Missed the Classics and Feminist Pedagogy event? You can still take part by reading a Storify of tweets from the day, put together by Liz Gloyn.
Choose either the comprehensive collection of all the tweets from the day, including thoughts and reactions from participants and readers around the world, or a curated selection of tweets with suggestions for teaching practice and further reading.
It’s great when a conference keynote sets the tone for the event as a whole. Alison Wylie (Washington) achieved this with her opening address to Feminism and Classics 7: Visions, held in Seattle in May. In exploring ‘What knowers know well: why feminism matters to archaeology’ she made a strong case for feminist approaches to gender archaeology and the study of early societies. From her perspective, non-feminist approaches were the ones that should be challenged, especially when they were importing assumptions about the domestic arrangements of early societies, as she demonstrated with textbook illustrations in which men were the focus and women domestic drudges in the background – one of many ways in which the conference theme would emerge in papers over the coming days. Combining humour, self-reflection and a combative stance, Alison Wylie exemplified a powerful mixture of knowledge and practice, leaving a large audience of conference attendees and the wider Seattle public better informed about both early societies and feminist approaches to studying them.
Feminism and Classics is a well-established conference that now attracts around 200 delegates for three days of papers, panel sessions, and plenary lectures; this, the seventh meeting, was held at the University of Washington in Seattle. Its feminist heritage is evident in the programming, with academic research papers scheduled alongside consideration of academic practice and the politics of campus life, and frequent intersections between theory and practice. Attendees ranged from the doyennes of feminism in Classics to a new generation of engaged and activist graduate students, all eager to learn from each other and happy to share knowledge and experiences. This was a very friendly conference.
The first panel session I attended, ‘Revealing gendered violence in the academy’, opened discussion of international concerns about women’s experiences on campus. After an introduction from panel organiser, Allison Surtees (Winnipeg), Judith Hallett (University of Maryland, College Park) and Fiona McHardy (Roehampton) each presented an assessment of the current climate for women (spoiler: depressing by and large, but we’re working on fixing it). Fiona drew on research carried out with her colleague Susan Deacy, and also presented an analysis of WCC UK’s own survey of the climate for women working in Classics in UK academia. There were some interesting differences both in the problems faced and attempts to respond to them from the USA and UK.
Fiona’s presentation of worries about the dangers of unchecked ‘lad culture’ on the UK campus was particularly compelling; respondent Maxine Lewis (Auckland) brought in experiences from New Zealand, and suggested strategies for tackling hostile climates. Many audience members had much to contribute, both underlining points made by the speakers and challenging them on what constituted ‘gendered violence’ – do micro-aggressions count, for example? For the rest of the conference, UK delegates such as myself found ourselves explaining UK ‘lad culture’ to intrigued Americans; sadly, since the conference, it is the fraternity culture of US the campus that has been in the spotlight. As this first panel showed, the distinctive cultures of academia around the world, and the different student and faculty populations in terms of gender, class and ethnicity, mean that experiences vary from campus to campus and country to country, although we may diagnose the underlying causes to be similar.
The next session, ‘See and be seen’, was a highlight in the way its novel structure engaged all attendees as participants and brought the ‘Visions’ theme to life through discussions of our lived experiences. Organisers Sarah Blake (York University) and Jody Valentine (Scripps College) began by showing an episode of John Berger’s 1972 TV series Ways of Seeing, in which he first displayed the male gaze in action, demonstrating it through camera work, and then discussed it with a panel of women including feminist academics. After this they opened a discussion, inviting the audience to come up and tag the starting panel members, taking their place on stage and sharing their experiences of working under the male gaze. If perhaps we might have gone more deeply into a critique of Berger’s depiction (and instantiation of it), the sharing of experiences felt empowering, almost a return to 1970s practices of consciousness-raising.
