EVENT: Feminist Philosophy Conference Canada - June

Conference Announcement

International Association for Women Philosophers 

XIV IAPh Symposium 2010

Feminism, Science and Values 
June 25-28, 2010 
The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
co-hosted by the Department of Philosophy
and the Rotman Institute of  Science and Values

Featuring keynote addresses by  Barbara Duden (Leibniz Universität Hannover), Lisa Gannett (St. Mary's University),  Sarah Richardson ( University of Massachusetts, Amherst),
Vandana Shiva (Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology) ) and  Nancy Tuana (Penn State University) 

This will be the International Association of Women Philosophers' (http://www.iaph-philo.org) first meeting in Canada and only its second meeting in North America. 

Session themes will include:

• Race, Genomics and Social Values
• Researching Sex Differences: Feminist Critiques and Their Antecedents
• Facts in Feminist Philosophy
• "Female Complaints": Medicine, Markets and Women's Health
• Beauvoir and Arendt on Science
• Feminism and Empiricism (Quinean Themes)
• Technology and Intervention in Pregnancy and Childbirth
• Sex and Gender: Military Contexts
• Reconsidering Values in Feminist Philosophy of Science
• Reductionism, Determinism and Feminist Values
• Disability and Dependence
• Gender and Sport
• Science and Values: Global Perspectives

Registration and full program information can be found at: http://www.uwo.ca/philosophy/events/iaph2010/index.html

EVENT: 21 June - Sheila Rowbotham - London

Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century

Sheila Rowbotham

Monday 21 June 18.30 - 20.00

The British Library Conference Centre

Sheila Rowbotham’s groundbreaking new history of the early women’s movement, the unsung ‘dreamers and adventurers’, who sensed dramatic social change was possible. Drawing on a wealth of original research, Dreamers of a New Day explores how, struggling to define themselves as individuals, these women overturned norms and assumptions, transforming the conditions of their own lives and those of others.

Pioneering feminist writer and activist Sheila Rowbotham ( University of Manchester ) is the author of many books including the acclaimed Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love and articles for The Guardian, The Times, theIndependent, the New Statesman, and the New York Times.

£6 / £4 concessions  / Conference Centre

Tickets available at http://boxoffice.bl.uk, by calling 01937 546546 (9am-5pm Mon-Fri) or in person at The          

British Library.

Summer School - Memory, Empire and Technology - London

Greetings blogland.  This summer school isn't particularly feminist, but I like Dr Katia Pizzi a lot so I thought I'd post it here.


I wasn't quite sure what cultural memory studies were when I first encountered them. Last week, I heard from some folks working on cultural memory, however, and I have to say that it's a really interesting way of looking at the world.  The IGRS (who has a hand in this summer school) does a PhD and, I think, an MA in cultural memory.

School of Advanced Study, University of London

SUMMER SCHOOL

MEMORY, EMPIRE AND TECHNOLOGY

29 JUNE-3 JULY 2010

Held at the School of Advanced Study and organised by the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory, this Summer School consists of a series of seminars, lectures and workshops on a broad range of subjects related to the relationship between memory and technology. The sessions will be taught by a team of internationally renowned scholars and range from experimental early flying to colonial memories in film, to photography and workshops on digital archives. These sessions will be complemented by afternoon activities centred round London understood as technological city: the Greenwich History Project, visits to the Stanley Kubrick Archives and the Warburg Library, and an architectural tour on the famous Routemaster bus. This School welcomes researchers, students, artists, archivists, conservation and heritage professionals and any others interested in memory, technology and the industrial legacy of London.

Deadline for Applications: 30 April 2010

For more info please visit: http://www.igrs.sas.ac.uk/research/CMsummerschool.html

or email: CMSS@sas.ac.uk

Tue 29 June: FILM

AM: Proust, planes and telephones'
Seminar/Workshopled by Dr Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck College, University of London)

Film and colonial memories
Seminarled by Prof Robert Lumley, UCL

PM/Evening: 
Patrick Keiller: The view from the train
Plenary Lecture
chair: Dr Katia Pizzi (IGRS) (open to the public)

Wed 30 June: ARCHIVES

AM: The Warburg Library
led by Dr François Quiviger (Warburg Institute)
PM: Visit to the Stanley Kubrick Archives, London College of Communication, University of the Arts
led by Richard Daniels (University of the Arts) and Dr Ricarda Vidal (IGRS)

Thu 1 July: PHOTOGRAPHY

AM: Writing with light
Practical photography workshop 
led by Dr Junko Theresa Mikuriya (University of Kent)

PM: Architectural tour of London on a Routemaster bus
led and driven by Prof Joe Kerr (Royal College of Art)
The Archway Polytechnic
Practical workshop led by the artist Ruth Maclennan - the session includes a presentation in Senate House and an exploratory walking tour in Archway (North London)

Fri 2 July: MUSIC/DIGITAL

AM: Digital memories
Seminar
led by Dr Eleanor Chiari (Harrow School)
Analogue memories: shellac and vinyl records
Seminar 
led by Dr Richard Osborne (Middlesex University)
PM: The Big Smoke: Films from a Lost London 1896-1945
Film screening

Sat 3 July: LITERATURE/VISUAL ARTS

AM: 
The British Empire on film
Seminar at Imperial War Museum, led by Dr Richard Osborne (Middlesex University)
Guns and the memory of the First World War: The case of the Imperial War Museum
Seminar at Imperial War Museumled by Dr Gabriel Koureas (Birkbeck University of London)
PM: London, the river, technology and memory
walking tour 
led by Prof Derek Keene (Institute of Historical Research)

Summer School Dinner

Day 15 - Women's Month - Natasha Walter

Natasha Walter is speaking tomorrow evening at Southbank Centre.  The event is, disappointingly for those of us wanting to go, sold out.  http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/literature-spoken-word/tickets/natasha-walter-50498

The good news is, however, that her book Living Dolls is readily available on Amazon.  I've not read it yet, but have placed an order and am thoroughly looking forward to what she has to say.  Have any of you read it?  What do you think?

