Some face-to-face events are returning. Check carefully for any requirements.
What does it mean to be a feminist? Who can be a feminist? And is there a right and wrong way of doing it?
Join us on a unique journey through feminist history, adding your voice as we discuss key moments in literature, art, politics, music, sport, and science to develop our understanding of feminism.
You’ll discover knowledge you didn’t realise you had as we join together the pieces of feminist history and women’s achievements in this fun, interactive workshop.
We will identify different stages and criticisms of feminism and consider intersections with race, LGBTIQ, age, and disability politics. We look for silences and unacknowledged voices, and consider the privileges and biases in our own perspectives.
How a Bolivian became a Feminist: A Personal History
Sonia Montaño is a Bolivian sociologist. She is currently active in Bolivia as a feminist researcher and activist and member of PIEB (Programa de Investigation Estrategica Bolivia). Between 1993 and 1995, she was Undersecretary of Gender Affairs at the Ministry of Human Development of Bolivia. Between 2000 and 2015 she was Chief of the Division for Gender Affairs at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC, United Nations), providing leadership to regional conferences on women of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The history she will share is a particular mix of a biography within the influence of a socio-cultural context. Sonia was born in the fifties when Bolivia was initiating a revolutionary process that gave indigenous people, peasants and women the right to vote and acces to education. Raised in a discriminatory society and by a courageous mother and a liberal family she could very early see women wanting to do “different things”. She lived and participated in a country suffering of continuous authoritarian governments and dictatorships and numerous efforts to establish democracy. Her adolescence was influenced by the emerging of a strong workers movement fighting for their rights, the presence of Che Guevara that stimulated an early political participation that ended in 1972 when the Banzer dictatorship sent her to jail for a couple of months. This was followed by a long exile to the Netherlands and France where Sonia was able to study and meet women from all over the world which started her activism as a feminist.
he travelling exhibition first launched at the Edinburgh Festival, and its next stop in Oxford has been designed to mark the 50th anniversary of the Abortion Act, which introduced a set of legal grounds for abortion. The organisers hope that by sharing women’s stories of abortion in their own words, the exhibition will challenge the lingering stigma and silence around the subject, and hopefully trigger conversation that inspires empathy for such a complex situation.
Based on recent Open University research on women’s experiences of abortion, the exhibition shows how easily an unplanned pregnancy can become a part of any woman’s life, how different women have made their decision about having an abortion, and what the process was like for them.
Most women will have over three decades of fertility to manage, and an unplanned pregnancy can happen at any time for all sorts of reasons. Even an intended pregnancy can become unwanted. Abortion is one of the most commonly performed gynaecological procedures in the UK, yet is still controversial and highly stigmatized – and in Northern Ireland the 1967 Act does not even apply.
Lesley Hoggart, Associate Head of School, School of Health, Wellbeing and Social Care at The Open University explained the reason behind the creation of My Body My Life: ‘Although one in three women have an abortion, they may not talk about it. This means they do not talk about how they were using contraception but still became pregnant, how they took emergency contraception but still became pregnant, or a whole host of other scenarios. The reality is that one in 60 women will experience an unplanned pregnancy every year, and abortion is a necessary part of the reproductive control that every woman needs in order to participate equally and fully in society, not being bound to unwilling motherhood. There is nothing to be ashamed of in that. Secrecy feeds abortion stigma, and secrecy therefore needs challenging. This is what we are doing through bringing our research to life in this multi-media travelling exhibition.’
Alongside the exhibition the Oxford University Law Faculty have organised a series of evening talks and events to give context and nuance to the event, including a panel discussion considering whether and how the Abortion Act should be amended.
Dr Imogen Goold, Associate Professor of Law at the Oxford Law Faculty, added:
This exhibition is a fantastic example of why it’s so important for academics to engage with the public about their work. My Body My Life brings this important research into the community, and will broaden public understanding of abortion, a subject that affects so many of us but about which we are often silent. Over the past 50 years, the Abortion Act has enabled thousands of women to access safe abortion services, ending the period of backdoor abortions that left so many women injured, and sometimes even dead. It is timely for us to reflect on the positive impact the Act had, and to think about whether it needs amendment to further ensure women retain control of their bodies and their lives.
My Body My life is led by The Reproduction, Sexualities and Sexual Health Research Group at The Open University and the Faculty of Law at The University of Oxford, working in collaboration with The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), The Centre for Research on Families and Relationships at Edinburgh University, The Family Planning Association, UCL Institute for Women’s Health, The Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at Ulster University, The Social and Public Health Sciences Unit at University of Glasgow and Alliance for Choice.
The exhibition has been designed and produced by UK-based creative consultancy The Liminal Space whose mission is to educate and engage people in important social and strategic issues, in order to deepen their understanding and inspire action. Rooted in the worlds of art, design and academia their methods use art, design and experiential learning to make issues tangible and accessible for a broad spectrum of people.
