Location
All Souls College
As austerity and right-wing politics have drawn campaigns to defend women’s rights to the fore, scholars and activists have turned to feminism’s recent past. Discussions of women’s bodily autonomy, their experiences of domestic and sexual violence, and their involvement in paid and unpaid labour have stimulated increased interest in the history of the British women’s liberation movement, active from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. Recent scholarship has reflected upon the political and intellectual dynamism of this activism, acknowledging contemporary resonances while seeking to understand the movement on its own terms. It is timely, then, to examine how this developing body of work has situated issues of sexuality, race and place; how these concerns intersected and interacted with other social movements of the period; and how historians can navigate the diverse and sometimes conflicting stances taken by a rarely cohesive movement.
This one-day workshop, hosted at All Souls College, University of Oxford and organised with the support of the Centre for Gender, Identity and Subjectivity will draw together historians working on the women’s liberation movement in Britain. With papers on a range of subjects—from Socialist-Feminism to Thatcherism, from Existentialism to the Black Women’s Movement—and a session featuring feminist activists, past and present, this workshop will explore the ways in which historians approach such recent and relevant histories.
Researchers at any stage of their career, based at any institution, are warmly invited, although spaces are limited so please only sign up if you are sure you can attend: .https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/new-directions-in-the-history-of-the-british-womens-liberation-movement-tickets-38837451864