Rethinking Sisterhood: The Affective Politics of Women’s
Relationships
th
13 September 2014, 9am-8pm
Bristol University
Graduate School of Education, 35 Berkeley Square, Fourth Floor
8.30am: Registration with tea and coffee
9.00am – 10.30am: Welcome and Keynote: Lynne Segal ‘Casting Memory Forwards:
Riding the Feminist Waves’ (Chair: Maud Perrier) Room 410
10.30am – 11am: Tea, coffee, and poetry reading with Jennifer Militello, Carrie Etter and
Claire Crowthe ‘This Community of Mothers: A Poetry Reading’
11.00am – 12.30pm: Parallel Panel Session 1
12.30pm – 1.30pm: Lunch and FWSA AGM
1.30pm – 3.00pm: Parallel Panel Session 2, Activist Roundtable Debate
3.00pm – 3.30pm: Tea and coffee break
3.30pm – 5.00pm: Parallel Panel Session 3, Creative Workshops
5.00pm – 6.00pm: Keynote: Margaretta Jolly ‘Sisterhood and After: Making Sense Of A
Women’s Liberation Oral History Project’ (Chair: Helen Snaith) Room 410
6.15pm – 7.00pm: Registration for Jackie Kay evening event. Wine reception with evening
refreshments
7.00pm – 8.00pm: Jackie Kay ‘FIERE: Exploring Deep Friendships between Women’
(Chair Emily Falconer) Room 410
Parallel Sessions
11.00am – 12.30pm: Parallel Panel Session 1
Affective Activisms: Feminism then and now (Chair: Kate Sang) Room 410
Prudence Chamberlain and Eley Williams (Royal Holloway)
‘Reconceiving the Wave Narrative as An Affective Temporality’
Netta Chachamu (Cardiff University) and Robbie Duschinsky (Northumbria University)
“‘Sisterhood’ served the rhetorical purpose of political under-development”:
Reflections on ideals and political change in the work of Juliet Mitchell and in
contemporary Britain’
Line Nyhagen (Loughborough University)
‘From universal to strategic sisterhood among women’s movement activists’
Symbolic Motherhoods (Chair: Sherah Wells) Room 401
Maud Perrier and Maria Fannin (University of Bristol)
‘Rethinking feminine relationality: Beyond Sisterhood and Motherhood?’
Yael Bankire (Bar Ilan University)
‘Undermining the narrow concept of motherhood: A consciousness-raising group
therapy of women who are both mothers and coping with mental disability’
Kat Neumann (University of Stirling)
‘The subversive face of Mother Superior in a poem by Dorothee Sölle’
Sisterhood in the Academy (Chair: Rose Holyoak) Room 402
Maria Tsouroufli (London Metropolitan University)
‘Shattered feminist dreams, fantasy needs and tantalising encounters: Feminist
academics and women managers in the Corporate University’
Yvette Taylor (Weeks Centre for Social and Policy research, LSBU) and Julie Harpin
(Goldsmiths University)
‘Feminist Tears’
Nina-Sophie Fritsch (The University of Vienna)
‘At The Leading Edge – Does Gender Still Matter? A Qualitative Study On Successful
Coping Strategies and Prevailing Obstacles In Academia. Analysing Female Careers
In Austria’
Melanie Boeckmann (University of Bremen) and Jasmina Crcic (University of Marburg)
‘Beyond the dissertation: peer support as a feminist action?’
Sisterhood Across Spaces (Chair: Bridget Lockyer) Room 406
Heidi Fritz (University of Warwick)
‘English feminist teachers’ lives and relationships: diverse pathways of sisterhood?’
Scarlett Brown and Natalie Wreyford (King's College London)
‘Negotiating the costs and benefits of 'sisterhood': ambivalence in the professional
relationships of female screenwriters and non-executive directors’
Margaret Page (University of West England)
‘Unsettling sisterhood: Sustaining Feminist Collaboration across inter-subjective,
political and business worlds’
Sisterhood in the Media (Chair: Nic Presley) Room 407
Louise Pennington (Activist and writer)
‘(Re)Creating Sisterhood Online: The Mumsnet Phenomenon’
Claire Sedgwick (De Montfort University)
‘Feminist Magazines and Blogs: Familial Metaphors vs. Tradition’
Rebecca Feasey (Bath Spa University)
‘Mothers on Mothers: Maternal Readings of Popular Television’
1.30pm – 3.00pm: Parallel Panel Session 2, Activist Roundtable Debate
Rethinking Sisterhood (Chair: Claire O’Callaghan) Room 401
Carly Guest (Birkbeck University)
‘Rethinking the angry feminist’
Dawn Mannay and Melanie Morgan (Cardiff University)
'Rethinking academic sisterhood: reflections on relationships between women in
research practice and within the ivory tower'
Emily Falconer (Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research, LSBU)
‘Thanking or Betraying our Feminist Sisters?’ Feminist identities and the politicisation
of tourism: A new women’s movement or simply women on the move?
