Preliminary Programme

Wed 4 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 5 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30
    19.00 - 20.15
    20.30 - 22.00

Fri 6 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 7 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.00 - 17.00

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Wednesday 4 April 2018 11.00 - 13.00
F-2 WOM02a Gender in the Global City. New Research on Gendered Urban Spaces I
MAP/OG/017 Maths and Physics
Networks: Urban , Women and Gender Chair: Sanne Muurling
Organizer: Danielle van den Heuvel Discussant: Elizabeth Cohen
Bebio Amaro : Gender and Urban Space in Edo (1600-1850)
This paper introduces a new research project which reconstructs women’s use of urban space in the biggest city in the early modern world: Edo (present-day Tokyo). It aims to enlighten the gendering of urban space during Edo’s transformation from a castle town to ?-Edo, the Great City of commoners. The ... (Show more)
This paper introduces a new research project which reconstructs women’s use of urban space in the biggest city in the early modern world: Edo (present-day Tokyo). It aims to enlighten the gendering of urban space during Edo’s transformation from a castle town to ?-Edo, the Great City of commoners. The project uses a great variety of sources shedding light on women’s use of streets. Edo’s street life is extensively portrayed in print, many of which include intricate and accurate details of people and activities. Guidebooks and surveys are contrasted with prints and popular fiction to illuminate female and male movement through the city. Historical maps allow for a reconstruction of the urban fabric, and the governance and day-to-day use of urban space in commoners’ districts will be deduced from ordinances, petitions, and court records.

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Lisa Hellman : The City of Women: the Gendered Spaces of Eighteenth-century Canton
During the long eighteenth century, Canton was a global hub for trade between Asia and Europe. However, this trade was controlled by the Chinese administration in a number of ways, the most striking of which was its spatial restrictions: all foreign traders lived and worked in the small foreign quarters. ... (Show more)
During the long eighteenth century, Canton was a global hub for trade between Asia and Europe. However, this trade was controlled by the Chinese administration in a number of ways, the most striking of which was its spatial restrictions: all foreign traders lived and worked in the small foreign quarters. These lay outside the city walls and were thus cut off from the bustling Chinese metropole of Canton. In addition, these restrictions were gendered: foreign women were forbidden from entering the foreign quarters at the same time as foreign men were banned from meeting Chinese women. For this reason, Europeans writers called the walled city of Canton “the City of Women”.
In their letters and travelogues, the foreign traders shaped discourses of the gendered restrictions and spatial isolation, which in turn helped form how life in port was lived. From the early eighteenth century and until the opium war, the environment in this vibrant hub was continuously shaped by the tension between the global scale of its trade and the smallness in which it took place. Some social activities, for example the masonic lodge or dinner parties, were limited by their local spaces – others practices become unavailable altogether.
In the early nineteenth century, however, Europeans increasingly often transgressed the spatial and gendered bans, and did so as a way to question the local rules. For a woman to enter a certain space, or for a man to enter another, became a way for certain European and North American groups to discuss Chinese control, and to pursue imperial ambitions.
This presentation will detail the gendered and spatial restriction of Canton, the discourses surrounding them, and the practices and conflicts resulting from these restrictions. (Show less)

Bob Pierik : Gender in the Streets of Amsterdam (1600-1850)
This paper presents the first findings of a case study of gendered use of urban space in early modern Amsterdam. While we have some knowledge of gendered patterns of day-to-day activities of European cities such as London, such an analysis has been absent so far for Amsterdam and the Dutch ... (Show more)
This paper presents the first findings of a case study of gendered use of urban space in early modern Amsterdam. While we have some knowledge of gendered patterns of day-to-day activities of European cities such as London, such an analysis has been absent so far for Amsterdam and the Dutch Republic. Foreign travelers were astonished by the exceptional freedom of women in the Dutch Republic to the extent that the ‘strong Dutch woman’ became a trope in travel literature, but these gender norms and stereotypes have not yet been analyzed through the lens of mobility and actual presence in street life. Women were numerically dominant in the unique city of Amsterdam, but the question is how this translated to their use and informal ownership of the streets and how this shaped both female and male urban experience over time. A variety of sources, ranging from court records to visual representations of street life are used to reconstruct the streets of Amsterdam during the period of the Dutch Republic, the Batavian Republic and the early Kingdom of the Netherlands. Through an intersectional approach in which I reflect on different social groups and their relation to gendered norms and practices, a first attempt is made at hypothesizing the gendered ownership of the streets. (Show less)

Danielle van den Heuvel : Freedom of the Streets. Some Thoughts on Gender and Urban Space in the Pre-modern Era
This paper introduces a new comparative research programme which investigates the gender dynamics of urban streets in cities in pre-modern Europe and Asia. It does so by reflecting on the historiography of street use, by assessing the validity of often-used concepts such as public, private, domestic and liminal spaces, and ... (Show more)
This paper introduces a new comparative research programme which investigates the gender dynamics of urban streets in cities in pre-modern Europe and Asia. It does so by reflecting on the historiography of street use, by assessing the validity of often-used concepts such as public, private, domestic and liminal spaces, and by testing out new ways we could study the impact of spatial practices on everyday life in the pre-industrial city. In this context it will pursue strategies that have been tried and tested in fields such as the history of women's work, and the history of crime and courts, and combine these with analysis of visual materials to study both materiality and movement in the context of the early modern city. (Show less)



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