The exhibition will be open at The Old Fire Station from 7-11 November 2017, 11am-6pm
Evening events will be held on 8 and 9 November
Website: http://mybody-mylife.org
Twitter: @mybody_mylife
Instagram: mybodymylife1in3
We recommend signing up for our free evening events, more information at www.mybody-mylife.org.
Ever felt like there was something you really wanted to say but you just weren’t sure how? We’re exploring the why and how of women’s speech and writing with the help of some amazing women writers and gender experts.
This is our fabulous launch for a feminist writing course to run in Oxford in early 2018.
The event will include presentations from rising-star feminist writers sharing their work and discussing what it means to express their gender in their writing.
There will be a chance to share your ideas about what feminist poetry means to you, how gender is expressed through poetry and language, what it means to write as your gender, and some of the challenges of writing women’s experiences, platforming a variety of voices in conversation.
We also invite presentations from YOU of your own work and/or that of your feminist heroes.
Kids and people of all genders welcome.
East Oxford Community Centre
Doors open 7.30pm (the bar will be open)
The Oxford constituency of the Spanish Researchers in the United Kingdom (SRUK) is holding a discussion panel entitled “Women in science and the glass ceiling” where three invited speakers will give a short talk about the topic, followed by a discussion where the attendees can actively participate.
The invited experts will highlight how the world of science needs to become accessible for everyone, women and girls. The discussion will cover the earlier stages of education, where children become interested in science, to the later stages of the scientific career, where excellent science and innovation require the talents of both women and men. We will evaluate why women’s progress in research is slow and why there are too few female scientists occupying top positions in scientific decision-making, limiting the important potential of highly skilled human capital.
The event will take place on the 18th of November at the The Jam Factory (Hollybush Row, Oxford, OX1 1HU) and it will start at 10:30AM.
This is a free event and open to the public, but registration is needed via Eventbrite.
Abstract:
In this talk Tiffany Page will consider what vulnerability is and what it does, and its role within the research process. As part of this she will raise the idea of ‘vulnerable writing’, and consider its possibility within feminist methodological approaches to research. The term vulnerable writing describes the process of explicating and recognising vulnerability in writing. This comes from a core concern in thinking about feminist methodologies and approaches to tensions in research, especially in transnational contexts, in addressing how we might respond to others in ways that allow for the acknowledgement of vulnerability in being faced by events which exceed knowledge, and how we can remain open to alternatives through enabling the space and time to question assumptions and forms of certitude, to return to materials, and to change our minds.
Tiffany Page is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Tiffany’s research is interdisciplinary and include the areas and intersections of vulnerability, gender inequalities and institutional violence. In particular she examines vulnerability as a political, methodological and ethical concept as a means to consider embodied responses to local and global social issues. In relation to gender inequalities in higher education, Tiffany’s research examines practices, cultures and leadership that produce particular institutional responses to staff sexual misconduct and help to sustain conditions in which forms of gender based and sexual violence occur.
N.B. The time of this event is not yet confirmed.
Abstract:
In this talk Tiffany Page will consider what vulnerability is and what it does, and its role within the research process. As part of this she will raise the idea of ‘vulnerable writing’, and consider its possibility within feminist methodological approaches to research. The term vulnerable writing describes the process of explicating and recognising vulnerability in writing. This comes from a core concern in thinking about feminist methodologies and approaches to tensions in research, especially in transnational contexts, in addressing how we might respond to others in ways that allow for the acknowledgement of vulnerability in being faced by events which exceed knowledge, and how we can remain open to alternatives through enabling the space and time to question assumptions and forms of certitude, to return to materials, and to change our minds.
Tiffany Page is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Her research is interdisciplinary and includes the areas and intersections of vulnerability, gender inequalities and institutional violence. In particular she examines vulnerability as a political, methodological and ethical concept as a means to consider embodied responses to local and global social issues. In relation to gender inequalities in higher education, Tiffany’s research examines practices, cultures and leadership that produce particular institutional responses to staff sexual misconduct and help to sustain conditions in which forms of gender based and sexual violence occur.
Women in Africa are congregated in poorly paid and precarious work (ILO, 2016) and have very high rates of school dropout, mortality and childhood morbidity. This is crucially linked to their role in childbirth and child-care. Women and girls still perform the bulk of unpaid domestic and care work, severely limiting their access to work with fair working conditions. Empowering women and achieving decent work is a vital element in developing a dynamic economy that includes the full political and social citizenship of African women, while supporting their care-giving roles.
This lecture focuses on young women (aged 15-24), who are at the cusp of reproduction and production. Drawing on the rich data sets collected by Young Lives, Professor Jo Boyden, Director of Young Lives, & Professor Sandra Fredman, Director of the Oxford Human Rights Hub, examine transitions of adolescent girls and boys from education to labour markets and how their opportunities are shaped by other intersecting transitions (family formation, marriage and parenthood). On the basis of this evidence, they will consider the role of legal frameworks in obstructing or facilitating women’s access to decent working conditions, the social support for care-giving roles, and ways of interrupting intergenerational transmission of poverty.
