Daily Archives: 20 July 2018

CFP: 10th European Spring School on History of Science and Popularization

Call for proposals for the 10th European Spring School on History of Science and Popularization. The theme is Handling the Body, Taking Control: Technologies of the Gendered Body.

Institut Menorquí d’Estudis, Maó (Balearic Islands, Spain) 23-25 May 2019
Organized by the Catalan Society for the History of Science
Coordinated by Montserrat Cabré and Teresa Ortiz-Gómez

The aim of the 10th European Spring School [ESS] “Handling the body, taking control: Technologies of the gendered body” is to encompass a diversity of themes around the axis of the historical construction of the gendered body as a locus of both empowerment and disempowerment and the place of the natural philosophical and biomedical disciplines in shaping the political and subjective dimensions of human experience. The School is particularly concerned with exploring how diverse intellectual and social movements have struggled to gain authority and cultural hegemony over women´s bodies by way of defining sexual difference and the gendered body. As in previous sessions, this ESS is structured in four key-note lectures and a research workshop. The keynote lectures will be delivered by four outstanding scholars covering areas such as sexual practices, the language of physiology, visual representations and feminist definitions of health expertise.   

The ESS is envisaged as a space for junior scholars to discuss their current work-in-progress with colleagues in a creative and supportive environment. The workshop will be organized in three thematic paper sessions and one poster session. All contributions –in both paper and poster format- will be commented by participants, lecturers and organizers of the School. Sessions and discussions will be conducted in English. 

The ESS  “Handling the body, taking control: Technologies of the gendered body” is open to graduate students, early career scholars, professionals, and activists concerned about past and present approaches to the gendered body and the analysis of the epistemological frameworks that feminism has developped to analyse them. 

Participants would be expected to address such issues as: 

  • Abortion and contraceptive cultures 
  • Expert knowledge and experiences of pregnancy and birth 
  • Feminist activism and body technologies 
  • Feminist epistemologies of the body 
  • Gendered biopolitics 
  • Illness, sickness, disease 
  • Medical constructions of sexual difference 
  • Pathologization and depathologization of the female body 
  • Sexual education and women’s health knowledge 
  • Sexual violence, perceptions of harrassment and rape 
  • Sexualities, female sexuality and asexuality 
  • Visual and textual discourses of the gendered body 
  • Women’s sexual desire and medical knowledge on female sexuality
  • Women’s versus medical representations of the female body 

Please send proposals to discuss your research (around 300 words) before 30 October 2018 to Montserrat Cabré and Teresa Ortiz-Gómez at: 10thEES@gmail.com  

A limited number of grants will be available for graduate students and early career researchers. 

Contact Email: 
10thEES@gmail.com

CFP IONA conference session: From Fiber to Decorated Textiles in the Early North Atlantic

Proposals are invited for sessions on “From Fiber to Decorated Textiles in the Early North Atlantic: Making, Methods, and Meanings,” to be convened as part of IONA: Early Medieval Studies on the Islands of the North Atlantic. Transformative networks, skills, theories, and methods for the future of the field. The conference will be held at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada. April 11-13, 2019.

Textiles are a ubiquitous part of life, essentially so in eras when they had to be produced by hand. In early medieval Europe the making and use of textiles also had symbolic, metaphorical, and even allegorical meanings, in additional to the functional. We wish to spend time exploring the connections between the act of making and understanding how something is being made as well as connections among disciplines, approaches, and interpretations.

We are envisioning a series of linked sessions in which participants first learn generally about the textile-making process in the Early North Atlantic, before choosing one skill to learn more deeply, which they will then proceed to practice for the remainder of the sessions. During this final part, scholars will also present their research findings and interpretations, most likely in a modified roundtable format, culminating in a final large discussion that brings together the insights of making through practice and how this might influence interpretation.

We invite proposals of two kinds. First we seek those versed in the making of early medieval textiles and the teaching of those skills. We are specifically interested in scholars accomplished in one of the following: nalbinding, lucet braiding, tablet weaving, inkle weaving, sprang, upright loom weaving, and other fabric and fiber arts. The organizers will be instructing in the use of the hand spindle and loop stitch embroidery. We also welcome other textile skills that were employed in the early North Atlantic world. The session organizers hope to be able to provide basic materials such as yarn, needles, fabric, and thread, and may be able to help provide larger specialty equipment.

The second kind of proposal we invite is from interpreters of early medieval textiles in the North Atlantic and the methods of making them. We hope to gather an interdisciplinary group of researchers, teachers, curators, and artists working in this area to spark a dialogue about how one can practically and metaphorically come to understand any of the following:

  • textile and textile tool remains
  • literary and artistic depictions of textile-making processes
  • how gender, region, religion, or economics were part of meaning making in textiles and the how the making process was experienced by medieval people or how these categories of analysis impact our contemporary understanding
  • the role of trade and/or migration in disseminating or adapting textile making processes, decoration, and raw and finished materials
  • how access to resources impacted the making of textiles
  • methods of decorating textiles (embroidery, braid, trim, and so forth)

If one is both a maker and an interpreter, one may submit a joint proposal.

Questions may be addressed to Karen Agee (karen.agee@uni.edu), Erika Lindgren (lindgrenedu@gmail.com), or Alexandra Makin (alexandrammakin@gmail.com). Please submit a 250 words proposal/abstract to Karen Agee (karen.agee@uni.edu) by 25 July, 2018. Please use Textiles IONA in the subject line.

The full website with all the CFPs and conference information can be found here: https://www.sfu.ca/english/iona.html.

 

 

New member publication: Women and Work in Premodern Europe

Congratulations to ANZAMEMS members Merridee L. Bailey, Tania M. Colwell, and Julie Hotchin on the publication of their edited book Women and Work in Premodern Europe: Experiences, Relationships and Cultural Representation, c. 1100-1800 (Routledge).

This book re-evaluates and extends understandings about how work was conceived and what it could entail for women in the premodern period in Europe from c. 1100 to c. 1800. It does this by building on the impressive growth in literature on women’s working experiences, and by adopting new interpretive approaches that expand received assumptions about what constituted ‘work’ for women. While attention to the diversity of women’s contributions to the economy has done much to make the breadth of women’s experiences of labour visible, this volume takes a more expansive conceptual approach to the notion of work and considers the social and cultural dimensions in which activities were construed and valued as work. This interdisciplinary collection thus advances concepts of work that encompass cultural activities in addition to more traditional economic understandings of work as employment or labour for production. The chapters reconceptualise and explore work for women by asking how the working lives of historical women were enacted and represented, and they analyse the relationships that shaped women’s experiences of work across the European premodern period.

A flyer for the book is attached. This includes a 20% discount offer to purchasers.

ANZAMEMS members who would like to promote recent book publications through the ANZAMEMS newsletter are welcome to forward the details to the newsletter editor Amanda McVitty (amanda.mcvitty@gmail.com).

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