by lizgloyn
The WCC UK steering committee is delighted to share a festive save the date for our next Annual General Meeting:
Friday 10th May 2019
Cardiff University
Theme: Foremothers
We will share more about the programme in due course; we hope that the day will give us the opportunity to reflect on those women from all around the world who have influenced us along our journeys, as well as the chance to spend some time together more informally.
by lizgloyn
Nominations are being solicited for joining the Steering Committee of the Women’s Classical Committee UK. The Steering Committee runs the WCC UK, including organizing events, workshops, and future development of the WCC UK. Committee members will serve for four years, with the option to renew for a further four year term. The Steering Committee wishes to encourage a diverse organization comprised of representatives from any background, location, or career level.
You may nominate someone or nominate yourself. Nominees must be members of the WCC UK in good standing (please check with Carol Atack, carolatack at gmail.com, if you are unsure of your membership status). Names of nominees should be submitted to Thea Lawrence, the Elections Officer, by Friday the 21st of December 2018. Her e-mail address is thea.lawrence at nottingham.ac.uk.
The Elections Officer will then contact nominees for permission to place their candidacy on the ticket. The Elections Officer will require a short CV (1 page) and an election statement from each nominee. These will be made available on the WCC UK website for members to review prior to voting. For previous examples of such materials, see here.
Voting will open on Monday 7th of January and run until Friday the 22nd of February 2019. The elected members will be announced in early March, and will assume office at the AGM in April 2019.
If you have any questions about the Steering Committee or the process of elections, please e-mail us at womensclassicalcommittee@gmail.com
by lizgloyn
We are very excited to be able to share that the work of the WCC UK and its members will be well represented at next April’s meeting of the CA/FIEC. Here’s a sneak peek of what’s on the programme from us…
Lexicon and letters: Challenges in studying same-sex desire – a panel in collaboration with the Lambda Classical Caucus US
How to recognize a kinaidos when you see one: Desire and the decipherment of papyri from Roman Egypt – Tom Sapsford (New York University)
What’s “tribadic” lust? Deconstructing ancient and modern topoi about the tribas – Sandra Boehringer (Université de Strasbourg)
Nikephoros Ouranos’ letters: epistolarity, same-sex desire, and Byzantine reception – Mark Masterson (Victoria University of Wellington)
Winckelmann’s love letters: epistolarity, sexuality, and classical reception – Katherine Harloe (University of Reading)
Queer Classics, Queer Reception: a Roundtable – in collaboration with the Lambda Classical Caucus US
A roundtable on non-binary sexual identities and LGBT+ Classical reception; participants include Mark Masterson (Victoria University of Wellington), Irene Salvo (University of Goettingen), Jennifer Ingleheart (Durham University), Christine Plastow (Open University) and Benjamin Greet (University of Reading).
Ancient Women: Methodology and Inclusivity
Narratology, Gender and Immorality. From Sulpicia 3.9 and 13 to Ovid’s Heroides 4 – Jacqueline Fabre-Serris (University Charles-de-Gaulle – Lille 3)
Cinnamon and old urine: odour therapies, perfumes, and the female body in the Roman world – Thea Lawrence (University of Nottingham)
Gendered space in Republican Rome: limits and assumptions – Sophie Chavarria (University of Kent)
Sapphic Sisterhood: Classics and the origins of modern lesbian culture – Mara Gold (University of Oxford)
#WCCWiki Session
#WCCWiki Editing Session with Training, on Friday 5th July in the afternoon. Do you want to know more about Wikipedia editing? Would you like to see better representation of women classicists (broadly conceived) on Wikipedia? Then please join us for this free training and editing event. All welcome, and absolutely no experience of Wikipedia editing necessary! Please bring a laptop.
Poster: The Representation of Women in Ancient History and Classics – with Sarah E. Bond (University of Iowa)
This poster illuminates how the representation of women in ancient history and classics has been dramatically advanced since 2016 through two digital humanities initiatives. The Women’s Classical Committee has developed #WCCWiki, a drive to reverse the absence of women classicists on English-language Wikipedia. Sarah Bond and Victoria Leonard have created the Women of Ancient History (WOAH) initiative to increase the visibility of women ancient historians.