CARU | Arts re Search Annual Conference 2017
“What does it mean to research art / to research through art?”
CARU brings together artists and researchers for yet another day of cross-disciplinary exploration into arts research! The event will consist of an exciting mixture of talks and performances from a variety of creative and academic disciplines, including Fine Art, Live Art, Social Practice, Art History, Anthropology, Education, Science and Technology, to question and debate various areas of arts research, such as themes, material/form, documentation and practice methodology.
Keynote talk: ‘Resonances and Discords’
Speaker: Prof. Kerstin Mey
PVC and Dean, Westminster School of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster
“The presentation will explore research in art at the interface to other epistemological systems and approaches. Drawing on case studies, it will explore key strategies and tactical manoeuvres of knowledge making in order to explore the hermeneutics of practice led inquiry in the space of art.”
Presentations include:
“The artist in the boardroom: Action research within decision-making spaces”
“Exploring the Art space as fluid cultural site through the immediacy of the performance and its inherent collaborative ethos”
“Chapter 1 (draft): Using text in performance: a range of strategies”
“Memory and identity within Bosnia’s Mass Graves”
“Fermenting conversations”
“Arcade Interface Art Research”
“Making sounds happen is more important than careful listening (with cups)”
“Shadow:Other:myself / photographic research from 2010”
“Un-knowing unknowing in painting as research”
“Developing an artistic epistemology”
Register at: www.ars2017.eventbrite.co.uk
To offer Oxford students the warmest welcome back to Hilary Term, we have invited Director Jenny Lu盧謹明, to show her feature film The Receptionist接線員 (2017) (bilingual subtitles).
This bilingual film is the first UK-Taiwanese film collaboration of its kind, and it tells the story of Tina, a literature graduate living in London, who takes up work as a receptionist in an illegal massage parlour. Through Tina’s eyes, viewers are not exposed to the dark underworld of London’s illegal sex industry, but are also shown a rare glimpse into the lives of those caught up in this world, and the harsh realities they face as Asian migrant women struggling to survive in London.
The film features the famous Taiwanese actress Chen Shiang-Chyi陳湘琪 and was nominated for the Golden Horse Awards. Director Jenny Lu wrote the film script based on a real story she witnessed when she was studying video art in London. After the screening, she will share with us the inspirations behind the story and her experiences as a transnational filmmaker in the UK and Taiwan.
This event will be of interest to those of you who work on contemporary Britain, Asian diaspora, Chinese and Taiwanese culture, film studies, gender studies, translation studies, and race and racism. The film is approximately 100 minutes long, and the director will talk for around 10 minutes with the host, followed by audience Q & A and discussions.
Tickets are 5£ and can be bought in advance
More information can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/331762997290657/
Our Marriages: When Lesbians Marry Gay Men 奇缘一生 —Documentary Screening and Talk with Director He Xiaopei and Dr Bao Hongwei
The Oxford Chinese Studies Society welcomes all to an exclusive screening and discussion of “Our Marriage: When Lesbians Marry Gay Men” with Director He Xiaopei and Dr Bao Hongwei.
How do gays and lesbians negotiate their social identities in postsocialist China? Are the so-called “fake marriages 形式婚姻” between them a pragmatic choice made out of social pressure or a queering act of subversion against the traditional institution of marriage? How do these phenomena tie into China’s revolutionary past and connect to Asia’s current wave of gay marriage legalisation and rising pink economy? These are the questions provoked by Dr. He Xiaopei’s documentary Our Marriage.
“The film, Our Marriage, is an exploration of the lives of four lesbians who decided to marry gay men in order to secretly pursue their relationships with their girlfriends and at the same time fulfil their families’ deep-seated desire that they get married. The sense of respect and responsibility that the marriage partners feel towards their parents, and the avoidance of social ridicule and tricky questions about their child’s sexuality, also play a large role in their decision to stage elaborate and glamorous sham ceremonies…In China, as one of the women in the documentary explained, nobody is allowed to be single. Whilst a burgeoning lesbian social scene is becoming more visible in large cities, heteronormative attitudes force people, heterosexual and homosexual alike, into marriages which they would rather avoid. Marriage can provide social acceptance, but it also gives you certain economic benefits such as access to social housing. Whilst homosexuality is not illegal in China there are no plans to introduce same sex marriage. Activists like He have argued against campaigns for same sex marriage suggesting that the institution of marriage itself should be challenged as it supports patriarchal norms and is detrimental to all people, whether they are gay, straight or bisexual.” — Kate Hawkins, Sexuality and Development Programme International Advisory Group
This event will be of interest to those of you who work on Chinese society, queer studies, film studies, as well as gender studies. The documentary is 45 minutes long, followed a brief talk on queer filmmaking and LGBT activism in China by Dr Bao Hongwei from the University of Nottingham, and then both of them will engage in audience Q & A and discussions.
