Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The history of mens opposition to womens emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story
of that emancipation itself.
Virginia Woolf, Room of Ones Own
The Womens Paths Research Group is pleased to invite PhD students and early career researchers to
its final symposium A Room of Her Own: Writing Womens Independence around the Globe,
which will be held in Leeds on 20th May 2016. The symposium will provide a space to continue the
conversation initiated at our LHRI (Leeds Humanities Research Institute) sponsored seminars and
reading group sessions organized at the University of Leeds.
Inspired by Woolfs quotation, we aim to investigate the ways in which visual culture, media studies
and literary creation can interrogate both meanings and representations of modern/contemporary
social movements for womens independence in a global context. Furthermore, the symposium
intends to develop a critical perspective regarding gender issues and the value of space and money
as qualifiers of such independence.
Papers are invited on any aspect of this debate. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Social media/literary creation and their role in the context of war (e.g. blogs writings, personal
websites)
- Issues, perspectives, representations in defining a feminine perspective
- Queer and Transgender Studies and redefining given gendered categories
- Critical approaches to the androgynous mind and creativity
- Money and space as qualifiers of individual independence (e.g. material aspects of such
independence and identity)
- Space as personal and social category (e.g. the role play inside the family unit and workplace)
- Financial independence/legal aspects in terms of inheritance laws, sexism in workplace
- Ethnic/Class stakes of feminist protest movements
Each presentation will last 15 minutes. PhD students and early career researchers interested in taking
part in the workshop are invited to send their abstracts (300 words maximum) by Monday 4th April
2016, together with a short biography (50 words) specifying name, email address and affiliation to
womenspathsleeds@gmail.com
For further information, do not hesitate to contact the organisers at the aforementioned email address.
Arunima Bhattacharya
Alexandra Gruian
Lourdes Parra
Clara Stella