Event overview
Centre for Feminist Research Opening Lecture: Of dinosaurs and divas: Is class still relevant to feminist research? by Professor Valerie Walkerdine, Cardiff University
We are pleased to welcome everyone to the first event for the Centre for Feminist Research for the new academic year.
In this first event we will host a talk by Professor Valerie Walkerdine, Distinguished Research Professor in the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. Valerie is the first Alumni Feminist Professor of the Centre for Feminist Research. This was awarded in recognition of her time at Goldsmiths in the Department of Media and Communications from 1991-1997, where she helped to shape feminist histories at Goldsmiths.
There will be a drinks reception to follow, all are welcome.
Of dinosaurs and divas: Is class still relevant to feminist research?
In the period after the Second World War, huge changes to the social fabric of Britain began to take shape. Poor women no longer automatically went into service and the ravages of the two wars meant new promises were made and broken in the post-war years. There was a strong social class division, only beginning to be punctured by the small number of working class students allowed into higher education, which expanded in the 1960s before it exploded in the 1990s. In the post-war ferment, these newly educated young people began to demand an end to war and the life that their parents had led. Perhaps signified most iconically by Woodstock – “dropping out, lighting up and turning on” signaling a new counter-culture. This moment paved the way for the beginnings of civil rights, black power, gay rights and second wave feminism.
In this lecture I explore this moment as it sets the scene for developments and divisions that we see today. I argue, for example, that the feminist work that aligns itself with Deleuze and Guattari begins here too, as well as what later becomes queer. In this process, however, lines are drawn. While working class jobs are relatively easy to get in the 60s, and many young people have dreams, by the 1980s work is beginning to change, manufacture to collapse and divisions between wealth and poverty increase dramatically.
It is inside these divisions that the working class become aligned with sexism and are seen as a reactionary challenge to the continued opening of the post-60s agenda, just as big finance enters the scene from the 1980s. In understanding the implications of changing divisions between wealth and poverty, and illustrating my argument with examples from social research and cultural products, such as films and popular songs, I discuss the ways in which feminism can engage with class divisions through the recognition of how the divisions between different kinds of lives produce a mistrust and incomprehension on both sides. I suggest that addressing these issues within feminist research is politically imperative.
www.gold.ac.uk/centre-for-feminist-research/
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 6 Oct 2016 | 6:00pm - 7:30pm |
Accessibility
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