Speaker biography:
Dr He Xiaopei completed a PhD at the University of Westminster in 2006, titled ‘I am AIDS: Living with the Epidemic in China’. She co-founded an NGO called the Pink Space Sexuality Research Centre in Beijing to promote sexual rights and sexual pleasure among people who are oppressed.
Dr Hongwei Bao is Assistant Professor in Media Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. He holds a PhD in Gender Studies and Cultural Studies from the University of Sydney, Australia. His research primarily focuses on gay identity and queer politics in contemporary China. He is author of Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, forthcoming in 2018).
2pm Wilde’s last years: Dr Sos Eltis, Brasenose College
2.45 The Ballad of Reading Gaol – read by five LMH students
3.15 Break
3.30 Jonathan Aitken in conversation with Alan Rusbridger – Why did the rehabilitation of Oscar Wilde fail in the 1890s? Why does the rehabilitation
of offenders fail today?
4.30 Break
5-6.30 Simon Callow reading De Profundis
Drinks
Listen to stories of Filipina women from different parts of the world, rising up to be leaders amidst the odds, defying gender and racial stereotypes. The Filipina Women’s Network (FWN) in cooperation with the Oxford Philippines Society, invite you to the author readings of FWN’s DISRUPT leadership book series.
As part of our College-wide Equalities Week, engineer and materials scientist Dr Clara Barker will be in conversation with LMH Principal, Alan Rusbridger. Dr Barker has won awards for her work with the LGBTQ community.
Old Images of Abingdon – various images and what they show.
Speakers AAAHS members: Anne Smithson, Judy White, Jackie Smith, Jessica Brod, Manfred Brod and John Foreman.
The meeting will consist of a number of shorter presentations about different paintings, pictures or photographs that are of interest to the speakers based around an image of Abingdon or images that has local connections.
For more information please visit www.aaahs.org.uk
Visitors are very welcome to attend meetings at a cost of £3.
If you want to join the Abingdon Area Archaeological & Historical Society, there’s a membership form on this website, or you can contact any of the committee members.
Parul Bhandari is currently a Visiting Scholar at St. Edmund’s College and the Centre for South Asian Studies (CSAS), University of Cambridge, UK. She is also a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), New Delhi, the South Asia research unit for the French National Centre for Research (CNRS). She has held Guest Faculty positions at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, and the Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT) Delhi. Dr Bhandari completed her PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge in 2014.
Her main research interests are in the field of social class, gender, marriage, and family. Her doctoral thesis explained the makings of middle class identities through the processes of spouse-selection. For her post-doctoral research she has shifted attention to the study of elites, particularly the rich housewives of Delhi, focusing on their relationship with money and exploring the themes of honour and humiliation in their everyday lives.
Dr Bhandari has written widely on gender, family and marriage, including book chapters, journal articles, and in newspapers and magazines. Her forthcoming books include Money, Culture, Class: Elite Women as Modern Subjects, (Routledge, London, 2018) and a co-edited volume, Exploring Indian Modernities: Ideas and Practices (Springer, 2018).
In conjunction with Oxford International Women’s Festival , Oxford Community-led Housing* research project and Transition by Design is organising a session on “Taking Control of our Housing: Women Leading the Charge”, to celebrate the efforts of a number of women pioneering community-led housing in various forms in Oxfordshire. In line with the festival’s broader theme of “Winning the Vote: Women’s Suffrage 100 Years On”, the session aims to raise awareness around community-led housing and an opportunity to gain fresh interest and broaden the movement.
Join us in the much needed discussion to highlight that affordable, safe and secure housing is a basic human right. The session will champion the idea that women can and are taking action to tackle the housing crisis in Oxford, and to generate discussion that homes and housing shape our identity as women and as human beings. We’re also very keen to find out more about the challenges you’re facing with the housing market. And to top it up, let’s celebrate the efforts of women in community-led housing.
Event format:
Interactive panel discussion
Panel speakers from Kindling Housing Coop, Edge Housing, Dragonfly Housing Coop, Oxford Fairer Housing Network, Oxford Housing Crisis Group and many more!
For more info or queries, please contact katie@transitionbydesign.org
*Oxford Community-Led Housing research project is a new partnership project by Oxford Community Foundation, Community First Oxfordshire and Oxford Community Land Trust. We have been commissioned by Oxford City Council to conduct a research project on how community-led housing could be delivered sustainably in Oxford. Community Led Housing (CLH) is about local people playing a leading and lasting role in solving local housing problems, creating genuinely affordable homes and strong communities in ways that are difficult to achieve through mainstream housing.