Reception
We are delighted to be sponsoring a reception at the CA/FIEC on Saturday evening; we are co-hosting with our sister organisations who do similar work in other countries, including Australasian Women in Ancient World Studies, the Classics and Social Justice Affiliated Group of the Society for Classical Studies, EuGeStA, the Lambda Classical Caucus of the Society for Classical Studies, the Women’s Classical Caucus of the Society for Classical Studies, and the Women’s Network of the Classical Association of Canada. More details will follow in due course.
by lizgloyn
We are very grateful to WCC UK member Christine Plastow of the Open University for writing up her notes of important take-away points and for sharing her response from our recent REF 2021 consultation event.
On Tuesday 18th September, the WCC UK met at the Open University campus in Milton Keynes to consult on the draft guidelines for submission for REF 2021. We were also able to livestream the event, and so were joined by colleagues around the country listening in and contributing. The event was led by Maria Wyke, the sub-panel chair for Classics, and Katherine Harloe, member of the Classics sub-panel and an interdisciplinary advisor for REF 2021.
Professor Wyke opened the discussion, stating that the event was an opportunity for the sub-panel to present the material produced by REF, and that REF were interested in gathering information about whether disciplinary interests have been addressed successfully in the draft guidelines. What follows here highlights the main points of discussion throughout the event.
Codes of practice
It was noted that institutions have been tasked with producing codes of practice prior to REF 2021 for the selection of staff and outputs for submission. The staff selected should be all of those with significant responsibility for research. Concern was expressed for the institution’s individual freedom in making these decisions. The sub-panel members asserted that codes of practice would be assessed by REF, in part against HESA definitions of staff roles. Codes of practice can be sent back for revision if deemed inadequate, and submissions could be damaged by institutions failing to provide a correct submission. However, if institutions do not adhere to their codes of practice once approved, this will need to be appealed by individuals within the institution, as the sub-panel will not be able to spot failure to adhere to the code of practice from the submissions. All codes of practice must include an appeals procedure.
Circumstances
Institutions will be expected to provide commentary on any adjustments to the submission due to special circumstances. However, decoupling of staff from submissions means that outputs are a group effort, and it may not be necessary to apply reductions to specific individuals. Two kinds of reductions are specified: defined reductions, such as maternity leave, where the reduction will be by a pre-set number of outputs; and reductions requiring judgement, generally more complicated circumstances, which will require assessment as to the reduction in number of outputs. The reduction in number of submissions for maternity leave since the last REF, from 1 output to 0.5 outputs, is due to the reduction in average number of outputs per staff member (from 4 to 2.5 outputs) and the longer assessment period of this REF (7 years, as opposed to 5 years for REF 2014).
Eligibility
A query was raised about the use of the word ‘eligible’ in section 180 of the draft guidelines. Attendees were concerned that this would permit universities to exclude staff with 2* research outputs. The sub-panel noted that universities would have to provide reasoning for any staff who were excluded, and that this would not be considered a valid reason. They also noted that the guidelines ought to encourage institutions to support all staff to produce excellent research, and that REF encourages this, although this may not be the effect in reality. Continue reading →
by lizgloyn
The next Women’s Classical Committee Wikipedia Project (#WCCWiki) workshop and editathon will be held at the Department of Greek and Latin, UCL, on September 20th 2018. The workshop will be led by Kelly Foster (an experienced Wikipedia trainer), Claire Millington (KCL) and Emma Bridges (ICS).
Wikipedia holds around 200 biographies of classicists, of which, at the start of this initiative, only approximately 10% were dedicated to women. This is the WCC UK’s third event of its kind, taking steps towards redressing the gender imbalance by training and encouraging classicists to edit Wikipedia with this focus.
Places are limited, so registration through Eventbrite is essential. This event is free to attend thanks to the support of the Leventis Fund. Refreshments will be provided. The workshop will take place in G09 (Otto Skutsch Room), Gordon House, UCL. The venue is on the ground floor and access is step free. There is an accessible toilet and nearby rest space.
If you would like to bring a child or children to this event, please contact the organisers (Claire Millington, Emma Bridges and Katharine Shields) as soon as possible to discuss possible arrangements.
by lizgloyn
The Women’s Classical Committee UK will host a consultation forum on REF 2021 on 18th September from 1pm to 3pm on the Open University campus in Milton Keynes. More details about the room will be provided to registered attendees.