Political Sisterhoods (Chair: Bridget Lockyer) Room 402
Sophie Robinson (University of New South Wales)
‘Gay liberation, politics and sisterhood’
Shaminder Takhar (Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research, LSBU)
‘Collective identities, political agency and social transformation’
María Martín de Almagro Iniesta (Université libre de Bruxelles)
‘Gender security and the politics of identity in transnational advocacy networks’
Leah Goertzen (University of Manitoba)
‘No longer black or white: New experiences in research using a feminist post-colonial
lens’
Eighteenth-Century Sisterhoods: Rivalry and Reputation (Chair: Joanne Parsons)
Room 406
Victoria Joule (Plymouth University) ‘The uncommon happiness of the (all-female)
cabal?’: Reading Female Literary Friendships in the Early Eighteenth Century’
Alison Winch (Middlesex University) ‘If female envy did not spoil everything in the world
of women’: Rivalry and Reputation in Lady Elizabeth Craven’s Travelogues’
Amy Culley (University of Lincoln) ‘Oh! Heavens! If a Select Society could be formed’:
Female relationships in the writing of Mary Robinson’
Horizontal Sisterhood (Chair: Charlotte Mathieson) Room 407
Rose Holyoak (University of Leicester)
‘Inspiring and sustaining one another: the influence of non-hierarchical relationships
on young women’s politicisation and activist commitment’
Li-Ning Chen (University of Essex)
'Democratizing Female Authority': A Feminist Practice of Agonistic Pluralism’
Elizabeth Maber (University of Sussex)
‘How far can the bridge reach? Exploring collectivity and difference in the women’s
movement in Myanmar’
Yvonne Low (University of Sydney)
‘Learning to become "professional": The rise of women's networks in the Indonesia
Art World’
Activist roundtable debate: ‘Practicing Sisterhood, the politics of activism’ Room 410
Chaired by Finn Mackay (University of West of England and Founder of London Feminist
Network) with Sian Norris (Founder of Bristol Feminist Network), Helen Mott (co-ordinator,
Bristol Fawcett), Marina Strinkovsky (Author of It’s Not a Zero Sum Game) Shabana Kausar
(Bristol Women’s Voice, Women’s Aid), Nimco Ali (Daughters of Eve)
3.30pm – 5.00pm: Parallel Panel Session 3, Creative Workshops
Women and Friendship (Chair: Charlotte Mathieson) Room 401
Sarah Hill (University of East Anglia)
‘Every girl for herself’?: Adolescent female friendship in contemporary British cinema’
Ida Maria Börjesson (Örebro University)
‘Rethinking homosociality – a useful concept for relationships between women?’
Sarah Marie Hall (University of Manchester)
‘Paper title: Make, mend and befriend: geographies of austerity, crafting and
friendship in contemporary cultures of dressmaking’
Laura Dales (University of Western Australia)
‘Friends and husbands: Tensions and ties in Japanese women’s lives’
Fragmented sisterhoods (Chair: Poonkulaly Gunaseelan) Room 402
Jean-François Brault (Paris 8 University)
‘Beyond Sisterhood: Rethinking Feminism Through Intersectionality’
Nwokocha Sandra Chinyeaka (The University of Birmigham)
‘African women’s issues in feminist scholarship’
Sabiha Allouche (SOAS)
‘Results from the Field: Un-Sisterly Consequences for Dissident Sexualities in
Lebanon?’
Creative Workshop 1 Room 410
VIDA, the Critical Management Studies Women’s Association ‘An experiment in critical
friendship’
This workshop focuses on papers that have been submitted and distributed in advance for
discussion in the session itself, according to the tenets of critical friendship. There will not be
any formal presentation of or responses to these papers. The session is for women only.
Creative Workshop 2 Room 406
Emma Gee and Sarah Gee (Artists and Researchers) ‘Finding the binds and binding the
finds’
Throughout the Conference:
Visual recordings and documentaries: Room 409
Miriam Arely Vázquez Vidal (Jaume I University) and Priscyll Anctil Avoine (Santo Tomas
University) ‘Experiencing our Body: Understanding Sisterhood through Breasts’
Deborah Withers (Feminist Writer) ‘The Softest Mountain’
Exhibition: Room 408
Emma Gee and Sarah Gee (Artists and Researchers) ‘Finding the binds and binding the
finds’