Li Ang：50 Years of Writing Taiwan
作家李昂：台灣文學五十年
05 March 2018 Monday 5-6:30 p.m. Lecture Theatre, China Centre, St Hugh’s College, Oxford
Supported by: Oxford Chinese Studies Society, Oxford China Forum, International Gender Studies Centre at Lady Margaret Hall Oxford, Oxford University Taiwanese Student Society
Free for all, please register at Eventbrite
Anyone who knows anything about Taiwanese literary history would know the name Li Ang. Starting her career in the late 1960s when Taiwan was still under Martial Law, she constantly experimented with radical ways of thinking gender and sexuality and has since become the most translated author from Taiwan.
It is no understatement to say that she is one of the most prominent feminist writers in the Sinophone world, as her works, often critical of patriarchal conventions and ideologies in Chinese societies, have won numerous literary awards in Taiwan. Many of her fiction, including The Butcher’s Wife 殺夫, Dark Night 暗夜, Lost Garden 迷園, and Visible Ghosts 看得見的鬼, have been translated into many languages and adapted into films, TV dramas and musicals in Taiwan, Austria, France and Germany. In 2004, Li Ang was awarded the “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the French Minister of Culture and Communication in recognition of her outstanding contribution to world literature. In 2017, Li Ang’s new book The Beautiful Man Asleep 睡美男 was published, and its focus on an older woman’s sexual psychology in her encounters with young people has again challenged conventional social attitudes towards less normative human relationships.
In this public event, Li Ang will share with us her experiences in the Taiwanese literary world in the last 50 years as well as her reflections on the development of Taiwanese and Sinophone literatures today. This event will be of interest to those of you who work on Chinese literature, Taiwan, Sinophone Studies, gender and sexuality, and media and film studies. Li Ang will first give a 15 minutes speech, followed by a conversation with Flair Donglai SHI (DPhil in English) to further contextualise her thoughts, and plenty of time will be given to audience Q & A and discussions.
Register for free here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/li-ang50-years-of-writing-taiwan-tickets-43064258356
Renowned journalist, author and commentator, Polly Toynbee (St Anne’s, 1966), will join St Peter’s alumna, Helen Lewis (2001), current Deputy Editor of The New Statesman, for an evening of discussion on the topic of “Brexit, the left and feminism”.
The talk, which will be hosted by Prof Abigail Williams, Lord White Tutorial Fellow in English at St Peter’s and Professor of 18th-century Literature, will be followed by a Q&A.
Wikipedia is the 5th most visited website in the world… but is it biased? Join us on International Women’s Day in the new Makerspace at the Oxfordshire County Library.
We’ll have a short talk on the gender gap on Wikipedia, learn how to edit, and then work on improving articles about and of interest to women!
Talk is at 10:30, followed by the editathon from 11:00am – 2:00pm. If you are planning on attending the editathon, please bring a laptop. If you don’t have a laptop please let us know in advance and we may be able to provide one.
Professor Susan Brooks will take you on a personal journey beginning in breast cancer research and leading to a passionate commitment to supporting and developing the next generation of researchers.
Susan discovered that a chemical from the edible snail was able to distinguish between cancers that are able to spread from their original site to other parts of the body, and those that cannot. It recognises altered sugar chains on cancer cells that are involved in them being able to crawl through tissues and enter the blood stream and allows them to stick to the lining of blood vessels at distant sites.
Harriet Harman was elected MP for Peckham in 1982. Elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 2007-2015, Shadow Deputy Prime Minister 2010-2015 and has twice served as Interim Labour Leader in 2010 and 2015. She has been in politics a prominent champion for women’s rights and as a minister in the Labour Government introduce the National Childcare Strategy and the Equality Act, changing the law on domestic violence and increasing female representation. She was the first woman Labour politician to answer Prime Minister’s Questions. In 2017 she became the longest serving woman MP.
The 2017-18 Humanitas Weidenfeld Visiting Professorship in Comparative European Literature will be held by Elif Shafak, an award-winning novelist and the most widely read woman writer in Turkey. She is also a women’s rights activist and an inspirational public intellectual and speaker.
Wednesday 2 May: Strong Words in a Liquid World
Defending the Art of Fiction in the Age of Post-Truth
What is the role of literature in our increasingly fractured and fast-changing world? Is it possible to write a-politically or do writers have a responsibility to speak out – and, if so, how? Can fiction address political issues in a way that ordinary public discourse cannot? Elif Shafak will explore these questions in three lectures and an open discussion.
After each lecture there will be the opportunity to ask questions, and all are welcome to join in the closing discussion.
As part of our Every Woman series, Blackwell’s presents an evening with Lyndall Gordon, who will be exploring her book ‘Outsiders’, an exciting and provocative look at the women who wrote the novels that changed the literary world.