The forum will be led by Maria Wyke, Professor of Latin at UCL and chair of the Classics subpanel, and by subpanel member Katherine Harloe, Associate Professor at the University of Reading. It will consist of a presentation and review of progress already made in the two main panel meetings. This will be followed by time for questions and discussion around concerns from our discipline and how these might be addressed.
This event is free and open to all interested members of the UK classics community, but members of the WCC UK have priority for attending the event in person. We intend to livestream the session via the Google Hangouts platform to enable interested people to attend virtually, and hope to facilitate questions from virtual attendees as well as physical ones. If you are interested in more information, please register as a virtual delegate.
by lizgloyn
The WCC UK condemns all acts, including speech, which demonstrate Islamophobia, racism, misogyny and similar discrimination. We find abhorrent attempts made by public figures and extremist groups to associate these with our discipline. Classicists have a responsibility to reckon with our field’s history and to acknowledge the ways in which it has been and continues to be used as a tool to create, perpetuate, and justify discrimination of various kinds. Racism and elitism must not be part of our vision for the discipline’s future.
We support Classics for All as they review their association with Boris Johnson, who is currently one of the charity’s patrons. This is not the first time that objections have been made to Johnson’s status as flag-bearer for the discipline and many classicists have not seen him as a public ally. Despite his best attempts to position himself as a positive asset to the field, as a discipline we must now recognise his conduct is appalling, and that association with him is in direct conflict with attempts to recover classics from an exclusionary and discriminatory elite.
We call on all bodies associated with classics to take this opportunity to consider those we ask to act as patrons and ambassadors for our subject. While Johnson may be an extreme case, the public statements and behaviour of others who align themselves with classics are increasingly at odds with our discipline as we understand and promote it. Equally, a board of patrons or supporters consisting primarily of white privileged individuals does not encourage those who do not see themselves represented to think that classics is for them.
The WCC UK has a long-standing goal to advance equality and diversity in Classics, and we acknowledge that there is a long way to go, including in our own ranks. We urge all relevant bodies to diversify and expand the range of those who advocate for them, and to show that there is a strong inclusive voice for classics at work in the UK.
The WCC UK supports a classics without white fragility, in which people of all backgrounds and circumstances flourish and thrive. We invite all those able to take action towards this goal to join us in making this happen.
by lizgloyn
Professor Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz of Hamilton College gave a keynote at our AGM in April. It is with great pleasure that we share the text of the talk that she gave.
I’m delighted to have been invited here to meet with you all—I was at the Feminist Sandpit in 2016, and have followed your activities with interest. Today’s topic of activism is one dear to my heart, and though I am mostly speaking from my US perspective, I anticipate a lively and informative discussion and look forward to moving forward together. Building coalitions is essential for progress.
First, I would ask what we even mean by activism in this context. Not much of what we do as academics counts as activism in the most obvious and political sense. Participating in world or local politics may even conflict with our professional roles. When I was in grad school in Chicago, for instance, feminist and anti-war demonstrations and meetings were all around me. How engaged could I be, given my time in the library instead of on the picket line? Then there is the question of what we study. The intellectual or academic branches of the civil rights and women’s movements (and later gay rights movement) have attacked the traditional curriculum, and in particular its domination by dead white men. Classics certainly seemed guilty as charged—a canon of works by dead white men taught mostly by (barely) living white men. And the history of the field supports this critique because of the gate-keeping function of the study of ancient languages; classics was a central part of a liberal education, taken for granted for middle and upper class men. It was decidedly not useless knowledge: as Chris Stray and Phiroze Vasunia among others have argued, a classical education helped in the formation of white male elites and led to jobs in colonial management. Women and people of color were excluded.
The construction of antiquity as white and European persists in very troubling ways. In the last year, the web-based right-wing group Identity Europa has emerged and energetically claimed ancient imagery as its “own,” making reclaiming it part of America’s “becoming great again,” posting flyers on campuses in 2016. The former APA, now Society for Classical Studies in the US, replied first by defining antiquity as
“a complex place, with a vast diversity of peoples, languages, religions, and cultures spread over three continents, as full of contention and difference as our world is today.” The statement then turns explicitly ideological: “the Society strongly supports efforts to include all groups among those who study and teach the ancient world, and to encourage understanding of antiquity by all. . . As scholars and teachers, we condemn the use of the texts, ideals, and images of the Greek and Roman world to promote racism or a view of the Classical world as the unique inheritance of a falsely-imagined and narrowly-conceived western civilization.”
