Matters of gender and sexuality have already made headlines in 2013 and it seems hope is on the horizon for understanding and re-framing gender and sexuality as implicating all,  whereby the phrasing of its ‘socially constructed’ categorisation can  break out of academic sociology and enjoy a more public airing. From the continuation of last year’s backlash against ‘gendered’ products, to parliamentary time and space finally being given to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, from the mainstreaming of distaste for Page 3 to the recent outrage at the Sun’s depiction of the deceased law graduate and successful model Reeva Steenkamp, we see expansions of, in, beyond ‘the feminist classroom’. 

Recently, Yvette Taylor gave a talk at the Guildhall as part of the Brave New World, LGBT conference, collectively inspired to feel an ‘arrival’ in place as delegates remarked on entering the corridors of power. At last…Shifting cultural (mis)representations, legal (im)possibilities and movements between margins and mainstreams, force questions about the place of feminisms, its ‘publics’, policies and practices: in other words, who is feminism for and where does it reside? Who might be excluded still from those corridors and classrooms? Read the full story

I was recently invited to present and participate in a British Sociological Association (BSA) workshop organized by the Early Career Researchers (ECRs) Study Group conveners, Dr Katherine Twamley and Dr Mark Doidge. The title of the workshop ‘What is a Winning Funding Application?’ posed an urgent, anxious question, felt as I planned my delivery and attempted to answer a loaded query, literally worth a lot. I wondered how I would, with colleagues, ‘workshop’ my way out of funding crises and the destruction of UK Higher Education: how to keep things constructive and positive in a harsh new climate? To enable rather than dissuade even as ‘early career’ is ever extended across the career trajectory which means some never ‘arrive’? Read the full story

Gender and Education Association Biennial Conference 2013

Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research, London South Bank University

Tuesday 23^rd- Friday 26^th 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)

- Bidisha: From Eastern Primitivism to Western Decadence? Overcoming the Notion of Cultural Differences in Gender, Race and Class Politics

Plenary Panel:

- Dr Tracey Reynolds, Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research, LSBU

- Dr Jin Haritaworn, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

- Dr Kay Inckle, Trinity College Dublin

- Dr Jayne Osgood, London Metropolitan University

- Dr Vanita Sundaram, University of York

Performance:

- Dr Claudia Brazzle, Liverpool Hope University

- Teddy Nygh, Director of Riot From Wrong and Co-Founder of Fully Focused

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, which reconfigure axes of intersectional inequalities. 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.

Book your place

If you are paying by debit or credit card, please book online using Eventbrite at http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/4743075667

If you wish to receive an invoice or have any queries, please email enterprise-events@lsbu.ac.uk

Conference Fee

£380 – Standard conference booking fee – Member*

£420 – Standard conference booking fee – Non-member

£150 – Standard day rate

* To obtain your discount code, necessary for member discount, please contact Alice Jesmont (a.jesmont@lancaster.ac.uk)

I came to a stop in my tracks. I stood and stared as I began to watch a wedding; a deliberately public event announcing itself, lakeside, on a bright – but still cold – winter day in Canberra.  I didn’t know the guests, the bride or the groom. But I still stopped. Maybe weddings were different in Australia, where same-sex marriage debates had intensified during my visiting fellowship at the ANU? Maybe I was about to witness something different? Read the full story

In Fame, Folk Devils and Generation X-Factor, Heather Mendick and Kim Allen highlight the moral condemnation of the ‘get rich quick’ X-Factor generation, and the profound classing of ‘celebrity’ as (un)appealing and (dis)tasteful. Patterns of culture, consumption and aspiration manifest variously across different national and international contexts and as a visiting scholar at the Australian National University, I’ve had the opportunity to consider the shape and ‘stick’ of class in the Australian context. Specifically, I’ve been intrigued by the figure of the ‘bogan’ as a negative descriptor of white working-class poor populations and an identified ‘new tribe’ of Australians (similar to the UK figure of the ‘chav’, excessively clothed in the wrong brand, and lacking the ‘right’ cultural capital, see ‘Neighbourhood Types’). As Mendick and Allen’s piece highlights, behavioural traits are captured and mis-represented as individual character facts, or flaws, disguising fundamental divisions around legitimacy, authority and material inequalities. Read the full story

