Manchester Feminist Theory Network (MFTN)
The Manchester Feminist Theory Network (MFTN) was started in 2009 by Jackie Stacey (The University of Manchester), Erica Burman (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Jane Kilby (University of Salford) in order to organise, co-ordinate and publicise events of interests to feminists working across the three Universities. Everyone is welcome to participate.
If you would like to be added to the MFTN email list, please contact: caitriona.devery[at]manchester.ac.uk
Upcoming Events
9 May 2012: Seminar: Karma Chávez "Alternative Imaginaries: The Political Possibility of Radical Interactionality"
Karma Chávez (Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA and co-founder of the Queer Migration Research Network).
Wednesday May 9th, 1pm in University Place 4.210
This talk builds on theories of intersectionality by advancing the notion of "radical interactionality" as a political rhetoric that constructs an alternative imaginary with material implications for queer, migrant, and queer migrant lives. Such a rhetoric starts critique from the roots of a problem or crisis and shows how systems of power and oppression interact to produce subjects, institutions, and ideologies that enable and constrain political response. Radical interactionality reflects a coalitional gesture that often addresses an audience comprised of people who are simultaneously likely and unlikely allies as they share political interests but divergent beliefs about the most salient aspects of an issue. This talk analyzes the rhetoric of the radical, queer materialist activist, Yasmin Nair, the most consistent voice for shifting the way queer and migrant activism and politics should be conducted.
Please contact humaira.saeed@manchester.ac.uk to express your interest in this event and be sent the (optional) background reading for the session: materials by Yasmin Nair, whose work Karma Chávez will be discussing. Karma R. Chávez is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA and co-founder of the Queer Migration Research Network (http://queermigration.com). She writes about feminism, immigration, queer theory and social movements and is finishing a book titled, Queer/Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities.
Wed 22 Feb 2012 - MFTN Workshop: Suryia Nayak, ‘Black feminism is not white feminism in blackface’
Wed 22 February 2012, 3-5pm. University Place 3.210, University of Manchester. Suryia Nayak, University of Salford, gives this workshop on Audre Lorde.
Reading:Lorde, A. (1979) ‘Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface’ reprinted in Lorde, A. (1984) Sister Outsider. Crossing Press Feminist Series. United States of America.
Fri 9 March 2012 - Trafford Rape Crisis: Declaring the Activism of Black Feminist Theory Convention
Longford Park Stadium, Manchester.
The daily reality of living with the effects of racism and sexism mixed up with other pressures such as poverty, disability and homophobia is exhausting. The ways in which Black women are physically, emotionally and sexually violated and survive these experiences need to be understood in relation to racism and those other weights of oppression that press us down. In other words Black women survivors of this racist patriarchy have specific issues and needs which require particular strategies, knowledge and forms of action. This convention has grown out of Black women (in Manchester and beyond) voicing their desire/need for mutual nourishment, inspiration and exchange of intelligence and support.
Keynote Speakers: Sara Ahmed, Gargi Bhattacharyya, Kum Kum Bhavnani, Kimberle Crenshaw, Carole Boyce Davies, FORWARD, Southhall Black Sisters, Ann Phoenix, Sunera Thobani.
This convention is supported by Manchester Feminist Theory Network and the Reseach Institute of Cosmopolitan Cultures, UCU and The Psychology of Women Section of the BPS.
Full details and registration information is available via Trafford Rape Crisis website.
Past MFTN Events
WED 23 NOV 2011 - RICC/MFTN Seminar: Heather Latimer - ‘Reproductive Cosmopolitics in Maria Full of Grace and In America’
Wednesday 23 November, 3-5pm, Samuel Alexander, S3.1.
This talk discusses how humanist philosophies such as cosmopolitanism continue to position the reproductive body as a resource or ground for the politics of collective reproduction. It looks at how reproduction is bound to cosmopolitanism in this fashion by examining two recent films that make thematic connections between migration, reproduction and subjectivity in their visualizations of cosmopolitan kinship: In America (Sheridan 2003) and Maria Full of Grace (Marston 2004).
TUES 18 OCT 2011 RICC/MFTN Workshop: Haneen Maikey - 'Homonationalism, Pinkwashing, and the Palestinian Struggle'
Tuesday 18 October, 10-11.30am, 2.016/017 Arthur Lewis Building (2nd Floor). Joint RICC/MFTN event.
