Date: 9 October 2019
Keynote speaker: Dr Elena Woodacre (University of Winchester), author of The Queens Regnant of Navarre: succession, politics and partnership, 1274-1512, lead editor of the Routledge History of Monarchy, founder of the Royal Studies Network
This one-day event hosted by the Medieval and Early Modern Studies research group at Northumbria University, Newcastle, brings together academics, early career researchers, and PhD students for an interdisciplinary symposium linking new and more traditional approaches to medieval and early modern gender studies broadly defined.
Recent years have seen a proliferation of approaches to gender studies to include, for example, incorporation of LGBTQ and challenging heteronormativity, history of emotions, and the recognition that to understand gender relations, we must equally study both femininity and masculinity. At the same time, interdisciplinary approaches, from literature, archaeology, music, history, linguistics, art and performance, continue to provide us with new and exciting ways of unlocking experiences of the past as both physical and sexual, as well as structured by gendered social norms.
We invite 250-word proposals for 20-minute papers on the theme of ‘Sex and Gender Politics’ but are also open to other formats (roundtable discussions, shorter work-in-progress papers, performances, reconstructions, posters etc). We hope that the informal atmosphere of a symposium will provide a friendly forum for both developed work as well as work-in-progress and trying out new ideas.
We welcome proposals relating to gender, sex and politics in their broadest senses. Moreover, we understand the term ‘politics’ broadly, as incorporating both governance and power relations between individuals and groups, therefore relating to court and diplomacy, local, family, and religious politics.
Areas of interest include but are not limited to:
- Expressions of identity
- Mistresses and favourites
- Cross-dressing on stage and beyond
- Sexual violence and harassment
- Representation and iconography
- Sexuality and eroticism
- Authority and power
- History of emotions
- Consumerism and material culture
- Work and leisure
- Boundaries, restrictions, limitations, and resistance
Please email your proposals to Katarzyna Kosior by 8 July 2019.
