WHN2016: Women’s Material Cultures and Environments Conference Programme

16 - 17 September 2016

#WHN2016Leeds @leedstrinity/leedstrinity /leedstrinity

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Friday 16 September

9:00am Registration

(Outside the Mary Hallaway Lecture Theatre)

9:30am – 10:00am Welcome Address (MHLT)

10:00am – 11:00am Panel Session 1: Panels 1 – 3

1) Women’s Material Cultures and Environments: Scottish Perspective - Rachel Meredith Davies ‘Material Identities: Examining the sigillography of late Medieval Scottish Countesses’; Karen-Mailley-Watt ‘Women and Scotland’s Stained Glass Industry: A family affair’. (AF34)

2) Political Object[ion]s – Rosanne Waine ‘’A considerable body of Amazons in plaid jackets’: The Sartorial Politics of Female Jacobitism’; Bernadette Cahill ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a crowd of greedy relatives: Women’s rights and men’s wrongs in the United States 1848 – 1870’. (AF35)

3) Materiality of ‘Little Women’ – Penny Tinkler ‘Teenage Girls on the Move: Spatial mobility and the cultural lives of girls growing up in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s’; Sian Roberts ‘‘Not only a comprehensive record. . . but a work of art’: Material culture, performing citizenship and the interwar British Camp Fire Girls’. (AF36)

11.00am – 11.30am Mid-morning refreshments

(South Room – AG21)

11.30am – 12:50pm Panel Session 2: Panels 4 – 7

4) Female Property Owners, Shareholders and Shoppers – Elena Borodina ‘Social Status of a Woman in Russian Empire of the 18th century and Property Relations’; Peter Hampson ‘Working-class Women Shareholders in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Lancashire’; Josh Poklad ‘Producing Consumers: Middle Class Women and Fractured Time’. (AG100)

5) Women Artists, Architects and Musicians – Judith Phillips ‘Josephine Bowes and Women Artists, Patrons and Collectors’; Deirdre Thackray ‘Casketing Grief, Releasing Life: Sarah Losh’s architectural response to loss’; Michelle Meinhart ‘Music and Women’s Material Memorials of the First World War in the English Country House’. (AF34)

6) On the Bias: Women’s Clothing – Vivienne Richmond ‘Clothing the Colonial Poor’; Lisa Mason ‘Fashioning Women: A case study of designer Jean Muir (1928 – 1995)’; Jane McDermid ‘From the Coal Mine to the Fashion House: Jeannie Lee’s observations of everyday life in Russia in the first half of the 1930s’. (AF35)

7) Making Do: Letters, Catalogues and Food: Material Culture of British Women on the Home Front in WW1 and WW2 – Maggie Andrews ‘‘I were standing at the gate and he was brought up the path and he’d got a large bar of fruit and nut chocolate in

Dear WHN2016 delegates and presenters, The WHN2016 Conference Committee are honoured to have organised the Women’s History Network 2016 annual conference at Leeds Trinity University. Over two days, there will be two keynotes, two illustrated talks, and nineteen panels of fifty-one papers and presentations. All of these will explore innovative international research, projects and collections about women’s material cultures and environments spanning from the Medieval period to the twenty-first century. Presenters and delegates range from social historians, cultural researchers, artists, filmmakers, museum curators, post-graduate research students, early career researchers, established academics and independent scholars. We would like to thank all presenters and delegates for their contributions. With almost one hundred international delegates attending over the two days, we are confident that this conference will generate lively, dynamic and fruitful discussions about women’s history through the lens of material cultures and environments. We hope that the research shared, conversations generated and links made will continue beyond the WHN2016 conference.

We hope that you enjoy the WHN2016 conference, and that it solidifies your interest into women’s history and inspires future research into women’s material cultures and environments as there is much more research to be done. After all, ‘Even the humblest material artefact, which is the product and symbol of a particular civilisation, is an emissary of the culture out of which it comes.’ (T. S. Eliot, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, 1947). Kind regards,WHN2016 Conference Committee (Prof. Karen Sayer, Dr. Sarah Njeri and Lauren Padgett)

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his hand’: Food, war and history’; Hayley Weaver ‘Love stories: Love and life in WWI letters in Worcestershire’; Elspeth King ‘The Second World War, Material Cultures and Making Do: A Golden Age of self-help?’. (AF36)

12:20pm – 1:20pm Lunch

(South Room – AG21)

1:50pm – 2:50pm Key Note 1: Dr Jane Hamlett, Royal Holloway,

‘Using the Material World to Study Gender: The Case of Victorian and Edwardian Girls’ Schools’. (MHLT).