Like many others of you, I’m sure, I am suspicious of traditional claims for classics’ importance and transcendent value; that tactic was associated with the denigration of other traditions. We have to find new reasons to study antiquity, especially as we do “outreach,” or “public engagement”; if we are selling the Ancient World, we have to ask why we are doing so (more on that later). In a recent article in Eidolon, Johanna Hanink put it this way: “the hard and rewarding work lies in figuring out how to keep doing what we do — studying antiquity and its legacy — while at the same time acknowledging, and further exposing, the damage done by the old hard line on Classics and “Western civilization.”
Classicists have responded to challenges to the field (the critique from the left, the unwelcome support from the right, and I would include here the nonpartisan attacks on the humanities as useless) over the last thirty or so years. In fact, like other disciplines, we have been mobilized by the women’s movement, civil rights and anti-colonialist struggles, the gay rights movement, and more recently by a growing disability rights movement. In the rest of the paper I’ll be looking first at activism in scholarship and teaching, then at efforts to change the profession, and finally at the ways in which classicists have been using classics outside the profession. Of course, the four social movements don’t fit neatly into the three topics, and there are some overlaps. But I hope you will be able to follow!
by lizgloyn
Are you a late antique specialist gearing up for the Leeds International Medieval Conference next week? Then you should know about our two co-sponsored WCC UK panels, both exploring the figure of the late antique empress! These have been organised by Victoria Leonard of the WCC UK in partnership with Julia Hillner, and are cosponsored by the Medieval & Ancient Research Centre, University of Sheffield . The details are as follows:
Session 218
The Late Antique Empress, I: Imperial Women between Court Politics and ‘Barbarian’ Kings
Monday 2 July 2018: 14.15-15.45
Moderator/Chair: Richard Flower, Department of Classics & Ancient History, University of Exeter
-a: Reviewing the Roles of 4th-Century Imperial Women: The Case of Justina – Belinda Washington, Independent Scholar, Edinburgh
-b: Galla Placidia as ‘Human Gold’: Consent and Autonomy in the Early 5th-Century Western Mediterranean – Victoria Leonard, Institute of Classical Studies, University of London
-c: Return of the Confined Empress: The Burial of Verina – Margarita Vallejo-Girvés, Departamento de Historia y Filosofía, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares
This session focuses on case studies that are rarely discussed or in need of reassessment, as they have significant things to tell us about late antique ecclesiastical, military and political developments. Paper -a investigates the changing relationship between state and church through Justina’s role in 4th-century Milan; paper -b asks how a reinterpretation of Galla Placidia’s Visigothic marriage as war captivity affects our understanding of Roman-Barbarian relationships; paper -c explores the rising power of late 5th-century imperial women through the burial of the disgraced Verina by her daughter, Ariadne.
Session 318
The Late Antique Empress, II: How to Read, Write, and View Imperial Women
Monday 2 July 2018: 16.30-18.00
Moderator/Chair: Robin Whelan, Department of History, University of Liverpool
-a: Empress, Interrupted: Writing the Biography of a Late Antique Imperial Woman – Julia Hillner, Department of History, University of Sheffield
-b: Women on the Move: Representations of Imperial Women and Urban Space in Late Antique Rome and Constantinople – Robert Heffron, Department of History, University of Sheffield
-c: Late Antique Empresses and the Queen of Heaven: On the Correlation between Sacred and Secular in the Imagery of a Female Potentate – Maria Lidova, British Museum, London / Wolfson College, University of Oxford
Historical studies on late antique empresses have usually been biographies of well-known empresses or single dynasties. This session – the first of two proposed – offers an interdisciplinary perspective on imperial women’s representation and agency. It explores three methodological approaches to the topic: biography, topography, and iconography. Paper -a assesses the benefits and challenges of the biographical approach in light of gender history, paper -b investigates how the study of public space impacts on our understanding of imperial women’s role at court, paper -c analyses the relationship between the late antique empress’s image and the cult of the Virgin Mary.
by lizgloyn
There are lots of ways to get involved with the work of the WCC UK! Take a look at what’s currently going on…
Do any of the above appeal? Then drop us a line at womensclassicalcommittee at gmail.com, and we’ll put you in touch with the right member of the committee to get things moving. We can’t wait to hear from you!