This workshop will be facilitated by Haneen Maikey, a queer Palestinian activist and the director of alQaws. Haneen will present the queer struggle in Palestine through the broader historical and political context. The workshop will propose an understanding about the nature of the queer activism in Palestine, its accomplishments and challenges through the last decade and will introduce the current discourse of homonationalism and Pinkwashing in Israel from the perspective of marginalized Palestinian queers.
In late 2001, Haneen worked as the Palestinian Project Coordinator for Jerusalem Open House, which began Haneen’s involvement in the Palestinian queer community and instigated long process of self-discovery and community development. During this period, what began as merely a service-oriented project under the umbrella of a Jewish-Israeli organization grew into alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society – the first independent, grassroots, politically active LGBTQ organization working within Israel and the Palestinian occupied territories. Since 2008, Haneen has been the director of alQaws.
TUES 4 OCT 2011 RICC/MFTN: Flor De María Gamboa Solís: ‘”Femininity, fright, madness”: a paradigmatic circuit of the ghostly’
Tuesday 4 October, 5-6.30pm, 2.016/017 Arthur Lewis Building. Co-organised by RICC and Manchester Feminist Theory Network.
“Femininity, fright, madness” is a circuit that can be translated into a threefold structure for thinking about the ghostly realm. This can model and order our way of understanding meanings and our sense of the frightening, spooky, horrifying and delirious results from such experiences. The key element enabling this circuit to function is the image of the castrated woman imbedded in psychoanalysis. This presentation looks at “The lost ghost”, a classic ghost story by Mary E. Wilkins, and attempts to dismantle the interconnections between the three terms in order to reveal why femininity is the fuel of the ghostly.
Flor de María Gamboa Solís is Professora-Investigadora de la Facultad de Psicologia de la Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolas de Hidalgo, Morelia, Mexico
Manchester Feminist Theory Network Workshops: The Case for Feminism, May 2011
The University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, Salford University.
Hosted across three weeks in May, the workshops will centre on the theme of the case, exploring the relationship between feminist theory and research and examining how theory is generated from particular case studies. Each speaker will present a paper detailing their own engagement with individual cases, considering how these have informed their development of particular theoretical perspectives and analytical tools. Discussants will present responses to the paper and facilitate the workshop.
All postgraduate students and staff are welcome.
Timetable of workshops:
Workshop 1: Wednesday 11th May 12.30-2.00 – University Place 4.212
Speaker: Sasha Roseneil, Birkbeck, University of London
Discussant: Jackie Stacey, University of Manchester
Readings:
Sasha Roseneil, 'Haunting in an Age of Individualisation', European Societies, 11(3) 2009: 411-430.
Sasha Roseneil, 'The ambivalences of Angel’s ‘arrangement’: a sychosocial lens on the contemporary condition of personal life', The Sociological Review, 54(4) 2006: 847-869.
Workshop 2: Tuesday 17th May 12:20-2 – University Place 3.214
Studying Pornography: ‘Feminism’ and ‘Theory’
Speaker: Feona Attwood, Sheffield Hallam University
Discussant: Clarissa Smith, University of Sunderland
Workshop 2 Outline: the study of pornography has been developed slowly but steadily since the late 1980s, most frequently by academics who are keenly concerned with sex and gender politics. Despite this, a popular view has persisted that the ‘feminist’ view is based on a crude ‘anti-pornography’ stance, a view recently strengthened by the resurgence of the feminist anti-pornography movement in the UK and US. The publication of the anti-pornography text, Everyday Pornography in 2010, edited by Karen Boyle and presented as part of Routledge’s Media and Cultural Studies offering for students in humanities and social science disciplines, suggests a further retreat from theoretical work on pornography, even in some academic quarters. In this workshop we focus on the collection’s roundtable discussion between Gail Dines, Linda Thompson, Rebecca Whisnant and Karen Boyle and ask what it suggests about the ways in which debates about porn continue to be framed in relation to both ‘feminism’ and ‘theory’ and how they depend on an incitement of disgusted response to both sex and media.
Readings:
Attwood, Feona, 2011, ‘After the Paradigm Shift: Contemporary Pornography Research’, Sociology Compass.5(1): 13-22.
Gail Dines, Linda Thompson, Rebecca Whisnant, with Karen Boyle, 2010, 'Arresting images: anti-pornography slide shows, activism and the academy' in Karen Boyle (ed), Everyday Pornography, London: Routledge.