3:00pm – 4:20pm Panel Session 3: Panels 8 – 10

8) ‘The Business of Decoration’: Women decorative art entrepreneurs and the material environment in London c. 1876 – 1930 – Heidi Egginton ‘The Amateur Trader’: Women buyers and the antique trade in Greater London, c. 1880 – 1930’; Miranda Garrett ‘A Very Successful Class of Lady Shopkeepers’: Women interior decorators, 1874 – 1900’; Zoe Thomas ‘The Lady Boss’: Female artistic metalwork businesses in London, c. 1880 – 1920’. (AF34).

9) Early Female Pioneers in Education – Pam Jarvis ‘The Genesis of British Educare: Margaret McMillan and Susan Isaacs’; Louise Swiniarski ‘Elizabeth Peabody: Founder of the American kindergarten movement in public and private educational settings (1804 – 1894)’. (AF35)

10) Women’s Material Environments and Spaces: ‘Homes of Mercy, birthing beds and rooms – Susan Woodall ‘Inside the ‘Homes of Mercy’: The material culture of prostitution reform’; Vicky Holmes ‘Finding a Bed: The experiences of unmarried mothers in working-class Victorian society’; Anna Niiranen ‘‘Large, Airy, and Well Ventilated’: An ideal birthing room in British medical writings, 1840 – 1902’. (AF36)

4:20pm – 4:30pm Mid-afternoon refreshments

(South Room – AG21)

4:30pm – 5:30pm WHN AGM for WHN members (MHLT) or

extended refreshment break for delegates not attending the AGM.

5:30pm – 6:15pm a) WHN Executive Committee Meeting

(AF36)

b) Illustrated Talk 1: Kitty Ross, Leeds Museums and Galleries, Kitty will be teasing out women’s voices from the museums’ collections and looking at how museum objects can shed light on women’s lives and experiences. (MHLT)

6:15pm – 7:15pm Wine reception, WHN announcements and

prizes (South Room – AG21 and MHLT)

7:15pm onwards Hot fork buffet (The Lounge, LTU)

9:00am Registration

(Outside the Mary Hallaway Lecture Theatre)

9:15am – 9:30am Welcome Address (MHLT)

9:30am – 10:30am Illustrated Talk 2: Alison Bodley, York Museums

Trust, Ali will be talking about women’s material culture in relation to the exhibition ‘Shaping the Body’ at the York Castle Museum, accompanied with handling objects (MHLT).

10:30am – 11.00am Mid-morning refreshments

(South Room – AG21)

11.00am – 12:20 Panel Session 4: Panels 11 – 14

11) Women’s Material Cultures and Environments: Indian Perspective – Friederike Voigt ‘‘Led by my love of science’: Margaret Tytler’s collection of Indian models’; Animesh Chatterjee ‘Women & Domestic Electrification in Urban Colonial India’; Gemma Scott ‘Mapping Sites of Resistance: Women in prison under India’s emergency 1975 – 1977’. (AF34)

12) Women Collectors and Collected Women – Stephen Basdeo ‘The Birth of Robin Hood: Mrs. Brown of Falkland’s Literary Afterlives and Influence upon the later Robin Hood Tradition’; Anna Reeve ‘The Legacy of Frances Louisa Stott: Discovering a

forgotten Leeds collector’; Teresa Doherty ‘100 Years’ [Royal College of Nursing 1916 – 2016]. (AF35)

13) Educators and Educational Environments – Letterio Todaro ‘Strengthening Modernization: The young woman teacher in primary schools as an agent of transformation within the material life of social communities. A survey in Sicily of the post second world war period across’; Kate James ‘‘One Woman’s Archive’ – The Mary Dawson Collection at Newton Park’; Zoe Milsom & Stephanie Spencer ‘‘An international clubhouse’: The significance of place and space for university women in the long 1950s’. (AF36)