Day - 13 Women's Month - Birds Eye View Festival

Last night, I attended the closing night of the Birds Eye View Film Festival in London.  The Festival celebrates women filmmakers.  We went to see Whip It, dir. by Drew Barrymore, which is a good girl coming-of-age film about roller derby.

There were some awesome films highlighted last night that I wanted to mention here as most of us will never have the chance to see them unless we go looking:

Junior, dir. by Jenna Rosher
Lourdes, dir. by Jessica Hausner
The Door, dir. by Juanita Wilson
Slaves, dir. by Hanna Hellborn and David Aronowitsch

I didn't find out about the Festival until last week, which was disappointing.  However, you can sign up for their mailing list here:  http://www.birds-eye-view.co.uk/2/home/homepage.html

Day 10 - Feminist critics

I've woken late. I've got a cold.  In America we call it a sinus infection, but in England it's a cold and no one will pay you any mind for it.  I tell you this because what I'm about to say is critical.

When did the dominant mode of feminist criticism turn to listing what various women (and men) fail to include in the story of feminism (or anything else for that matter?).  When did we decide that a good mode of critique is pointing out what hasn't been included?  Was it sometime in the late 80s after Derrida's deconstruction became popular in the states?  Did the watered-down version of his theory taught in undergrad programs all across America give rise to this tendency to point to exclusion?  If so, I think we all need to return to the text and re-think.

I'm responding here to the F Words recent review of the BBC4 series 'Women'.  You can see the review here: http://www.thefword.org.uk/reviews/2010/03/women

The reviewers point out that no women of colour nor any ethnic group has been portrayed in this series.  This is without question true.  However, the reviewer fails to take the text into consideration.  What is the purpose of this text?  Is it to present an all-encompassing history of the women's movement?  Will it become the dominant mode by which millions understand the history of the movement?  No.  Without doubt.  No.  The history will be written, luckily, by a multitude of participants and historians, who like many of us have access to Word Processing programs and camera equipment. 

The reviewers want the white Vanessa Engels to access a racial experience that she simply cannot. Sure, she can interview black leaders of the movement, but can she really talk to them about race?  Will the questions falling from her lips illicit from those women the truth and hardship of their struggle?  I doubt it.  Especially in America where to talk of race openly puts most of us into roles we have no idea how to negotiate. 

Race is an incredibly complicated issue for Americans.  If it had been included into these documentaries, it would have been been watered-down, or added on as a supplement to the larger history.  I'm certain that that is not where I want to see race placed - as an add-on, a 5 minute nod to unimaginable struggle. 

To accuse this series of documentaries of racial prejudice is to ask for tokenism.  It is to suggest that if you just put one or two black women into the picture, the picture will be clearer. It won't.  It will still be the picture created by a white, British woman. As it currently stands, the series owns that. 

What would be awesome is if someone talented and smart could find funding for a series on the ethnic struggle in America during the feminist movement.  I fully support that and if anyone is looking to make that happen, I'm here to help.

Sexuality Summer School - Manchester

Sexuality Summer School

http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/subjectareas/englishamericanstudies/research/cssc/summerschool/

The Sexuality Summer School has been held annually by tbe CSSC since 2008. The Sexuality Summer School is coordinated by the Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture (CSSC) and the Research Insitute for Cosmopolitan Cultures (RICC).

The Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture (CSSC) in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures (SAHC) at the University of Manchester is holding its second Sexuality Summer School in May 2009. This Summer School is an annual event intended for postgraduates and researchers working in the broadly defined area of sexuality studies. The Summer School addresses current debates within queer studies, emphasising in particular its implication for the interdisciplinary study of culture. It offers an opportunity for students to discuss queer debates with researchers in the CSSC as well as international scholars brought in for the event. The Summer School is organised in conjunction with the Queer Up North International Arts Festival. Applications welcome from Doctoral and Masters' level students from any university, as well as third-year undergraduates interested in taking the MA in Gender, Sexuality and Culture at The University of Manchester.

CSSC sponsors frequent public events, Queer Methodology Seminar Series and conferences.
CSSC also offers an innovative MA program in Gender, Sexuality and Culture.

Sexuality Summer School 2010

Registration is now open for the Sexuality Summer School 2010.  The Sexuality Summer School will take place on the 24th, 25th, 26th and 27th May 2010.  Please download the poster below. To register, please download and fill in the registration form, and return it to Hannah Mansell in the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, University of Manchester.  

Sexuality Summer School poster, 2010 (PDF, 153 KB)

Sexuality Summer School registration form, 2010 (Microsoft Word, 37 KB)