When you think of religion, do you then think of sexuality? Does the connection then become a drastic dis-connection, a sentiment of incompatibility and impossibility, as the mind wanders over abortion debates, family planning, and the ‘sins’ of homosexuality? These collisions are apparent in recent UK debates on the Civil Partnership Act (2004), The Equality Act (2006) and the proposed Con-Lib plans to legalize gay marriage by 2015. All have generated significant controversies, frequently positing Christian ‘backlash’ against more integrative calls for inclusion. Representations of ‘sexual citizenship’ are still positioned as separate from and indeed negated by religious rights and some religions are (mis)positioned as more hostile, tolerating and welcoming than others.  Sweeping claims are made about the representation of broader secular publics where some suggest that ‘Religious Leaders are out of Touch with Sexuality Issues’. Over time policy-makers and the media have variously positioned religious leaders and communities as (un)wise and (in)competent citizens; with – or without – the capabilities and connectedness to contemporary British publics. The voices of those most vocal are heard here, where gaps exist between prescription and practice and between official institutional stances – in being in or out of touch – and what is experienced on the ground at congregational level. Against this often highly intense social context young LGBT Christians try to find a sense of belonging and identification, which Making Space for Queer Identifying Religions Youth (ESRC, 2011-2013) focuses upon. Starting with a focus on the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), the project offers insight into the management and development of excluded and in some ways ‘contradictory’ identity positions. How might religion and sexuality serve as a vehicle for various forms of belonging, identification and political expression where these have been pitted against one another?   Read the full story

There were many similarities in our journeys, with repeated meetings across time and place, first at Rutgers University, New Jersey, then London and then Oakland: our queer community – and queer cares – kept bringing us together it seemed. ‘Queerness’ exists in these shared encounters and in the familial and societal demands made and refused as we inhabit our spaces carefully and with care. Read the full story

Triumphs:  Story 1

She’s just won a prestigious prize (at a prestigious conference): praise was rightfully delivered and she basked it the glory, in the surprise that seemed to say she’d arrived in academia (early career no more). But she was worried. Did this really signal a safety in arriving, a recognition of value, labour, contributions? Or did it signal more labour, maybe this time without recognition or value? When the stakes are set so high do we have no choice but to keep apace, to endlessly indicate, effect and fear our own (in)capacities? When we compete with colleagues in a competitive university-marketplace – and when competition is so close it is generated by-ourselves-for-ourselves (as ‘keeping up’, ‘what next?’) – what cares, connections, capacities are rendered near and far? I tell her to add her award to her email signature, a neat summary quickly conveying who she is as a hyperlinked bio. But I pause. There’s a borderline between the achieving academic, the celebrity star and the pretentious, (self)promotional subject. I pause. These are laboured cares. Read the full story

The Gender and Education Association would like to announce that the ninth international Gender and Education conference will be held at London South Bank University from Tuesday 23rd – Friday 26th April 2013. Read the full story

I’ve been a part of a few feminist reading groups in different UK-US institutions: lately this has posed a question of what kind of ‘feminism’ are we reading, evaluating and doing in these classroom encounters? Who can be the feminist-in-the-classroom and what efforts, labours and recognition come into play here? How do these encounters travel beyond the classroom and where, then, do we locate feminism? At Rutgers, I was lucky enough to participate in the Happiness reading group, where researchers across the career stage were encouraged to present their work-in-progress and to share views, critique and inter-disciplinary thoughts on the subject of ‘happiness’; how to get it, whether and where it arrives, and what/who sustains this, with the group facilitating its production as well as its disruption.  The explicit feminism/feminist(s) frequently arrived by virtue of certain bodies being in the room, declaring their presence and ‘outing’ their investments, often just by declaring their research interests. Happily or not, the feminist in the classroom cannot often be equally present or an unburdened absence (speaking only for herself) with the expectation too that she should take us, our feminism, to another level, revealing her feminist approach with her every articulation. Read the full story