Smith, Clarissa, 2010, ‘Pornographication: A discourse for all seasons’, International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 6(1): 103-108.
Workshop 3: Wednesday 25th of May 4.30-6.00 – University Place 3.213
Speaker: Victoria Robinson, University of Sheffield
Discussant: Bridget Byrne, University of Manchester
Workshop 3 outline: Drawing initially on a single case study, this talk explores the relationship between methodologies used for sex research and representations of ‘sex’ in everyday life. Using an ESRC funded cross generational study of heterosexuality in the UK, carried out with Jenny Hockey and Angela Meah, it asks how the relationship between interviewer and informant contributes to the production of knowledge around sexuality and how this then relates to the actual concepts and practices which constitute everyday understandings of sexuality.
Readings:
Hockey, Jenny , Meah, Angela and Robinson, Victoria, 2004, 'A heterosexual life: Older women and agency within marriage and the family', Journal of Gender Studies, 13: 3, 227 — 238.
Robinson, Victoria , Meah, Angela and Hockey, Jenny, 2007, 'Representing 'Sex' in the Research Process', International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 10: 3, 181 — 194
Registration for these events is not required. For further information please e-mail rachel.oneill-2@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk or Matthew.Helmers@gmail.com.
Seminar: Radhika P., "Woman & Unreason: Thinking a cultural history through women's writing, popular cinema and psychiatry in South India"
Wednesday March 9 2011, 4.00-5.30pm
The presentation will attempt to trace the cultural history of 'unreason' in the post-colonial Indian context through examining the production of the 'mad woman' in the sites of women's writing, popular cinema and the psychiatric clinic.
Radhika P. is currently working as Associate Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore. She is currently working on the construction of the 'mad woman' in the realms of psychiatry and popular culture and is involved in the assembling of a data-base of the NIMHANS archive going back to the early twentieth century. As part of the Culture Subjectivity and Psyche (CUSP) Research Programme at CSCS, she is involved in a study on The Experience of Gendered Violence: Developing Psychobiographies. Her doctoral work examined the construction of subjectivity in post-independence regional women's writing in the context of an emerging Indian state's scientific-developmental discourse.
Public Lecture: Adrian Howe (RMIT University)
Every Time You Said ‘Penis’, (Men’s) Violence, Victim Advocacy and Impermissible Speech,
Wednesday 10 November 2010, 5-6.30pm, Crescent House, Room 103, University of Salford. Poster.
Feminism and its Methods: An Interdisciplinary Colloquium (CRESC Conference)
12-13 July 2010 Further details
Speakers: Lisa Adkins, Goldsmiths
Bridget Byrne, University of Manchester
Rachel Cohen, University of Sussex
Ann Cvetkovich, University of Texas
Joan Haran, Cardiff University
Margaretta Jolly, University of Sussex
Julie McLeod, University of Melbourne
Maureen McNeil, University of Lancaster
Nirmal Puwar, Goldsmiths, University of London
Kate O Riordan, University of Sussex
Rachel Thomson, Open University
Kath Woodward, Open University
Sophie Woodward, University of Manchester
Feminist Life Writing: A Manchester Feminist Theory Network Workshop
Friday 18 June 2010 (11-6pm)
Organiser: Jane Kilby (University of Salford)
Speakers: Frigga Haug , Alison Light and Janet Wolff
Location: University of Salford. Full details
Professor Erica Burman (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Thursday 20 May 2010 (1-2pm)
"Gender and childhood in neoliberal times: contemporary tropes of the boychild in psychological culture"
Location: Samuel Alexander A112, The University of Manchester.
Postgraduate Symposium with Prof Erica Burman
Thursday 20 May 2010 (3-6pm)
Location: Samuel Alexander A112, The University of Manchester
To register contact CIDRA@manchester.ac.uk, www.manchester.ac.uk/cidra
Roundtable 'Debating the Child'
Wednesday 19 May 2010 (2-5pm)
Participants: Barry Cooper (Music); Emma Griffiths (CLAH); Daniela Caselli (EAS); Carol Mavor (AHVS); Eleanor Conlin Casella (Archeaology); Atreyee Sen (R&T/RICC/CIDRA); Gillian Evans (CRESC/RICC).
