Women as Wives & Workers: Marking Fifty Years of The Feminine Mystique
A joint conference hosted by the Bedford Centre for Women’s History, RHUL, and the Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW)
Saturday 30th November 2013, 0930 to 1830, at Royal Holloway University of London. All sessions are being held in the Main Lecture Theatre, Founders Building.
Time / Session0900-0930 / Arrivals and coffee
0930-1030 / Welcome and plenary lecture by Jay Kleinberg
1030-1040 / Break
1040-1200 / Panel 1: The Perfect Wife?
Caitríona Beaumont (London South Bank University): ‘What is a wife? “Setting jam to jell” or “the frilly little woman”? Negotiating domesticity in Britain before The Feminine Mystique’
Ed Owens (University of Manchester): ‘“The Queen looked up and smiled to show her love for her children”: Public Service, Citizenship and Family Life in Post-War Britain’
Elizabeth A. Sharp (Texas Tech University, USA/Durham University, UK): ‘Betty Friedan versus Betty Crocker: Becoming a Wife in West Texas’
1200-1215 / Break
1215-1315 / Panel 2: Challenging patriarchies through writing
John Howard (King’s College, London): ‘“Jail is a Great Teacher”: Isabel Alvarez, Palomares, and Women’s Writing’
Eilidh Hall (University of East Anglia): ‘“Sofi devoted her life to being a good daughter, a good wife, a good mother […], and now she asked herself – “¿Y pa’qué? ¡Chingao!””: evolutions and revolutions in the role of women in Ana Castillo’s So Far From God’
1315-1400 / Lunch
1400-1500 / Panel 3: Critiques of Friedan: political and personal identities
Jon Coburn (Northumbria University): ‘“Just a Housewife” – Women Strike for Peace and the Political Identity of Motherhood in Early 1960s America’
Gwen Jordan (University of Illinois Springfield): ‘How The Feminine Mystique Played in Peoria: Who is Betty Friedan?’
1500-1515 / Refreshment break
1515-1615 / Panel 4: Critiques of Friedan: race and class
Alice Lilly (University of Nottingham): ‘Housewife or Worker? Tensions over Women’s Treatment within the Aid to Families with Dependent Children Programme, 1935-1996’
Beverley Duguid: ‘Black women as “Superwomen”: Fitting Black Women’s experience into Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique
1630-1730 / Roundtable: The Feminine Mystique at Fifty
1730-1830 / Wine reception
1830-2000 / Dinner (optional extra – please indicate on your booking form if you would like to join us)