Preliminary Programme

Wed 12 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 13 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Fri 14 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 15 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00

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Thursday 13 April 2023 11.00 - 13.00
P-6 WOM17 The Modern City and Gender Constructions (1890s-1950s)
E44
Networks: Urban , Women and Gender Chair: Maja Hultman
Organizers: Maja Hultman, Christina Reimann Discussant: Christina Reimann
Sophie Cooper : Liminal Habits: Female Religious Orders and the Transformation of Urban Space, 1850-1900
Focusing on the cities of Limerick and Chicago, this paper considers women religious - women who, through the taking of the habit, were often given access to different physical and social spheres of power to other women - as dislocated but influential participants in urban life. This paper focuses on ... (Show more)
Focusing on the cities of Limerick and Chicago, this paper considers women religious - women who, through the taking of the habit, were often given access to different physical and social spheres of power to other women - as dislocated but influential participants in urban life. This paper focuses on the ways that female religious orders used the growing city space as a tool in exerting power, within the Catholic Church and within wider society. At times this was through the building and ownership of educational and reform institutions, at others it was through supporting other women in 'taking up' public space. This research, which brings women religious out of the cloister and into the city, contributes a new perspective to the exploration of gender and urban space in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this reading, the modern city provided new opportunities for women religious - often immigrant women - to exert social, religious, and economic power both as part of the Catholic Church and, crucially, as female-led institutions. (Show less)

Susanne Korbel : The Making of Modernity and Gender-Bending: Expressions of Urban Queerness
In this presentation, I provide a case study on how the performative practice of gender-bending expressed sexuality and gender in urban metropolises between Central Europe and the United States in the first decades of the 20th century. From the last decades of the 19th century onward, the raising artistic scene ... (Show more)
In this presentation, I provide a case study on how the performative practice of gender-bending expressed sexuality and gender in urban metropolises between Central Europe and the United States in the first decades of the 20th century. From the last decades of the 19th century onward, the raising artistic scene established ways to deal fluidly with gender and non-heteronormative sexuality. The appearance of performers suggested a provocative conflation of differently gendered attributes while challenging the limits of gender as exposed by societal norms. I draw on visual and performative aspects and investigate performers, and photographers and their models. Spaces under consideration include studios, music halls, cabarets, and film. I argue that the urban sphere of the early 20th century, determined by the making of modernity plus the mobility the society and the cities were facing, sparked characters who critically negotiate the boundaries of sex, but also offered identifications that were at the core of denunciations by antisemites, homophobes, and antimodernists alike. (Show less)

Rachel Pierce : The Geography of the Racialized Family: Mapping Segregation DC and the Possibilities of Digital History
The history of racial covenants and redlining in America – the extra-legal practices that ensured strict racial segregation in the US housing market through the mid-1900s – is well-documented by historians yet remains little understood by the public. Recently, digital history has swooped in bridge this gap, teaming historians with ... (Show more)
The history of racial covenants and redlining in America – the extra-legal practices that ensured strict racial segregation in the US housing market through the mid-1900s – is well-documented by historians yet remains little understood by the public. Recently, digital history has swooped in bridge this gap, teaming historians with local activists and IT specialists. This paper will investigate how the intersectional family politics of modern urban segregation is depicted in Mapping Segregation DC, a project focused on the nation’s capital. The project allows for an examination of how multimodality affects the depiction of the intertwined politics of race, class, housing, and gender. This is a history easily reduced to 2D racialized maps that privilege a history of capital manipulation and deemphasize gender. Yet primary sources for the DC project range from maps and photographs to guided tours and digitized racial covenants. This array will provide the basis for an analysis of digital history’s potential and limits as a method of illustrating a complicated intersectional politics of the family as defining the evolution of modern urban space. (Show less)

Judit Vidiella : Haunted Cities: Medium Women in-between Materiality and Spirituality (1853-1910)
This presentation explores the relationship between modern urbanity and spiritism, an organized movement that was primarily an urban phenomenon and presented itself as a scientific religion that permitted emancipation from Catholicism. Kardecian spiritism was a counter-hegemonic movement with its own journals, clinics, associations and schools where women played a central ... (Show more)
This presentation explores the relationship between modern urbanity and spiritism, an organized movement that was primarily an urban phenomenon and presented itself as a scientific religion that permitted emancipation from Catholicism. Kardecian spiritism was a counter-hegemonic movement with its own journals, clinics, associations and schools where women played a central role. The spiritist movement allowed women to express themselves in new ways and experiment positions of possibility in relation to power, citizenship and participation in the public sphere of the city. They founded their proper schools, organized rallies at theatres and athenaeums, or participated in the organization of the First Spiritist Congress in Barcelona at 1888 coinciding with the Universal Exhibition. The women’s urban civic associations that fought against the domination of male clergy were the germ of the early Spanish feminism. This presentation uses the case of Barcelona city to show how spiritist mediums took over bodily-materialistic but also spiritual dimensions of urban life, including political, economical, educational and scientific activities. (Show less)



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