Newsletter No 36  November 2003 News From National Committees

 United Kingdom 

Women’s history continues to be practised in many spaces and places - in and outside the academy, across the regions of England and in Scotland and Wales.  The member-based organisation affiliated to the IFRWH is the Women’s History Network. Founded in 1991, the Network aims to encourage contact between all people interested in women’s history - in education, the media or in private research; to collect and publish information relating to women’s history; to identify and comment upon all issues relating to women’s history; to promote research into all areas of women’s history; and to establish a database of the research, teaching and study-interests of the members and other related organisations and individuals. A national Steering Group, elected by the membership, meets regularly during the year to carry out the business of the WHN, focusing in particular on the organisation of the Annual Conference which is held in September of each year.

The 2002 conference was held at Royal Holloway College, in Surrey. The theme was ‘Earning and Learning’ and it attracted over 130 delegates not only from Scotland, Ireland Wales and England but also from Australia, Russia, Switzerland, Tajikistan, and the USA. The 2003 conference was held at the University of Aberdeen and the theme of ‘Contested Terrains: Gendered Knowledge, Landscapes and Narratives’ drew speakers from more than sixteen countries. These lively conferences are always well organised and friendly occasions and provide opportunities to engage with new research. They draw together established scholars, graduate students and enthusiasts for women’s history as well as long standing WHN members and those who are new to the Network. The annual conference also provides the venue for the presentation of the Clare Evans prize for an essay in women’s/gender history by an as yet unpublished author. The prize attracts a wide range of entries and provides an encouraging indication of the state of new scholarship in the field. The 2002 winner was Jessica Meyer for her essay, ‘ “Not Septimus Now”: Wives of Disabled Veterans and Cultural Memory of the First World War in Britain’. In 2003 the prize was awarded to Catriona Kennedy for her essay, ‘ ‘Womanish Epistles’: Martha McTier, female epistolarity and Irish radicalism in the late eighteenth century’. Part of the prize is that the essay is published, subject to revision, in Women’s History Review.
          
The WHN also publishes its own Women’s History Magazine three times a year which contains research-based articles, conference reports, book reviews, calls for papers and WHN news. The Network promotes its activities through its website (www.womenshistorynetwork.org). The website is a useful reference point if you want to check on forthcoming UK conferences and calls for papers in all aspects of women’s history/gender history. The site is also building a directory of women’s history courses available at BA and MA level. Although there is a feeling amongst practitioners that Women’s Studies MAs and even Women’s History programmes are under threat, this list leads one to be a little more optimistic. At the same time women’s history is clearly not commonplace in the history provision of all universities and often appears as part of a programme with another title eg Women’s Studies or Gender & Culture. In addition, the website also hosts an email discussion list which provides opportunities to exchange information, research queries and to network with others interested in promoting women’s history in schools, in universities and as part of public history.

As important to the WHN is that it functions at a regional as well as a national level. Regular conferences are held which are particularly successful at bridging the gap between scholars inside and outside the academy and which reach out to local women who are interested in women’s history. Recent examples have been the Midland Region’s conference in November 2002 on ‘Regional Women’, the West of England and South Wales Region’s conference on ‘Women and Country: Rural life, landscape and nation’ in June 2003 and the Southern Region’s conference on ‘The Suffragette and Women’s History’ in October 2003. To take one example of a regional group, the West of England and South Wales WHN is a lively group which meets regularly and has its own website (www.humanities.uwe.ac.uk/swhisnet.htm) with details of all its past conferences. They also produce a biannual newsletter for their members. The Scottish Women’s History Network (www.swhn.org) is also thriving. It holds regular conferences and has a number of collective projects such as the Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women.

Women’s history also occurs outside the umbrella of the WHN, although often with the involvement of WHN members as speakers, participants and as part of the audience. Thus the recent centenary of the formation of the Women’s Social and Political Union on 10 October 1903 prompted a series of celebratory events. These included a range of activities at the Pankhurst Centre, 62 Nelson Street, Manchester where Emmeline Pankhurst and her family were living in 1903 and where the inaugural meeting of the WSPU was held. The celebrations included a talk by June Purvis, one of the recent biographers of Emmeline Pankhurst, as well as a successful day conference on Suffrage and Women’s History with contributions from Sheila Rowbotham, Karen Hunt, Jill Liddington, Gill Scott and Barbara Winslow. The Women’s Library (www.thewomenslibrary.ac.uk) in London has also launched a new exhibition on ‘Art for Vote’s sake: Visual Culture and the Women’s Suffrage campaign’ with a supporting programme of talks by suffrage historians. They are also hosting a conference on 22 November ‘Dare to be Free: an examination of the campaign for women’s vote’. Of course women’s historians in the UK are also busy showing that women’s history is more than the Pankhursts but such anniversaries garner considerable media attention and provide opportunities to introduce a new audience to the wonders, complexities and competing narratives which are to be found in women’s history.

For more information see

http://pages.britishlibrary.net/habsburg.netherlands/

or contact:

Dr. Cordula van Wyhe, Wolfson College, Cambridge CB3 9BB Cordula@studycave.org.uk

 Compiled by Cordula van Wyhe