Women’s rights work in and post-COVID: A cross-regional roundtable discussion with VAW organisations in the UK
Wednesday
26
May
2021
Join us for a candid roundtable discussion with leading regional as well as grassroots organisations and individual activists fighting for rights, protections, shelter, and the futures of women, refugees, and those most violently marginalised by existing systems of gendered, racist, classist, and cultural oppression pre-, during, and post-COVID.
The Songs of Hecate: Poetry and the Language of the Occult.
Wednesday
21
April
2021
In recent years, in the UK, and across Europe and the US, there has been a growing fascination with the occult, and especially with the figure of the witch, in all her variety, difference and infinite capacity. Much has already been written about contemporary Western culture’s renewed interest in witchcraft and the occult, from the appearance of ‘insta-witches’ to the rise of neo-pagan practice. But what I want to do in this talk is think about this ‘occult moment’ in relation to poetry.
End-of-Term "Care Share" Social
Wednesday
24
March
2021
Each of us deserves some softness and sweetness, some spaces to exhale and to celebrate our strength, our personal and collective growth, as well as to reconnect with all the good things (and people!) who have uplifted and fortified us during this growthful but also no doubt tiring time.
Framing Lesbians, Fashioning Desire
Wednesday
24
February
2021
The artist Tee Corinne once described her collaborations with photographer Honey Lee Cottrell as the pursuit of images that “read as lesbian”. This required negotiating the demands of a community and the dynamics of desire alongside the material conditions of photographic production. This talk turns to the work of Phyllis Christopher who became known for her intimate, erotic portraits of lesbians in San Francisco the 1990s.
Indigenous Pedagogy: How to Teach a Decolonized Curriculum
Thursday
4
February
2021
Our speaker - Akua Sarr - will talk about how she planned and taught one of my favorite classes in university - “Growing Up Ethnic”, what anti-racist methods she used, how she incorporates Jesuit teaching into her work, and how she dealt with a classroom specifically designed to include individuals of non-White on non-Western origi
Islamic Feminism, Today and Tomorrow
Wednesday
25
November
2020
A central voice in discussions around gender relations in Islam today and a valued Maslaha advisor. one of the founding members of the global network Musawah, which strives for equality and justice in the Muslim family.
Querying or Queering Gender: The lived experience of zhongxing (middle gender/sex) women in China and Hong Kong
Wednesday
11
November
2020
The mediated and gendered phenomenon of zhongxing (‘middle gender/sex’ or ‘neutral gender/sex’) since the 2000s has mainstreamed non-normative gender expressions among women in the Sinophone world and attracted considerable academic discussion. Scholarly works have either placed heavy emphasis on textual representation or assumed that zhongxing is exclusively relevant to masculine lesbians. In this talk, I would like to extend the current literature by exploring the everyday practice of zhongxing among both heterosexual and queer Chinese women in urban China and Hong Kong. By drawing from 70 semi-structured interviews and discourse analysis of Internet forums, I argue that Chinese women practise zhongxing to construct alternative modes of doing gender. My findings suggest that my research participants engage in precarious boundary management by re-doing appearance and personality, as well as negotiating between respectability and authenticity. Although most of them agree that zhongxing has offered new opportunities to explore their gendered selfhood, their everyday practice of zhongxing paradoxically reinforces gender binderies and heteronormative values.
Taking Care: Mental Health & Well-being Workshop
Tuesday
3
November
2020
To help you take a breather from teaching and recalibrate in reading week, the FRACS team is delighted to invite all CWS students and staff to our workshop on "Taking Care: Mental Health & Well-being," run by Francesca Lewis (CWS PhD, 3rd year) and Bobby Alexandrova (CWS staff).
Applying for a PhD FRACS Workshop
Friday
23
October
2020
We're delighted to announce that our FRACS workshop on "Applying for a PhD" is coming up next Friday, Oct 23 at 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. on Zoom, run by Bobby (boriana.alexandrova@york.ac.uk).