Location: Samuel Alexander A101, The University of Manchester
To register contact CIDRA@manchester.ac.uk, www.manchester.ac.uk/cidra
The Complete Roberta Breitmore Symposium
Saturday 15 May 2010 (3-5pm)
Join Lynn Hershman Leeson in conversation with Jackie Stacey, Co-Director of the Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures, and Rachel Garfield, lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University, London. Chaired by Maria Balshaw, Director of the Whitworth, the discussion addresses the impact of Hershman Leeson's Roberta Breitmore series on artistic and cultural practice and her continuing relevance to feminism, representations of identity and life in a digital age. Further details.
Venue: Free Lecture Theatre, Whitworth Art Gallery
Women Art Revolution: Lynn Hershman Leeson
Friday 14 May 2010 (2-5pm)
A Masterclass with independent, feminist artist and filmmaker, Lynn Hershman Leeson. In discussion with Lynn Hershman Leeson will be Jackie Stacey (University of Manchester), Rosemary Betterton (Lancaster University) and Clare Johnson (University of the West of England). Full details.
May 2010: Events on the Child (of interest to MFTN)
Organised by Dani Caselli and others for CIDRA (Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts), The University of Manchester
Monday and Tuesday 10-11 May 2010
The Convulsive Nursery: Surrealism and Childhood Sexuality
Organiser: James Boaden (with the additional input of David Lomas and Carol Mavor). James Kincaid to close the conference as a keynote speaker.
Further details. Programme.
Public Lecture: Kum-Kum Bhavnani (UC Santa Barbara)
'Transnational Feminisms and Development: Staying on the Edge?' (24 February 2010).
PG workshops on Feminist Theory
October 2009 – May 2010. Organiser: Matthew Helmers (PhD student in English at MU).
Through SAGE, in SAHC at The University of Manchester.
2008-2009
Transnational Feminisms: Postgraduate Conference
Keynote Speakers: Dr. Anne-Marie Fortier (Lancaster University), Prof. Gabriele Griffin (University of York), Dr. Amrit Wilson (Royal Holloway) (4-5 December 2009)
'Psychic Life of Power' Judith Butler Reading Group
Kirsten Campbell (2001) "The Plague of the Subject: Psychoanalysis
and Judith Butler’s Psychic Life of Power" International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies 6(1/2): 35-48.
Pierre Macherey (2004) [trans. Jason Smith] "Out of Melancholia: Notes on Judith Butler's The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection" Rethinking Marxism 16(1): 8-17. (16 November 2009)
Feminist ‘Desert Island’ Texts
Roundtable: Jane Kilby and Frances Piper (Salford); Erica Burman (MMU); Jackie Stacey (The University of Manchester) and Carol Smart (The University of Manchester); and Nicole Vitellone (Liverpool) (4 November 2009)
Theorising Violence
A Symposium
Bulent Diken (Lancaster University): 'Violence, Nihilism, (Post)politics'
Johanna Oksala (University of Dundee): 'State Violence, Governmentality and the Recession of Law'
Larry Ray (University of Kent): 'The Mark of Cain - Shame, Violence and Social Theory' (30 October 2009)
Public Lecture: Vicki Kirby
(The University of New South Wales)
The impasse of cultural constructionism: or, what if culture was really nature all along? (20 October 2009)
Feminism and the Question of Rape
Seminar with Joanna Burke (Birkbeck College, University of London), Tanya Horeck (Anglia Ruskin University) and Nayanika Mookherjee (Lancaster University) (16 September 2009)
Workshop with Elizabeth Wilson
(Department of Women's Studies at Emory University).
Abstract: '"Would I had Him with me Always": Sexuality and Affects of Longing in early Artificial Intelligence (AI).' (23 June 2009)
Workshop with Sarada Balagopalan
(Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi). Abstract: 'The Girl Child and Schooling in India: A Critical Reading.' (16 June 2009)
Feminism, Anti-Racism and Cosmopolitan Cultures
Seminar and Workshop with Nira Yuval Davis (University of East London) and Mica Nava (University of East London) (5 May 2009)
Lauren Berlant
Seminar: 'After the Good Life, the Impasse: Time Out, Human Resources and the Neoliberal Present' (10 February 2009)
Judith Butler, Public Lecture
'Frames of War' (5 February 2009)
Launch Event
The Child and Childhood in Feminist Theory (10-11 December 2008)