Compelling Diversities, Educational Intersections: Policy, Practice, Parity Gender and Education Association Biennial Conference 2013

Compelling Diversities, Educational Intersections: Policy, Practice, Parity

Gender and Education Association Biennial Conference 2013

Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research, London South Bank University
Tuesday 23rd- Friday 26th April 2013

Confirmed keynote speakers:

  • Prof. Lisa Adkins, University of Newcastle, Australia:
  • What Do Wages Do? Feminist Theory After the Financial Crisis
  • Prof. Val Gillies, Weeks Centre, LSBU:
  • From Baby Brain to Conduct Disorder: the New Determinism in the Classroom
  • Gary Younge, author and Guardian columnist:
  • Education Equality in the UK and USA: Race and Class in a Neo-Liberal Age

Plenary Panel: Diversity in Crisis?

  • Dr Kalwant Bhopal, University of Southampton
  • Dr Kay Inckle, Trinity College Dublin
  • Dr Jayne Osgood, London Metropolitan University
  • Dr Vanita Sundaram, University of York
  • Dr Jin Haritaworn, York University

Performance:
Dr Claudia Brazzale, Liverpool Hope University ‘(Un)Covering Ground: A Critique of Contemporary
Dance Education and its Narratives of Spatial Mobility’

Call for Papers
The ninth international Gender and Education Association conference, Compelling Diversities, Educational Intersections hosted by the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research, engages with key debates surrounding the interplay between dynamics of education, work, employment and society in the context of crisis, upheaval and cutbacks. In considering diversity in education, this conference will explore the relationship between new equality regimes and continued educational inequalities, exploring organisational ambivalence, change and resistance. It will ask important questions about the role of
feminist research at a time when education, and its variously placed subjects (academics, pupils, students, and policy makers), wrestle with the commitments and contentions in doing diversity and being diverse. We would welcome proposals for papers, workshops and symposia from academics, teachers, practitioners and policymakers. Papers could usefully address:

  • Different subjects in ‘crisis’: institutions, inter-disciplines and intersections
  • Pre and Post compulsory education
  • The (re)making and (un)doing of privileged identities
  • The politics of diversity and ‘different’ differences
  • Widening participation: Access and existences
  • Educational intersections and inequalities
  • Diverse Pedagogies, Policies and Practices

Please save your abstracts (250 words) with author name followed by GEA_2012. (e.g. Taylor Y_GEA_2013) with a brief bio. and contact details to GEA2013Abstracts@lsbu.ac.uk.

The deadline for submissions is 12th November 2012. Limited Bursaries and/or discount fees will be available for number of postgraduate and early career researchers, some UK-based school teachers and a small number of academics based in resource-poor countries whose work directly relates to gender in education.

Details to follow at http://www.genderandeducation.com/

OHA Annual Meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, October 10-14, 2012

OHA Annual Meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, October 10-14, 2012

Sing It Out, Shout It Out, Say It Out Loud: Giving Voice through Oral History”

Program EventsFull Program Schedule, Registration Information Advertisers

The 2012 OHA meeting will focus not only on the many ways that people express themselves within oral histories, but also the ways in which people craft existing oral histories into other means of expression.

Papers, performances, exhibits, and roundtables will encompass broad and diverse interpretations of the conference theme, in both traditional presentations and nontraditional ones with interactive, dialogic formats and creative use of digital media.

Special guests will include, among others, Neenah Ellis, national NPR journalist and oral historian, and Harold B. Williams, former executive secretary of the NAACP in Cleveland. Several special events are also planned to tap the rich history and culture of the Cleveland area and showcase the creativity of local musicians, performers, and artists, as well as the work of regional activists striving to preserve the recent history of struggles for civil rights, labor justice, and social welfare.

Plan now to attend this vibrant and engaging conference.  Register now online at http://a3.acteva.com/orderbooking/go/oha2012

 

International Federation for Research in Women’s History Conference, Sheffield, UK, 2013

International Federation for Research in Women’s History Conference incorporating the 22nd  annual conference of the Women’s History Network, UK
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE29th August-1st September 2013 at Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

CALL FOR PAPERS

Women’s Histories: the Local and the Global 

This international conference will explore the history of women worldwide, from archaic to contemporary periods. Engaging with the recent global and transnational turns in historical scholarship, it will examine the ways in which histories of women can draw on and reshape these approaches to understanding the past. It will focus on developing gendered histories of globalisation that explore the complex interplay between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’, and on exploring the relationship between nation-based traditions of women’s history writing and transnational approaches which examine connections and comparisons between women’s lives in different localities. Key questions to be addressed are:

  • How can women’s histories reshape our understanding of the relationship between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’?
  • What implications does a transnational framework of analysis have for nation-based traditions of writing women’s history?