The Visions theme also attracted some wonderful explorations of the continuing but changing depiction of classical women in art, theatre and especially film. Rhiannon Easterbrook (Bristol) explored the depiction of Galatea in WS Gilbert’s Pygmalion and Galatea, a theme echoed by Matthew Fox (Glasgow), who explored women’s encounters with classical sculpture in 19th-century fiction. Teaching and being taught in classical sculpture cast galleries will never be the same for me after the clips he showed from Leslie Howard’s 1941 Pimpernel Smith.
There was also a place for straightforward classical scholarship with a feminist stance. Panels ranged over genres from Greek drama, Latin poetry (impossible not to address Ovid) and philosophical prose, periods from archaic Greece through Imperial Rome and receptions from late antiquity to contemporary pop culture, with plenty of material culture along the way.
The integration of discussions of classical texts and scholarship and the social and political context in which that scholarship takes place was informative and inspiring. Sexual violence is a charged topic in our texts and on our campuses. Kathy Gaca (Vanderbilt) has long interrogated the sexual violence within Homeric epic, and here turned her attention to ‘Pretty women as lookers’; she explored the performative and status-generating elements of sexual abuse in war-time, and drew powerful comparisons between militaristic sexual predation and values and hierarchies on campus. Helen Morales (UCSB) argued for the careful deconstruction of metaphorical language in our assessment of gendered language and behaviour, questioning where the boundary between violence and its metaphors lies, and arguing for a scepticism with a British tinge whenever there was a risk of conflating violence and its metaphors.
Outside the formal sessions, the discussion did not stop. With our WCC UK hats on we met committee members from the US WCC and also the team from Eugesta, the pan-European network for gender studies in antiquity. Both those groups generously provided insights from their own experiences which will help us to develop the WCC UK. In turn, we were able to discuss further the data from our survey; Fiona’s presentation made a real impact and was much discussed throughout the conference.
I have rarely gained so much insight and inspiration from a conference on this scale; the only frustration was the impossibility of seeing all the papers and the inevitable clashes that meant I missed talks from Nancy Rabinowitz and others. The organisers had taken some risks in experimenting with topics and formats beyond the standard conference panel. This use of novel formats, including the associated ‘Just One Look’ exhibition of book arts on the theme of women and vision, contributed to the success of the conference and the interesting discussions generated. I look forward to the next Feminism and Classics, and hope that one day we will be able to bring the conference to the UK.
WCC UK members who presented at the conference, along with their paper titles:
Carol Atack (Warwick): ‘Feminist Approaches to the Performance of Status and Gender in Xenophon’s Political Thought’
Rhiannon Easterbrook (Bristol): ‘Galatea from the Inside’
Chris Mowat (Newcastle): ‘First Person, Second Sight: the Sibyl, Apollo, and feminine prophecy in the ancient world’
Irene Salvo (Göttingen): ‘Visions of Gender from the Athenian Curse Tablets’
Call for Papers: WCC UK Panel at the Classical Association Annual Conference 26-29 April 2017
Classics and Women: Ancient and Modern
Deadline for Abstracts: 2nd August 2016
The WCC UK invites submissions for our inaugural panel at the CA. Our aim is to demonstrate how much there is to gain from recognising historical, conscious, and unconscious bias in the ancient classical world (broadly defined) and in studies of the ancient world. The panel seeks to showcase recent academic work from a range of perspectives, underscoring the benefits of embracing heterogeneity in the study of Classics. We welcome in particular papers that seek to diversify Classics in approach, findings, or methodology.
We invite submissions that focus on (but are not limited to) the following: gender and the non-human, resistances to hierarchy, new approaches to ancient and modern pedagogy, women in war, gendered bodies, women in material culture/archaeology, gendered economies, and pioneering women in classics, ancient history and archaeology. We warmly encourage Classicists at any career stage and of any gender to submit abstracts.
Please send anonymous abstracts of no more than 200 words to either virginia.campbell@classics.ox.ac.uk or lucy.jackson@balliol.ox.ac.uk by Tuesday August 2nd 2016.
The Women’s Classical Committee is delighted to announce its first event, a workshop for ECRs and graduate students exploring what feminist pedagogy is and how it might be useful for thinking about teaching classics. The workshop will take place on Friday 29th July at the University of Birmingham.