14) Women’s Material Culture as Film, Art and Archives: Laureen Levy in absentia ‘My Grandmother’s Sitting Room’; Cathy Greenhalgh ‘Cotton Mill Women: Identifying “agentic threads” during film research’; Joan Ashworth ‘Suffragette Prison Experience: Accessing archive texts, artefacts and objects and representing and re-enacting through film and animation’. (AG100)

12:20pm – 1:20pm Lunch

(South Room – AG21)

1:20pm – 2:20pm Key Note 2: Prof. Yosanne Vella, University

of Malta ‘Teaching women’s history in history classrooms’ (MHLT)

Saturday 17 September

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2.30pm – 3:30pm Panel Session 5: Panels 15 – 16

15) Women’s Material Cultures and Environments: Irish Perspective – John Black ‘Hidden Faces’: Irish Women and War Work during the Great War; Donna Gilligan ‘A Missing Materiality – Tracing the invisible objects of the Irish women’s suffrage movement’. (AF35)

16) Pins and Needles: The Social Lives of Textile Tools and Practice – Marta Kargol ‘‘There are no women who can’t do needlework, except those who do not believe in their own abilities’ – The practice of knitting in Communist Poland’; David Hopkin and Nicolette Makovicky ‘Tools of the Trade, Vectors of Emotion: The material culture of Midlands lacemakers’. (AF36)

3.30pm – 4:00pm Mid-afternoon refreshments

(South Room – AG21)

4:00pm – 5:20pm Panel Session 6: Panels 17 – 19

17) 16th Century Women’s Material Culture – Eva-Maria Lauenstein ‘‘The wise man and the fool . . . death cowed like in the grave’: Katherine Willoughby and the continuities and changes of the Visual language of Spilsby Chapel’; Louise Horton ‘‘Thou which didst me forme & make’: Print, politics and gender in the making of a Tudor mother’s prayer book’; Cheryl Butler ‘Invisible / Visible: Women hiding in

documents. The life of Mary Janverin, 1539 – 1608, wife, mother, innkeeper ‘a woman of good & honest conversation’ but also witchfinder, scold, recusant, harbourer of thieves & pirates and ‘a common whore’. Reconstructing forgotten lives from the surviving wills, court records, inventories and buildings of Tudor Southampton.’. (AF34)

18) Epistolary Material Culture – Teresa Barnard ‘Letters to Emma: Epistolary material culture’; Ali Flint ‘To the Ladies Turbutt: Three Women, Three Wills and Three Legacies’; Madelaine Schurch ‘The Portland Museum: Materiality, letter-writing and female scientific endeavour’. (AF35).

19) Off the Rails: Materiality of Women’s Railway History – Anne Mallery ‘Crossing the Line: Women, railway and religion in the late Victorian period’; Hannah Reeves ‘Who were the Railway Women’s Guild? A case study of Gloucester, 1900 – 1948; Oli Betts ‘‘For Ladies Only’: Locating women’s history in a technological museum’. (AF36)

The WHN2016 organisers, Prof. Karen Sayer, Dr. Sarah Njeri and Lauren Padgett, would like to thank the following people for their help and support: the Women’s History Network committee (particularly June Purvis and Penny Tinkler), Leeds Trinity University’s Commercial Services and Marketing departments, Prof. Rosemary Mitchell (Leeds Trinity University) for her assistance, Leeds Trinity University’s PGR students volunteering as conference assistants, panel chairs, and all the speakers and delegates for contributing to furthering the study of women’s material cultures and environments.

‘Studio Interior’ by William Merritt Chase, c. 1882, online at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Studio_Interior_-_William_Merritt_Chase_-_overall.jpg

Information correct at time of printing, September 2016.

The information in this booklet can be supplied in alternative formats upon request. Please call 0113 283 7150 or email enquiries@leedstrinity.ac.uk

Leeds Trinity UniversityHorsforth Leeds LS18 5HD

Enquiries@leedstrinity.ac.uk0113 283 7150 leedstrinity.ac.uk

‘In the Studio’ painting of the Academie Julien in Paris, 1881, by Marie Bashkirtseff (1858 – 1884), held at Dnipropetrovsk State Art Museum, online at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bashkirtseff_-_In_the_Studio.jpg