Manchester Feminist Theory Network
Launch Event: The Child and Childhood in Feminist Theory
10 - 11 December 2008
Lecture Theatre, Manchester Museum, Oxford Road, Manchester
As the launch event of a new cross-university interdisciplinary feminist theory network in Manchester, we convened a two-day workshop on the theme of the child and childhood in feminist theory. In the last decade, there have been a striking number of studies across the disciplines on the figure of the child and on childhood generally, which have drawn on feminist (and other) theories to think about questions of subjectivity, fantasy, relationality, futurity, affect, human rights, nationalisms, psychological and economic models of development, globalization and social inequalities. Debates in these areas have been complex and contested for feminist engagements, in part because of the ways women's rights and children's rights are either presumed to be elided or else set in competition with each other alongside state maternalism and heteronormativity. Hence a feminist politics of childhood becomes increasingly urgent as an arena in which to address key dilemmas facing transnational and intersectional feminist commitments.
This workshop, based around discussions of pre-circulated papers, debated where we are now with these longstanding concerns, drawing on a variety of contemporary conceptual, methodological and disciplinary frameworks. Papers ranged across the social and human sciences, arts and humanities and through these we considered the place of feminist theory within the academy more generally.
This initiative is co-organised by Erica Burman (MMU) and Jackie Stacey (University of Manchester) and is sponsored by the University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and Salford University.
Speakers include:
Johanna Motzkau (Open University)
Karin Lesnik-Oberstein (University of Reading)
Karen Lury (University of Glasgow)
Lucie Armitt (Salford Univerity)
Daniela Caselli (University of Manchester)
Jane Kilby (Salford University)
Ingrid Palmary (University of Witwatersrand)
Please note: All speakers have submitted their papers in advance, and will speak for 20 minutes to their papers, rather than presenting them. Participants were strongly escouraged to download the papers and read them in advance of the workshop.
The conference poster and conference programme are also available.