Of interest to early career Classicists and others:
Women in the Humanities is an interdisciplinary programme which aims to explore how gender and sex play out in history, art, philosophy, music, language and literature, as well as the ethics and politics of gender identity and equality in the Humanities. It seeks to promote the opportunities Oxford offers to women working in the Humanities at all career stages, as well as promoting the study of women’s lives within the Humanities at the University.
Postdoctoral Writing Fellowship
A postdoctoral writing fellowship worth £5,000 is available to early career scholars within three years of the award of a doctorate who do not yet hold a permanent academic job. The fellowship will be tenable for between 3 and 6 months from 1 October 2016. Funding may be used for travel expenses, living expenses and research activities that will enable the Fellow to publish their doctorate or aspects of their doctoral work. The Fellow will be a scholar whose work promises to significantly advance knowledge of women’s lives, experiences and/or representation. They will be mentored by an experienced academic in their field, and will be expected to be a regular participant in WiH activities.
More information is available on the TORCH website. The deadline for applications is 10 June 2016.
After a hugely successful launch event, we are very pleased to say that you can now join the WCC. Membership is open to all. Membership for the 2016 calendar year will be £20, or £5 for students, unemployed, retired and underemployed members. Subscriptions will help to support the WCC’s future activities and events.
Check out the “Join Us” page of this website for further details.
We’d like to let you know that the 2015 edition of Cloelia, the annual publication of the Women’s Classical Caucus in the US, is now out. This edition features articles by Fiona McHardy and Susan Deacy on teaching sensitive subjects and by Helena Hoyle and Joscelyn Cole on the Classics and the New Faces of Feminism sandpit that led to the creation of the WCC UK. You can see the table of contents and read the articles over on the Caucus’ website.
Following the establishment of the Women’s Classical Committee in 2015 we want to gather information about the current situation and experiences of women in Classics in the UK. This information will inform the direction of the WCC in supporting women and their research and teaching in Classics.
Please take our survey here if you work in or studied Classics or the study of the Ancient World (broadly defined) in the UK. We welcome answers from Classicists of all genders.
Everything is coming today for our launch event on Monday 11th April – registration will open very soon. You will be welcome to attend the whole day, just the morning or just the afternoon, or to attend remotely via social media.
For now, here is a draft of the day’s timetable:
Past, Present and Future: The Launch Of The Women’s Classical Committee
9.30 – Registration, coffee
10.15 – Welcome, house-keeping
10.30 – Short talk: Why are we here? (Liz Gloyn)
10.45 – Short talk: Women in Classics in the UK – The Numbers (Irene Salvo)
11.15 – Discussion Session
11.15-11.45 – Break-out discussion, panel 1: Women and postgrads, early career researchers and casualisation (chaired by Rhiannon Easterbrook)
11.15-11.45 – Break-out discussion, panel 2: Women, mental health, disability, and additional need issues (chaired by Susan Deacy)
11.45 – Discussion Session
11.45-12.15 – Break-out discussion, panel 3: Women and implicit bias (chaired by Efi Spentzou)
11.45-12.15 – Break-out discussion, panel 4: Women and parenthood/caring (chaired by Victoria Leonard)
12.15 – Whole-Group Discussion
12.30 – Lunch
1.30 – Spotlight Talks: A series of five-minute talks on current research taking a feminist and gender-informed perspective.
2.30 – Roundtable: What is feminist scholarship? (Participants will include Fiona Macintosh, Stella Sandford, Alison Sharrock and Susan Deacy)
The Feminist and Women’s Studies Association is now accepting submissions for their 2016 Student 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 their judging panel and will be published in the Journal of International Women’s Studies. 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), must be submitted electronically and including a completed competition coversheet. Please use your surname as the file name (e.g. ‘ROY’). Please note that entries without this coversheet will not be considered.
The deadline for this year’s competition is Monday 2nd May 2016.
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