Registration is now open for this two-day international conference, which will reflect on how far society has progressed since the coining of the term “sexism,” and on the possible futures of the issue. The conference will run from 7th to 8th March, over International Women’s Day 2015.

For more details and link to registration, see: https://readdurhamenglish.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/registration-and-programme-for-50-years-of-sexism-what-next-7th-to-8th-march/

The conference features over twenty papers and panels on topics ranging from sexism (past and present) in the workplace, to the future of activism via social media. Keynote speakers include:

New York Times 1 Best-Selling Author of The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield
Actress, writer and founder of the “No More Page 3” Campaign, Lucy-Anne Holmes
Specialist in Criminology at Durham University, Professor Nicole Westmarland
Children’s Literature specialist, formerly of Durham University, Dr Pam Knights
Writer of children’s fiction, The Demon Notebook, Erika McGann
Author of The Quick, Lauren Owen

A draft programme for the conference is available below.

Saturday 7th March

9.15 Registration opens

9.30 Introduction / housekeeping

9.45-10.45 Keynote 1: Pam Knights: Dangerous Thresholds? Entering the Ballet World in Fiction for Girls, 1930s to the present.

10.45-11.00 Break

11.00-12.30 Panels 1

Panel 1A: The Politics of Work, the Work of Politics
Victims of violence in Indian families:  where misogyny and misandry meet
Whistle while you Work?  Representations of Female Work in Disney Animated Films (1937-2014)
Gender and the “shades of grey”: Representing the legacy of female political leadership

Panel 1B: The Terminology of Oppression
DH Lawrence’s study of Thomas Hardy’s ‘bachelor girl’: sexist or sympathetic?
Engaging with David Foster Wallace’s Hideous Men
The legacy and iconography of the madwoman
12.30 – 13.15 Lunch (films)

13.15 – 14.15 Keynote roundtable discussion, with novelists Diane Setterfield, Erika McGann, and Lauren Owen

14.15-15.45 Panels 2

Panel 2A:  Media-ting Sexism
UK Mass Media and Survivors of Sexual Violence
Susanna the Slut: Depictions of Rape Victims in Law and in Art
A Feminist Take on Sexism and Sexual Objectification in Paternal Literary and Artistic Canons and the Daughter’s Seduction in Phoebe Gloeckner’s Graphic Memoirs

Panel 2B: Divine Justice
Feminine Assertion and the Deified Female: Draupadi in the Mahābhārata and The Great Indian Novel
Hilda Doolittle’s Trilogy: Venus, from Venereal to Venerous
‘Women’s Religious Experience’: 30 Years On

15.45 – 16.00 Break

16.00 – 17.30 Panels 3

Panel 3A: Re-pressing, Acts of Repression
Depictions of consent in erotic fanfiction as a form of cultural activism
Re-envisioning Resistance & Representation: New Subjectivities & the Black/Lesbian Feminist Literary Revolution
Readwomen2014

Panel 3C: Bodies of change
The Representations of Disabled Women in Anglo-American Advertising
Sexism/(Dis)ableism: intersection of ideas between feminist and disability rights movements
Gendered Topographies and Celestial Archetypes: Women Divided at the Breast
17.30 – 18.30 Keynote 3 Lucy Anne Holmes (Founder of No More Page 3)

19.00 Conference Dinner

Sunday 8th March

10.00 – 11.00 Keynote 4 Nicole Westmarland (Professor of Criminology, Durham University)

11.00 – 11.15 Break

11.15 – 12.45 Panels 4

Panel 4A: The Legacy of the Second Wave
Dying into Art: the Myth of the Author and the Woman Writer in the 1960s
Autobiography as continued resistance: gender, life narratives and feminist discourse of the 1960s
Remembering Past Sexism at 1970s Durham University

Panel 4B: Visions of the future?
The Game of Harassment: Gender Identity and #Gamergate
Is the blogosphere sexist?
‘Couldn’t Very Well Keep Calling Myself the Master, Now Could I?’: Sexism and Doctor Who (2005-2014)

12.45-13.30 Concluding statements, discussion on themes and information on publication & networks