Outsiders tells the stories of five novelists – Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, Virginia Woolf – and their famous novels. We have long known their individual greatness but in linking their creativity to their lives as outsiders, this group biography throws new light on the genius they share. ‘Outsider’, ‘outlaw’, ‘outcast’: a woman’s reputation was her security and each of these five lost it. As writers, they made these identities their own, taking advantage of their separation from the dominant order to write their novels.
Lyndall Gordon is the prize-winning author of seven biographies, including ‘The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot’; ‘Virginia Woolf: A Writer’s Life’; ‘Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft’; and ‘Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds’ and her memoir ‘Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and Daughter’. She is a Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford and the Royal Society of Literature.
The Blackwell’s Every Woman Series
From February 2018, Blackwell’s Broad Street will launch a year-long series of events in conjunction with the Centenary of Women’s Suffrage in the UK.
The 1918 Representation of the People Act gave women of property over the age of 30 the right to vote – not all women, therefore, could vote. It was a step, but it was not the whole journey. And many would argue that we are still a long way from stepping the journey’s full distance towards gender equality in this country and worldwide. Blackwell’s Centenary events programme will focus around the following questions:
1) How much does the vote mean today?
2) How far are we still from achieving gender equality?
3) How can we recognise intersectional privilege and oppression, and platform those demographics of people who weren’t acknowledged by this achievement 100 years ago, and are still under-represented and undervalued today?
For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk
Join St Cross alumna Kristina Lunz (MSc Global Governance and Diplomacy, 2014), co-founder of the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy, for a panel discussion on diplomacy, feminist foreign policy and social entrepreneurship. Joining her will be CFFP co-founder Marissa Conway, head of CFFP in the UK, and Dr Jennifer Cassidy, Editor of “Gender and Diplomacy” (Routledge, 2017) and Lecturer in International Relations, University of Oxford (St Peter’s College).
This talk is free to attend, all welcome.
About CFFP
The Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy (CFFP) is a research and advocacy organisation promoting a feminist approach to foreign policy. With its vision to challenge the status quo of foreign policy, the CFFP puts people instead of special interest at the core of policy initiatives.
CFFP was founded in 2016 by Marissa in London, where she is heading the UK section of CFFP. Kristina, a St Cross alumna (2014-2015), joined Marissa as a co-founder and also brought the organisation to Germany, where she is heading the German team. Dr Jennifer Cassidy joined CFFP’s Advisory Council recently.
Film Screening with Director: Kit Hung’s Soundless Wind Chime (無聲風鈴)
The Shulman Auditorium, The Queen’s College, Oxford
*Multilingual dialogue with English subtitles
Open and free of charge for all, please register on Eventbrite
Supported by: Oxford Chinese Studies Society (OCSS)
OCSS is proud to present our big film screening event of the term: Kit Hung’s Soundless Wind Chime! The film has a unique place in queer Asian cinema as it interweaves multiple journeys of identity and love together. The central figure of the young handsome migrant from mainland China, his intricate relationship with a Swiss expat, as well as Hong Kong as a kaleidoscopic space where all these take place, form the elements that guarantee the critical reflections this film provokes in the audiences. This event will be of interest to those of you in queer culture, translation studies, migration, Hong Kong, and film studies in general. The film is 110 minutes long and will be followed by a conversation between Director Kit Hung and Dr. Victor Fan from King’s College London, and we will leave plenty of time for critical dialogues, Q & A and discussions.
Synopsis of Soundless Wind Chime:
Soundless Wind Chime is the poetic journey of Ricky, searching for the lost soul and the past of his deceased Swiss lover – Pascal. The film shows a battle of love, lust, reality, memory and illusions and the grief everybody bears every day. The two young men Pascal and Ricky are both foreigners living in Hong Kong. While Pascal, a Swiss, ekes out a living from street theatre and petty crime, Ricky, who comes from Beijing, is a dependable helper in a humble restaurant. One fateful day their paths cross and they fall head over heels in love with each other and boldly decide to move in together. But their love is soon put to the test – the fickle Pascal makes high demands on gentle Ricky. Years later, long after their relationship comes to a sudden end, Ricky sets off in search of his former lover, and not far from Lucerne he meets a young man who looks just like Pascal. Like the broken melody of a wind chime, the secret of this poetic love story is gradually revealed in brief flashbacks. Archaic images of an austere Switzerland with its rugged mountains and rustic restaurant culture reflect not only the loneliness and pain of the lovelorn protagonist Ricky, they also stand in stark contrast to the vitality and colourfulness of life in Hong Kong where, transcending all cultural barriers, the couple experienced moments of profound happiness. (from the Chinese Visual Festival)
Speaker biography:
Kit Hung (洪榮傑) graduated with an M.F.A. from the Department of Film, Video and New Media, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Lecturer of the Academy of film, Hong Kong Baptist University, his films have won numerous international awards and were screened at over 120 international film festivals. His debut feature Soundless Wind Chime was nominated for the Teddy Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, released in more than 16 countries in 6 languages. He is currently a research student in the department of Media and Communication in the Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK.
