This is a regular, online seminar. Each session (held via zoom) features 2 x 10–12-minute research presentations on current research in Gender History with a focus on Aotearoa New Zealand, followed by discussion. Please be in touch if you would like to present your own research – we have speaking slots available on Wednesday Rāapa 7 September.
Wednesday Rāapa 16 March, 12 pm – 1 pm, via zoom
Zoom link: https://waikato.zoom.us/j/97078105588
Speakers:
Amelia Barker
PhD Candidate, Massey University
Constance de Rabastens (d. c.1386): a woman who fought to be heard
Constance de Rabastens was a lay female visionary during the Great Western Schism (1378-1417), a period in which Western Christendom was divided between two rival papacies, and political and religious differences divided communities and even families. Unlike most female visionaries at the time, Constance’s visions supported the “wrong” pope for her region, and she was forbidden from recording her experiences. Despite this, she fought to be heard by religious authorities, challenging their decisions, and eventually disappearing after being arrested. Her recorded letters and visions reveal her agency in making her voice heard, providing historians with a clear example of how medieval women were not just silent witnesses of great political and religious turmoil in their communities, but actively engaged and desperate to influence those in power.
Amanda McVitty
Lecturer in History, Massey University
Sexual regulation and the evolution of patriarchal judicial culture: Towards a feminist history of the legal profession
In his now-classic study, Robert Moore stressed the pivotal role of lawyers in transforming premodern Europe into a ‘persecuting society’ that was heavily invested in surveilling and regulating moral and sexual ‘vice’. This new project centres lawyers’ gendered agency in this process, asking how and to what extent these men created and enabled a patriarchal judicial culture in which were born ‘sticky’ myths and stereotypes about sexual misconduct, rape and gendered violence, and about those who perpetrate it. Using feminist methods, I aim to transform the way we think about and teach this legal history across the premodern-modern divide.
Coming up next:
Wednesday Rāapa 4 May, 12 pm – 1 pm, via zoom
Speakers:
Hayley Goldthorpe, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington
The Three Graces against the Taranaki War, 1860-61
Rachel Caines, Australian Catholic University
Interrogating Gender through First World War Propaganda Posters