Gendering the memory of work - 8 March 2013, London

Tue Mar 5 22:15:29 UTC 2013

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From: Announcement and discussion list for CNR [ mailto:CENTREFORNARRATIVERESEARCH at JISCMAIL.AC.UK <mailto:CENTREFORNARRATIVERESEARCH at JISCMAIL.AC.UK> ] On Behalf Of Rowena Lamb
Sent: 28 February 2013 15:15
To: CENTREFORNARRATIVERESEARCH at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Gendering the memory of work - 8 March 2013

Dear All

You may remember I contacted you a short time ago regarding two events being held on 8 March with Professor Maria Tamboukou of the Centre for Narrative Research, University of East London.  I am writing now to inform you that it has been necessary to alter the events.  

The workshop  'The thick autonomy of archival research' has been cancelled, though we will still be holding the lecture entitled 'Gendering the memory of work'.  Part of International Women?s Day <http://www.internationalwomensday.com/> , this lecture contains aspects of the workshop, making it more interactive and further enriching the learning experience.  It will also be followed by a talk about the archival practices that lead to the research.

The event will be held between 2-4pm in the Library at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education.  

An abstract of the lecture is below, and further information can be found here: http://store.ioe.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&prodid=146&deptid=112&catid=42 <http://store.ioe.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&prodid=146&deptid=112&catid=42>  

Over the past thirty years feminist theorists have drawn on women's auto/biographical narratives to include them in the canonical texts of literary criticism, to rewrite social and cultural histories but also to understand and theorise the constitution of the gendered self in modernity. But if one looks into the rich body of scholarship around women's auto/biographical narratives, there is very little theorisation on working women's auto/biographies from a sociological perspective, although there is a substantial body of work in literary criticism (see Coiner 1995, Zandy1990). Even among the few notable exceptions (Hollis 2004, Stanley 1984, Swindells 1995) the seamstress seems to be a figure that has yet to be studied and analysed. It seems that working women in general and seamstresses in particular had very little time in their hands to write but did they really?

Professor Maria Tamboukou's review of the literature has revealed a range of very interesting autobiographical documents that span diverse geographical, ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds To be sure, seamstresses' narratives or rather extracts of them have been widely used as illustrations and points of reference for many studies around women's work in a wide range of disciplinary fields. However seamstresses' narratives have never been analysed as 'documents of life' (Plummer 2001). It is this significant gap in the literature on women's lives that Tamboukou's research addresses, particularly focusing on the memory of work and its role in the constitution of female subjectivities. In this lecture Professor Tamboukou will present some of the emergent themes as well as a tentative framework for theorising gendered aspects in the memory of work.

I hope that you will join us for what will be an extremely interesting and rewarding event and help mark International Women?s Day.

With best wishes

Rowena

Rowena Lamb
Administration Officer - NOVELLA

Thomas Coram Research Unit
Institute of Education
27-28 Woburn Square

London WC1H 0AA
Tel: +44 (0)20 7612 6921
Fax: +44 (0)20 7612 6927
Email: r.lamb at ioe.ac.uk <mailto:t.walpole at ioe.ac.uk> 
Website: www.novella.ac.uk <http://www.novella.ac.uk>  
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/NOVELLAUK <https://twitter.com/#!/NOVELLAUK>  

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