Dr. Victor Fan (范可樂) graduated with a Ph.D. from the Film Studies Program and the Comparative Literature Department of Yale University, and an MFA in Film and Television Productions at the University of Southern California. He was Assistant Professor at McGill University, Department of East Asian Studies between 2010 and 2012, where he was also Chair of the Equity Subcommittee on Queer People. Fan has publications in peer-reviewed journals and anthology including The World Picture Journal, Camera Obscura, A Companion to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Screen, Film History and CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture. Further, his monograph Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory was published by University Of Minnesota Press in 2015. In addition, his thesis film from USC, The Well (2000), was screened in the Anthology Film Archives, São Paolo International Film Festival, the Japan Society (NYC) and the George Eastman House. It also won the third prize in the Long Narrative category in the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival.
Blackwell’s is delighted to announce an event with Laura Bates, where she will be in discussion on her latest book ‘Misogynation’ in the Sheldonian Theatre.
In this collection of essays, originally published in the Guardian, Laura Bates uncovers the sexism that exists in our relationships, our workplaces, our media, in our homes and on our streets, but which is also firmly rooted in our lifelong assumptions and in the actions and attitudes we explain away, defend and accept. Often dismissed as one-offs, veiled as ‘banter’ or described as ‘isolated incidents’, ‘Misogynation’ joins the dots to reveal the true scale of discrimination and prejudice women face.
A bold, witty and incisive analysis of current events, Misogynation makes a passionate argument for stepping back, opening our eyes and allowing ourselves to see the bigger picture.
Laura Bates is a pioneering feminist, activist and the bestselling author of ‘Everyday Sexism’ and ‘Girl Up’. Laura has given voice to hundreds of thousands of women through her international Everyday Sexism Project. She has written for the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, Red Magazine and Grazia among others. Laura is also contributor at Women Under Siege, a New-York based organisation working to combat the use of sexual violence as a tool of war in conflict zones worldwide. In 2015, Laura was awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) in the Birthday Honours for services to gender equality.
Tickets for this event cost £8. Seating is allocated on a first come first seated basis. Doors will open at 6:30pm. For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk.
As part of our Every Woman Series, Blackwell’s presents an evening with Caitlin Davies where she will be discussing her fascinating new book ‘Bad Girls’, which explores the history of a century of women, punishment and crime in HM Prison Holloway.
Those who defied expectations about feminine behaviour have long been considered dangerous and unnatural, and ever since the Victorian era they have been removed from public view, locked up and often forgotten about. Many of these women ended up at HM Prison Holloway, the self-proclaimed ‘terror to evil-doers’ which, until its closure in 2016, was western Europe’s largest women’s prison.
First built in 1852 as a House of Correction, Holloway’s women have come from all corners of the UK – whether a patriot from Scotland, a suffragette from Huddersfield, or a spy from the Isle of Wight – and from all walks of life – socialites and prostitutes, sporting stars and nightclub queens, refugees and freedom fighters. They were imprisoned for treason and murder, for begging, performing abortions and stealing clothing coupons, for masquerading as men, running brothels and attempting suicide. In ‘Bad Girls’, Caitlin Davies tells their stories and shows how women have been treated in our justice system over more than a century, what crimes – real or imagined – they committed, who found them guilty and why. It is a story of victimization and resistance; of oppression and bravery.
Caitlin Davies is a novelist, non-fiction writer, journalist and teacher, and many of her books are inspired by forgotten women from history. She is the author of six novels and six non-fiction books,.
The Blackwell’s Every Woman Series
From February 2018, Blackwell’s Broad Street will launch a year-long series of events in conjunction with the Centenary of Women’s Suffrage in the UK.
The 1918 Representation of the People Act gave women of property over the age of 30 the right to vote – not all women, therefore, could vote. It was a step, but it was not the whole journey. And many would argue that we are still a long way from stepping the journey’s full distance towards gender equality in this country and worldwide. Blackwell’s Centenary events programme will focus around the following questions:
1) How much does the vote mean today?
2) How far are we still from achieving gender equality?
3) How can we recognise intersectional privilege and oppression, and platform those demographics of people who weren’t acknowledged by this achievement 100 years ago, and are still under-represented and undervalued today?
Tickets for this event cost £5. Please note doors for this event open at 6.45pm, there will be a bar offering range of alcoholic and soft drinks that can be purchased before the event. For all enquiries please contact events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk.
Abstract: The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an independent Australian federal government research agency. CSIRO is actively participating in two key Government funded (National Innovation Statement) initiatives: the Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) program, and the Male Champions of Change (MCC) STEM.
