Gendered iconography and domestic space in late medieval England’ Rachel Delman (University of Oxford)
May 2017
The ‘genderman’: (re)negotiating militarized masculinities when ‘doing gender’ at NATO Matthew Hurley (Oxford Brookes University)
The Other Woman: Unorthodox Forms of 'Femininity' in the Hindu World Jessica Frazier (University of Kent)
June 2017
Language and the problem of female authority.
Speaker: Professor Deborah Cameron.
Introduction: Professor Elleke Boehmer
Chair: Vice Chancellor Louise Richardson
November 2017
"Comedy and Authority: Representing Female Voices in Medieval Italy" David Bowe will be presenting a paper on
"Respect des Hommes, Silence des Femmes: Writing Female Voices in Revolutionary Afterlife" Jessica Goodman
January 2018
'Female Military Commanders in Medieval Epic: Ferdowsī's Šāhnāmeh, Digenis Akritis and the Guillaume d'Orange cycle' Nina Soleymani Majd (Université Grenoble Alpes)
'The Decadent Femme Fatale in French Colonial Literature of Indochina: The Case of the Native Congai’ Fay Wanrug Suwanwattana (University of Oxford)
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Women's Studies and Gender Studies Roundtable Discussion (November 2016)
Discussion on the continuities, differences, and comparative advantages of framing one's research in terms of 'Gender studies' or 'Women's studies'.
Speakers
Joana Serrado, from the Centre for Gender, Identity & Subjectivity
Julia Mannherz, from the History Faculty
Maria Jaschok & Khin Mar Mar Kyi, from the International Gender Studies Centre
Lynn Robson, from the Mst in Women’s Studies Programme
Mara Keire, from the Rothermere American Institute
Alison Moulds, from the Women in Oxford’s History Podcast Series
Chairs
Adele Bardazzi, David Bowe, Natalya Din-Kariuki & Julia Hartley, Gender & Authority Research Network
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Oxford Feminist Thinking Seminars - Series of 3 seminars.
Organisers: Sarah Crook, Pelagia Goulimari,and Cláudia Pazos-Alonso
Convenors: MSt Women's Studies Cohort
Convenors: MSt Women's Studies Cohort
A Friend of Tommy's: Gay Desire and Homophobia in the First World War British Military (January 2018)
Jack Doyle (The University of Oxford)
A Voice of Her Own: Five Outsiders (February 2018)
Lyndall Gordon (The University of Oxford)
'A Voice of Her Own: Five Outsiders'
Feminist Ambivalence: Power, Gender and Collusion (March 2018)
Mary Evans (The London School of Economics and Political Science)
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Book Launch (February 2018)
The launch of two new monographs in Italian Studies.
Dr Alberica Bazzoni (University of Warwick) Writing for Freedom: Body, Identity, and Power in Goliarda Sapienza's Narrative (Peter Lang, 2018).
Dr Ursula Fanning (University College, Dublin) Italian Women's Autobiographical Writings in the Twentieth Century (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017).
Chair: Dr Jennifer Burns (University of Warwick)
Women in the Wake of May 68 (May 2018)
A one-day conference to coincide with the 50th anniversary of May 68. Keynote speakers:
Professor Margaret Atack, author of May 68 in French Fiction and Film: Rethinking Representation, Rethinking Society
Dr. Rakhee Balaram, whose forthcoming book Counterpractice: Psychoanalysis, Politics and the Art of ‘French Feminism’ examines art in post-May 68 France
The Archaeology of Experience of Domestic Violence Against Women in Iran (May 2018)
Women's Rights Research Seminars
Abstract: This paper was based on a qualitative study conducted in Iran with 62 men, women and judicial officials in relation to domestic violence against women in Iran mainly in Gilan province situated in the north of Iran.
Speaker: Shahla Tizro (St John University)
A Political History of the Nude (May 2018)
Henk de Smaele Guest Lecture
A talk, that addressed some tensions and inconsistencies within the historiography of ‘modern’ masculinity.
Chair: Professor Dan Healey
Women and the Politics of Representation (June 2018)
Gender & Authority Network Annual Lecture
Annual Lecture delivered by Dr. Lorna Finlayson, Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Art History at the University of Essex
Tale of Two Omani Women (May 2018)
Women's Rights Research Seminars
Speaker: Deena Al Asfoor (St Catherine’s College)
What Can Historians Learn from Bridging Across Time Periods and Regions? (June 2018)
Workshop: Professor Lyndal Roper led the session and facilitated discussions around how to approach sources for the study of gender, identity and subjectivity from different time periods and geographical areas.
Gender & Authority (June 2018)
LGBTQ Identities
‘This is 4Real: the authority of the material body in transgender debates’ Dr Elliot Evans (University of Birmingham)
‘Exemplary’ lesbians: the struggle for “adequate” representation’ Dr Charlotte Ross (University of Birmingham)
Gendered Sensations: the intersection of gender and sensory histories in the early 20th century (October 2018)
CGIS Discussion Group
Speaker: Sasha Rasmussen
Finding Rape in the Archives: Methodologies for Evaluating Survivor Voices from the Past (November 2018)
CGIS Discussion Group
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