Workshops
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Workshops ♀
Feminist Print Culture Workshops
This series of workshops was originally held in collaboration with Women’s Studies Online
These workshops challenge revisionist historical portrayals of second wave feminism through the lens of visual archival material from the 1970s and 1980s, with emphasis on UK examples and some from the US, Canada, India and continental Europe. We will look directly at primary sources of feminist publishing and archival efforts in order to get a sense of the multifaceted strategies and issues with which feminist were grappling with during the second wave, most of which is just as relevant today. The goal is to establish intergenerational linkages with women’s work that is largely hidden away in boxes or high-barrier institutions. By means of these workshops, the life of the feminist document is revived, continued, and awakens renewed participation. The debates and experiments of the second wave constitute a rich foundation of knowledge which can inform our feminist practices today.
Workshop Recordings
Workshop 1: Second Wave Women’s Presses and Reading Counterpublics
Women’s presses and publishing houses during the second wave: who were they, how did they operate and what was their mission?
Examples of books and pamphlets published by second wave feminist presses and the impact they had on the feminist movement
How feminist presses did the hard work of proving that there was a counterpublic of female readers and writers, which was subsequently taken advantage of by corporate publishers
The dilemma of publishing with a feminist press versus choosing a more malestream publisher with a bigger audience
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Workshop 2: How Second Wave Feminists Created Women’s Networks Before the Internet
Pre-internet network thinking: how second wave grassroots network infrastructures connected the women’s movement
Examples of second wave feminist networking initiatives: women’s yellow pages, phone and letter-writing trees, information and resource services, and communication networks.
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Workshop 3: Mediating Conflict in Second Wave Periodicals: Plurality of Opinion and Woman-Controlled Communication
An overview of second wave periodicals: examples, their purpose(s) and mission(s), the publishing and distribution process, the range of topics covered.
Letter to the Editor pages: sites of praise, appreciation, conflict and disagreement. Examples of ideological disagreements in feminist periodicals. Blurring the boundaries between readership and authorship lead to otherwise shy/timid/excluded women being able to voice a plurality of opinion.
Conflict as progress, not regress: how printed circulated communication and conflict contributed to the development of feminist theory
Challenging the “wave” narrative of feminism by evidencing a multitude of ideological positions held that don’t fit in a neat and tidy account of feminist history
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Workshop 4: Women’s Archives: Archiving Our Herstory Because Nobody Else Will
An overview of second wave periodicals: examples, their purpose(s) and mission(s), the publishing and distribution process, the range of topics covered.
Letter to the Editor pages: sites of praise, appreciation, conflict and disagreement. Examples of ideological disagreements in feminist periodicals. Blurring the boundaries between readership and authorship lead to otherwise shy/timid/excluded women being able to voice a plurality of opinion.
Conflict as progress, not regress: how printed circulated communication and conflict contributed to the development of feminist theory
Challenging the “wave” narrative of feminism by evidencing a multitude of ideological positions held that don’t fit in a neat and tidy account of feminist history