In 2014, 140 leaders and policy representatives from Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM) in Australia voted to pilot the Athena SWAN program that had been running successfully in the UK for the past decade, as a partnership between the Australian Academy of Science and the Academy of Technology and Engineering. The pilot, Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE), was met with overwhelming demand, with 95% of Australian Universities and a number of research organisations opting in. Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) was in the first tranche of the pilot and submitted its application for a SAGE Athena SWAN Bronze Award in March 2018. In this talk, Dr Megan Osmond will describe the approach CSIRO took in developing its application and SAGE Action Plan, challenges along the way, and key early outcomes arising from the work.
The Male Champions of Change (MCC) strategy is a global coalition of men advocating for gender equality. The founding Male Champions of Change was established in 2010. Commencing with 8 Australian leaders, the group has since grown to 100 CEOs, Board Directors, Government Department, University and Military leaders. The focus of the MCC group is working together to achieve a significant and sustainable improvement in the unacceptably low levels of women in leadership by supporting peer groups of influential male leaders, to step up beside women, and drive actions to fast track gender parity. The MCC STEM was established in 2016, with CSIRO’s Chief Executive Dr Larry Marshall as Male Champion of Change. Larry committed to lead and influence real change in women’s representation not only in CSIRO but and across STEM. The collaboration between MCC STEM and SAGE provides a unique opportunity to influence change and challenge the systems and stereotypes in STEM that hold women back. CSIRO’s role in the MCC group will support and expedite outcomes of the SAGE program into the future. In this talk, Kerry Elliott will describe the actions, achievements and impact of the MCC STEM group and CSIRO’s approach to supporting males to step up and lead gender initiatives.
Biography: Dr Megan Osmond, Research Scientist, SAGE Project Manager, CSIRO
Megan joined the CSIRO in 2008 as a Post-doctoral Fellow, later converting to an on-going position as a Research Scientist. In mid-2016, Megan took on the role as manager for CSIRO’s Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) program, as part of a nation-wide pilot, and commenced a second PhD focusing on gender equity in STEM. Prior to that, Megan’s scientific research focused on the biological safety of nanomaterials in consumer products, such as carbon nanotubes, and metal oxide nanoparticles in sunscreens.
Biography: Kerry Elliott: Manager Diversity and Inclusion, CSIRO
Kerry has an extensive background in HR, Organisation Development, Diversity and Inclusion and Cultural change in both the public and private sectors. In her role as Manager of Diversity & Inclusion, Kerry leads the CSIRO Diversity and Inclusion Strategy which includes, the Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) program and the Male Champions of Change (MCC) initiative. Kerry plays a pivotal role in the drive by Australia’s pre-eminent science organisation to achieving best practice, innovative solutions to remedying gender inequity not only within CSIRO but across the STEM industry.
All welcome.
Refreshments will be available.
阴道之道l 牛津·女权话剧
Our Vaginas, Ourselves l Chinese Vagina Monologues at Oxford
The play will be performed in Chinese with English subtitles.
The Vagina Monologues is an episodic play written by Eve Ensler based on interviews with more than 200 women from different social-cultural backgrounds. Ensler wrote the piece to “celebrate the vagina”.
In 1996, The Vagina Monologues premiered at HERE Arts Center, Off-Off-Broadway in New York, and it was awarded the Obie Award for ‘Best New Play’ that same year. Ensler’s play has since been translated to more than 40 languages, and performed on the stages of over 140 countries.
In 2012, a drama-focused group, BCome, inspired by the Vagina Monologues, created an original episodic play, Our Vagina, Ourselves, based on interviews with Chinese women. The play is around an hour and a half in length, and the scripts .draw from interviews as well as the personal experiences and opinions that BCome members have on social issues.
In Our Vagina, Ourselves, women are not treated as victims, but as active subjects who have autonomy and agency. It therefore proposes an alternative reading of gender violence and integrates anger and grief with joy, satire and humour. It also challenges the marginalization of “the others” and brings forward the rights of LGBTs, and it cares deeply about intersectionality, especially among gender, sexuality and class.
On March 20, 2018, Our Vagina, Ourselves was performed in the lecture theatre of SOAS by a group of performers consisting mainly of oversea Chinese students.
On June 12, 2018, it will be performed again at Oxford!
See you then, when we will tell you all about Our Vaginas, Ourselves.
Organizing bodies：VaChina, OCSS (Oxford Chinese Studies Society), and BPCS (British Postgraduate Network for Chinese Studies)
Acting Crew: VaChina
VaChina, established in September 2017, is a UK-based Chinese feminist network officially registered at SOAS with members from various higher education institutions including in SOAS，LSE，Oxford，Cambridge，UCL，UAL, and Essex. VaChina aims to create a supportive and friendly environment for all gender and sexualities, advocates for justice within the field of gender, and promotes gender equality via different means, including theatre.
Scripts ：BCome
Founded in 2012, BCome is a feminist group based in Beijing. Led by the youth, the BCome group initiates campaigns for women’s rights and against gender-based violences.
Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/358499304639795/
Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/our-vagina-ourselves-at-oxford-tickets-45627591354?aff=efbeventtix