Dear Katharine
thank you for making the time to add these reflections. Because this event has triggered so many responses over the summer (mainly off list, two anonymous and several also from overseas) in a similar vein to your's and Ros Gill's Heather and I are planning a publication (not a real solution to anything I know but at least it allows these debates a wider circulation and some permanent record) following this event but, far more importantly, we hope that on the day we can talk about some other strategies for continuing this conversation and perhaps even strengthening support networks.
best
Anita
Dr Anita Biressi
Reader in Media Cultures
School of Arts
Roehampton University
Roehampton Lane
London SW15 5PH
Tel:020 8392 3359
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From: Women's Media Studies Network list [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Katharine Sarikakis [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 29 September 2009 20:29
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MECCSA-WMSN] My Brrrrrrilliant Career
Dear All,
Thanks for daring to come back to these painfully persistent issues, in public. I could not help but smirk when I read the (very ironic as I read it) title of the event and cursed my (academic) circumstances for not being able to attend.
I also remembered a few more other events in Cardiff and Leeds, again under the auspices of WMSN, but also in ICA and IAMCR (I believe under the feminist/gender divisions) and a couple of major research projects into the experience of women academics in communications. It is high time we got angry, so thanks for this initiative.
Although I agree that the neo-liberal university is hitting us hard and under the belt, both women and men, discrediting the efforts we make and belittling our achievements, I must say that a great deal of all this is doing it just to women. From having to adopt male working styles to climb up the ladder to concealing feminist work and leading double scholarly careers to ‘personal’ issues such as caring responsibilities or to everyday petty nastinesses and demonstrations of control, women are kept in their places.
I am interested in the practical expression of ‘what next’ – how can we push for change and accountability when patriarchal academy is alive and well (I hope nobody will ask me ‘what do you mean by patriarchy?’)? How can we support each other in everyday negotiations? How can we stop from thinking to ourselves ‘I am a fraud’ ‘I will be found out’ and make our own the very spaces we occupy- not as guests or charity cases, but rightful owners?
I have only an answer to the many questions I just posed, which is borrowed from a book (I think it had the title a tone of feathers, women in the academy- or something like that): If, after all this work and after all these years you still think you are a fraud, then you have done a pretty good job fooling everyone else! ( Since this is very hard to maintain, I take comfort from the fact that it may just not be like that).
Dear Anita and Heather,
Keep us posted. I am looking forward to hearing more about your deliberations and outcomes.
All the best
Katharine
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