Women, History and Sexuality PG Forum

One-day Postgraduate Forum
Women, History and Sexuality

April 1st 10.30 am, Bishop Otter Campus, University of Chichester, H144
South Coast Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Research Group (SCERRG)

We are pleased to announce a one-day postgraduate forum on 'Women, History and Sexuality'. The conference is interdisciplinary, combining approaches from the fields of English, history and philosophy, and discussing both contemporary feminism and the literature and history writing of the long eighteenth century. The theme is a 'light' one so speakers are giving papers on a variety of topics. All are welcome, whether staff, undergraduates, postgraduates or prospective postgraduates.

As well as being of interest to postgraduates, this forum will also be useful to undergraduates who have an interest in women’s writing, the eighteenth century or Austen’s precursors. For undergraduates it is also a chance to pick up some dissertation ideas, look at how academic presentations are structured and learn about postgraduate work.

Plenary speakers are: Dr Sue Morgan (Chichester), editor of The Feminist History Reader; and Dr Nina Power (Roehampton), author of One Dimensional Women (2009), speaking on issues in contemporary feminism. Entry is free. To register an interest, contact Fiona Price.

In Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818), her naive but ingenuous heroine Catherine Moreland notoriously pronounces that ‘real solemn history ‘either vex[es] or wear[ies]’ her: ‘the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all’. Nonetheless, the eighteenth-century saw a rapid expansion in the forms of historical discourse, including a new emphasis on histories about and by women, and an invigoration of fictionalised forms of history. This forum will examine women’s often troubled relationship with the discourses of history and sexuality.

Preliminary Schedule
10.30 Introduction: Dr Fiona Price, 'Romantic women writers and the fictions of history: some introductory remarks';

10.40 - 11.10 Short plenary and questions: Dr Susan Morgan 'Duty and desire: historicising women and sexuality';

11.15-12.30 panel 1 ;

12.30 - 1.15 lunch;

1.30-2.45 panel 2;

2.45-3 tea break;

3-4.15 Plenary 2: Dr Nina Power 'One-Dimensional Woman: Work and the Illusion of Emancipation'. Talk about feminism today.