Author: genderandsexualityhistory

Gendering of Migration

Helen Sunderland

In recent years, migration has never been far from the headlines. The European migrant crisis – the worst since the Second World War – saw several million people endure exhausting and dangerous journeys to the continent. Refugees fleeing war and persecution in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, and many other countries, as well as those escaping extreme poverty, risked their lives trying to reach Europe by land and sea. Thousands died trying to do so. As the EU struggled to reach a consensus about how to resolve the crisis, migration became increasingly politically charged. Fears over immigration were a factor in the Brexit vote and have fuelled the resurgence of the far-right across Europe.

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Gender, Sex and Shopping

George Severs

To many, shopping is part of the everyday makeup of life which slips beneath the radar. Quotidian and ubiquitous, we may have assumed that shopping and the stores which facilitate such transactions, have a history which fits firmly into the canons of economic history. Whilst there is still doubtless an interesting economic story to be told, last week the Workshop learned more about the fascinating gender and sexuality history of shopping in department stores.

Public interest in the history of department stores is growing. The popular ITV period drama Mr. Selfridge, which detailed the story of Harry Gordon Selfridge and the emergence of Selfridge’s department store on London’s Oxford Street, was well received and brought the twentieth century history of the department store into living rooms across Britain on Sunday evenings.

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The Regulation of Prostitution: an ongoing question

Holly Ashford

In 2018, debates on how sex work should be regulated continue to cause friction. Is prostitution the ‘oldest profession’ or the ‘oldest oppression’? Perhaps both. Different states have taken different approaches to the regulation of prostitution. In some places, the practice of prostitution is illegal – in 2010, Iceland even made lap dance clubs illegal. Other states such as the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, have all legalised prostitution. Alternatively, the “Nordic model” penalises those who buy sex, but not those who sell it.

Amnesty International is a world advocate in legalised prostitution. They argue that the abuse and discrimination that this marginalised group of – mainly – women, faces, is more adequately combatted when the practice is not illegal. This makes sense, after all, if prostitutes are hidden from the state, the state cannot ensure their wellbeing. On the other hand, in places where prostitution has been decriminalised, trafficking of women into brothels, and illegal brothels continue to facilitate abuses. The fact that it is mainly women selling sex to men arguably means that the practice perpetuates gendered ideas of sexuality in which women are passive, providers of sex, and men full of sexual desire that must be fulfilled.

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Meet the Convenors!

Welcome to the Cambridge Gender and Sexuality History Workshop!

This year there are three of us organising the workshop, and we are all very eager to hear from you and to share our research this term.

We thought we would start by introducing ourselves.

 

Holly Ashford

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Hello everyone! This is my first year convening the Gender and Sexuality workshop and I’m thrilled to be on the team. I’m just starting my third year of studies for a PhD in History.

My research looks at the history of women’s reproductive health in Ghana from 1920 – 1981. I am delving into the question of how national and international development discourses in the twentieth century influenced women’s health in Ghana. This takes me into areas such as demography, oral history, anthropology, history of medicine and global history to name just a few of my interests!

I arrived at Cambridge for the first time in autumn 2016. Before that, I did my Masters at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, spending a term at Yale University. I completed my undergraduate degree at Warwick in the UK in 2013 in History and Italian.

Cambridge has offered so many wonderful opportunities, especially attending the graduate workshops, becoming part of the community at Pembroke College and writing for Vision. I presented some of the work I’ve been doing at the workshop last year in June, which was a great experience and enabled me to fine tune my work.

For the last nearly 18 months though, I’ve been away from Cambridge carrying out research in Ghana, Switzerland, England, Scotland and the USA. It’s been a fascinating year but I am very excited to be back and look forward to meeting you all!

hra32@cam.ac.uk

@hollyashford2

 

Helen Sunderland

bdr

Hi! I’m also new to the Gender and Sexuality History Workshop team this year. I’ve loved coming along to the workshop over the past year so can’t wait to get stuck into organising more fantastic talks and events for the community.

I am in the second year of my PhD researching schoolgirls’ political socialisation in late Victorian and Edwardian England. My wider research interests include the histories of childhood, girlhood, gender and political culture in modern Britain. I did my undergraduate at Oxford University.

I’m passionate about public history and am co-editor of the collaborative blog Doing History in Public. When I’m not in the library or trawling through school archives, you can find me playing football or the violin, or bingeing period dramas on Netflix.

I’m really excited by the range of papers we have this term and can’t wait to learn more about subjects outside of my area and period. I spend a lot of time thinking about ideas and performances of girlhood, so am particularly interested in learning about how historians of masculinity approach their work and tackle similar questions.

hls60@cam.ac.uk

@hl_sunderland

 

George Severs

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I am a second year PhD student in modern British history. My thesis examines the history of HIV/AIDS activism in England between 1982 – the year of the first AIDS-related death in the UK – and 1997 – the year after the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy which transformed an HIV/AIDS diagnosis from a terminal to a chronic one, and the year which saw 18 years of Conservative rule in Britain come to an end. I am interested in the political responses of LGBTQ groups, religious organisations and voluntary workers to the epidemic (to name just a few). Oral history interviews form a large part of my research, and I am a member of the Oral History Society’s LGBTQ Special Interest Group (OHS LGBTQ SIG). I have co-convened the Cambridge Gender and Sexuality History Workshop since June 2017.

Welcome!

Welcome to the 2018 Cambridge Gender and Sexuality History Workshop!

We are very excited to start a fresh year of workshops. We already have a great line up for Michaelmas coming together.

The Gender and Sexuality History Workshop is designed as a space for early researchers to share their work on any aspect of gender and sexuality history – no time/geographical limits! Once papers are given at the weekly workshops, there is an opportunity for questions, feedback and discussion, making it a great atmosphere in which to learn and meet others with similar interests to your own. After the workshop, we’ll all head over to the bar for continued, more informal chat.

This new blog is a new feature of the workshop – it’s designed to keep those who can’t make the workshop up to date and allow researchers’ presentations to reach a wider audience, through our weekly commentries.

It’s also an opportunity for members of our community – that is you! – to contribute to the workshop in written form. We would love to hear if you’d like to contribute to this blog.

The call for submissions is now closed for Michaelmas, but will reopen at the end of term so that we can put together an equally exciting schedule for Lent – so keep an eye out for our next cfp.

In the mean time, we can’t wait to see you very soon at one of our workshops.