 Keynote speakers will include:
Mrinalini Sinha, Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History, University of Michigan.
Catherine Hall, Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History, University College London.

Strand themes:
You are invited to submit proposals for individual papers or panels (3 papers plus commentator) relating to the following strands:

  1. The impact of global change on women’s lives in specific localities.
  2. Relations between women in the context of global inequalities of power.
  3. Women’s local responses and resistances to imperialism and globalisation.
  4. Women, migrations, diasporas.
  5. Empires ‘at home’: women in imperial metropoles.
  6. Women as local producers, traders and consumers in a globalising economy.
  7. Women’s life histories and personal relationships across geo-political divides.
  8. Women’s involvement in transnational networks.
  9. National women’s histories in comparative perspective.
  10. Teaching women’s history in a globalising world.
  11. The place of the global in local, community and public histories of women.

Conference languages: English and French

Please submit your proposal online through the conference website:

http://www.ifrwh2013conf.org.uk 

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS:  31st OCTOBER 2012

The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center Celebrates the History of Graduate Education – check out today’s poster session!

As part of the Graduate Student’s Appreciation Week we have created a poster to chart the history of graduate education at Bryn Mawr College

The poster is currently being displayed in Thomas Great Hall along with posters from current graduate students. I will be available to talk about this poster tonight at 5.30pm along with the graduate students at a special event to be held before the talk by Professor James Wright of the Archaeology Department on ‘Graduate Education Through the Years’.

On Friday there will be a networking reception with current graduate students and alumnae/i and for this I have prepared a series of images which will be projected while the event is happening. This includes images of former graduate studies deans, students and facts about graduate education at Bryn Mawr College that you may be unfamiliar with. Be sure to check it out! The event is happening at 5pm in the Ely Room of Wyndham.

For more information on the events happening tonight and throughout the rest of the week check out http://inside.blogs.brynmawr.edu/2012/04/12/graduate-student-appreciation-week/

Focusing on Graduate Education at Bryn Mawr College – get involved!

As you might have seen from notices and emails, the annual Graduate Student Appreciation Week is coming up from April 16th – 20th. This is run jointly by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research and the Graduate Student Association and I have been working with them for this exciting event. Graduates, their areas of study and their post-Bryn Mawr lives are a focus of the research we are conducting at The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center and we are delighted to be involved. Check out our poster at the display on Wednesday April 18th at the Thomas Great Hall Graduate Research Symposium.

Bryn Mawr College’s graduate schools was one of the earliest to accept women fully into programs for masters and doctoral level education and represented a significant achievement for women in pursuing academic careers. If you haven’t yet seen the program of events, here’s what’s involved:

Monday, April 16th, 6:00pm – Thomas 110

Keynote Address by former President Pat McPherson: “A college without graduate students never occurred to us.” –M. Carey Thomas

Opening Remarks by Dean Osirim (GSAS) and Dean Bailey (GSSWSR)

Closing Remarks by Provost Cassidy

7:30pm – Thomas Great Hall: Reception following the Keynote Address

 Tuesday, April 17th. 6:00pm – GSSWSR Gym

Graduate Student (GSAS/GSSWSR) and Faculty Happy Hour: A time to relax and celebrate the connection between students and faculty

 Wednesday, April 18th, 5:30pm – Thomas Great Hall

Graduate Student Research Symposium: Presenters will display posters/answer questions throughout the hall; light refreshments will be served

6:00pm – Thomas Great Hall: Prof. James Wright (Archaeology Dept.) will present a talk on Graduate Education through the Years

7:30pm – Thomas Great hall: Graduate Student Research Symposium Awards Ceremony: GSAS and GSSWSR students will present Faculty Appreciation Awards; A Poster Award will be given

 Thursday, April 19th:

12noon – London Room, Thomas: TA Luncheon with Dean Osirim

4:00pm – Quita Woodward Room, Thomas: Reception with Graduate School Deans, Past and Present

4:30pm – Carpenter 21: Panel discussion with Graduate School Deans, Past and Present: Past and Present Deans from the GSAS and GSSWSR will discuss the role of graduate education at Bryn Mawr and share their personal experiences in the position of dean

 Friday, April 20th: 5:00pm – Ely Room, Wyndham

Networking Reception with Current Graduate Students (GSAS/GSSWSR) and Alumnae/i

Sponsored in part by the Career Development Office, this final event will allow current graduate students  to connect with alumnae/i while celebrating graduate education

 If you have any questions it is best to contact Lindsey Dever (ldever@brynmawr.edu) or Stella Diakou (sdiakou@brynmawr.edu) directly.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Celebrating National Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day!

Courtesy of the Bryn Mawr College Archives

Happy International Women’s Day from The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education!

This year’s theme for National Women’s History Month is (aptly for us) Women’s Education – Women’s Empowerment. This connects strongly with one of the major themes in the history of women’s education – that of women’s higher education as a tool of empowerment, propelling women into the public world in meaningful and lasting ways. We’ve been working hard this month on finalizing the designs for our new site, which will be launched in the next few months. However, in celebration of Women’s Day and as a preview to some of the wonderful images we will have on the site, I’ve created a special  Tumblr which you can access here to see them. Enjoy!

Today is International Women’s Day, the theme of which is CONNECTING GIRLS, INSPIRING FUTURES. This reminded me of the exciting new initiative happening at Bryn Mawr College which links students here with peers in four women’s colleges in Saudi Arabia, India, South Korea and Japan. The President’s Seminar is a series of four IT-facilitated, internationally linked conversations that explore higher education for women as an engine for social change and progressive leadership. Having observed the first seminar with students from Effat University in Saudi Arabia, I was impressed with the articulate and intelligent contributions and the connections students were able to make between their lives in very different places (for more on the seminars click here). Although there are lots of sites dedicated to International Women’s Day, this site  gives you a truly global perspective on the ways in which it is being celebrated across the world. For some, it’s a day of commemoration and celebration, for others, it’s a crucial time for awareness raising for issues affecting women in society today.

International Women’s Day has its roots in the labor movement and women’s demands for better, more equitable pay and conditions and has been celebrated on this day every year since 1911. The Summer School for Women Workers at Bryn Mawr College was established in 1921, aimed at working class women factory workers who otherwise had no opportunity of experiencing higher education. A history of the School is available through Triptych and can be found here. The School was the first time many of the women had ever entered a college and was a profound moment in the college’s history of reaching out to the community and providing empowerment through education. As the history of the School says, ‘President M. Carey Thomas went far beyond educational events of the past and gave impetus to a dynamic experiment which has had far-reaching results’.

Although our website isn’t ready yet to view, Special Collections has a lot of inspiring material that it has digitized already which is intimately connected to the history of women’s social movements. If you haven’t already, check out the Carrie Chapman Catt Suffrage Collection which was digitized by Bryn Mawr College Special Collections here. One of my favorite images is of a float from 1918 which demonstrated the countries that allowed women to vote which you can see here

There are exciting events happening all month to mark Women’s History Month, many of which are advertised on the National Women’s History Project site (http://www.nwhp.org/) and I have been posting many links to relevant events and projects on Twitter (follow me @RedmondJennifer) with a special emphasis this month on role models and heroines of the past we can acknowledge and appreciate for their exceptional work and the path they laid for women today.

Whatever you do to celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month don’t forget to acknowledge the progress women have made, as well as the challenges we face. Happy Women’s Day!

Courtesy of the Bryn Mawr College Archives

The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education hosts its first Advisory Committee Meeting

The project team of The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education was joined on Friday February 17th by all the members of its Advisory Committee, an amazing array of professional expertise, knowledge and scholarship on issues of the history of women’s education.

The members of the committee include former Bryn Mawr College president, Nancy Vickers, who is now Treasurer of the American Council of Learned Societies, and current President Jane Dammen McAuliffe also joined the meeting.

