Workshop ‘Gender, Women, and Decolonization(s)’

Premier congrès de l'Union des femmes de l'Ouest africain, Bamako, alors au Soudan français. 9 août 1959 (STAFF/AFP)

Maison Française d’Oxford & European Studies Center, St. Antony’s College (Oxford)
Organiser: Anna Nasser (anna.nasser@sant.ox.ac.uk), Deakin Visiting Fellow

The workshop is intended for ESC and MFO members only.
However, If you would like to attend, please get in touch with Anna Nasser (anna.nasser@sant.ox.ac.uk) to confirm availability.

PROGRAMME

Day 1, May 21st (Thursday) - Maison Française d’Oxford, 2-10 Norham Road, Oxford

12.30-14:00 Arrival and lunch 
14:00 Introduction (Stéphane Van Damme, Paul Betts, Anna Nasser)
14:15-16:15 Panel I – Leftist and communist women navigating decolonization.
Chair: Professor Paul Betts (Oxford)
Emilia Flack (Oxford), (En)Gendering ‘Algerianness’ in the Decolonial Moment: Communist Women’s Organising and the Internationalist Anticolonial Alternative in Algeria, 1947-1955.
Lydia Gray (Southampton), ‘A Damned Nuisance’, Women, the Communist Party of Great Britain and British Imperialism in Africa.
Kirsten Kamphuis (Leuphana University), Leftist women and (post)colonial solidarities between the Netherlands and Indonesia, online.
Giulia Strippoli (Lisbon), Collective struggle, subjective perspective: the transnational projection of Angolan women, online.
16:15-16:45 Coffee Break
16:45-18:30 Panel II – Rethinking agency and the politics of liberation at the end of the empire.
Chair: Professor Andrew Thompson (Oxford)
Marie Robin (Columbia), “I’ve Always Been Free”: Agency and Coercion in the Bordels Militaires de Campagne in Vietnam and Algeria (c. 1946-1962), online.
Aincre Evans (Oxford), Rethinking Women’s Organising and the Politics of Liberation in British West Africa: The Case of the Sierra Leone Women’s Movement (1950-1960).
Sarah Frank (Sheffield), The Household as a Site of Encounter: Ginette Eboué and the Micro-Histories of Intimacy in the Decolonising Empire.

Day 2, May 22nd (Friday) – European Studies Center, 70 Woodstock Road, Oxford

09:30-11:30 Panel III - Visions of gender, development and emancipation in the post-colonial world.
Chair: Professor Sara Lorenzini (University of Trento)
Alana Harris (KCL), ‘The Urgency of the Situation in Africa’: English Catholic laywomen and Catholic Initiatives around the Collapse of Empire.
Silvia Bruzzi (Naples – Orientale), Ethiopian Women in the EWWA and the Global Framework of the IAW, online.
Giulio Fugazzotto (Venice), Extending the State through Family Planning: The Union Nationale des Femmes Tunisiennes and the Territorialization of Reproductive Policies in Tunisia (1960s–1970s)
David Brydan (KCL), Spain’s invisible decolonization: Catholic women and the emergence of Third Worldism in the Spanish metropole, 1950s-80s.
11:30-11:45 Coffee Break
11:45-12:30 Concluding discussion
12:30 Concluding lunch