Deconstructing Feminist Periodisation: The Problem with Feminist Waves in Women’s History

Sammi-Beth Clarke (Department of History, University of Sheffield) Feminism, for the most part, is taught, talked about, and understood within the framework of ‘feminist waves’. This periodisation provides useful categorisation for distinguishing how the feminist movement has shifted, divided, and realigned throughout its history. Yet, this periodisation is problematic. Problematic, as it can, and indeed...

Sex and Psychosis: Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and the Inherent Trauma of Womanhood

Emily-Rose Baker (School of English, University of Sheffield) In his first English-language film Repulsion (1965), Roman Polanski offers a terrifying alternative to the deeply conservative ideals of suburban domesticity and gender roles used to oppress 1960s women in an early Cold War climate of international instability. Reminiscent of other gendered psychological thrillers of the same...

Femininities and Feminisms: Tensions in (Neo)-burlesque

Chelsea Haith (Culture and Thought After 1945, University of York) This paper explores the tensions that arise in the negotiation of sexualities, femininities, and feminist ideology in Cape Town-based (Neo)-burlesque performers’ articulation of their experiences in the genre. The focus of this paper is on the way in which performers articulate their beliefs and experiences...

Family First? Motherhood, Work and Politics in the German Textile Workers’ Union’s Mein Arbeitstag – Mein Wochenende and Alice Rühle-Gerstel’s Das Frauenproblem der Gegenwart

Katherine E. Calvert (Germanic Studies, University of Sheffield) The Weimar Republic, founded in 1919 as a modern democracy, represented a clear departure from the immediate past and authoritarian Imperial era (1871-1918) in Germany. The Weimar era, which ended with the National Socialists’ assumption of power in 1933, failed to provide political stability, illustrated by the...