Anne Bruder, former CLIR fellow at Bryn Mawr College and editor of Offerings to Athena, now at Berea College, is also on the committee, and is joined by a number of eminent scholars who she collaborated with on the 125th Anniversary conference, Heritage and Hope, held in 2010. These include Helen Horowitz, Professor Emerita at Smith College and author of the biography of M. Carey Thomas, The Power and the Passion of M. Carey Thomas, which many of you will be familiar with, among other excellent books on women’s experiences of higher education over the last two centuries. Also on our committee is Mary C. Kelley, Ruth Bordin Collegiate Professor of History, American Culture and Women’s Studies at University of Michigan and author of many books on the history of women’s education, my favorite being Learning to Stand and Speak.

The Committee also has a range of teaching experts, such as Christine Woyshner, a professor of education at Temple University who worked with us on the National History Day collaboration with Temple students (detailed in earlier posts by Lisa MacMurray and Teddy Knauss). Elizabeth di Cataldo is the archivist at the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, which as many of you know was set up by M. Carey Thomas and her associates to provide a high standard of education for young girls wishing to pursue higher education. As was said at the meeting, without the Bryn Mawr School there would be no Bryn Mawr College. An eminent Bryn Mawr College alum, Catharine Stimpson, a Professor in the English department at New York University and founding editor of the preeminent feminist journal, Signs, has also joined us on the Committee (click here for a transcript of her address at the Heritage and Hope conference http://www.brynmawr.edu/125th/conference/proceedings.html).

The Center aims to have an international outlook and outreach and for this reason Joyce Goodman of the University of Winchester, was invited on to the committee. The past president of the History of Education Society (UK) and the author and editor of a number of books on the international history of women’s education, including the recent four volume Women and Education: Major Themes edited with Jane Martin, Joyce gave us some great ideas on how to expand our research questions into the history of women in the western world.

The Advisory Committee contains members of the Bryn Mawr College faculty and staff, some of whom helped to obtain the original grant funding from The Albert M. Greenfield Foundation, inlcuding Elliott Shore,  Chief Information Officer and Constance A. Jones Director of Libraries and Professor of History and Eric Pumroy, Director of Library Collections and Seymour Adelman Head of Special Collections. Bryn Mawr colleagues also include David Karen, Professor of Sociology & Chair of the Faculty, Katherine Rowe, Professor of English, Director of the Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center, and Director of Digital Research & Teaching and Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, Associate Professor of History.

It was a lively meeting in which the deeper research questions about the Center’s mission were discussed alongside the most important themes in the history of women’s education and we look forward to fruitful collaborations in the future. With our committee members expertise and ideas, we can now move forward with our plans to establish the Center as the primary site of knowledge, discussions and resources on the history of women’s education. We hope to have all the committee back again for the conference we are planning for Spring 2013.

Watch this space for updates! And as always, if you have thoughts, get in touch…

With thanks to our resident technologist and now photographer, Cheryl Klimaszewski, for taking this collection of photos.

Talk in Center City: The Quest to be Educated: the Complicated History of Women and Higher Education, Feb 9th 2012

For any of you interested in hearing more about The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center and the kinds of research we are engaged in, Bryn Mawr College Friends of the Library in collaboration with New Century Trust are hosting the Director, Jennifer Redmond to speak on ‘The Quest to be Educated: the Complicated History of Women and Higher Education’.

The talk will begin at 5:30 pm and is at the New Century Trust building, 1307 Locust Street, Philadelphia. The New Century Trust is an organization that was founded in 1893 to support the social, industrial and educational cultivation and improvement of working girls and women. For more about the Trust, see http://newcenturytrust.org

At a time when women seem to be outperforming men in many areas of educational achievement, it is difficult to remember that higher education for women was a highly controversial idea just a century ago, and that most elite colleges and universities in America did not admit women until the 1970s. The talk will focus on women’s early struggles to gain access to higher education, the preconceptions of women’s capabilities and roles in society that had to be overcome, and the critical role played by women’s colleges like Bryn Mawr. The activities of the Center will also be announced, including a volunteer transcription project we hope many of you will get involved with.

For additional information about the talk, or to rsvp, please contact the Special Collections Department, Bryn Mawr College Library: SpecColl@brynmawr.edu, or call 610-526-6576

We’d love to see you so please consider coming along!