Lien Foubert, Floris Meens, Tom Sintobin; Radboud University, The Netherlands

Proposals by 01.04.2016

We two ladies … have found out and will maintain / that ladies alone get on in travelling much better than / with gentlemen … The only use of a gentleman in / travelling is to look after the luggage, and we take / care to have no luggage. (Emily Lowe, Unprotected Females in Norway: Or, The Pleasantest Way of Travelling There. 1857)

It is generally assumed that early travel reports were predominantly written by men because they moved more freely in the public sphere. For the same reason, so scholars have argued, women did not appear in travel literature as travel companions but rather as objects of desire or as someone to return home to. Since the 1970s in particular, the absence of women in the mobile societies of Europe and beyond has been questioned. After a reappraisal of diaries, letters, scientific reports, etc. of travelling women in the 19th and 20th centuries, it has become clear that women undertook voyages of their own, some in companionship of other women, others in companionship of men. Modern scholarship has acknowledged this more nuanced image of the practice of travel, but the ways in which men and women travellers interacted with each other while en route have not yet been a systematic focus of scholarly attention. The present volume aims to fill that gap. Read more and source … (Web)

University of Nantes, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Organized by Martine Stirling and Delphine Sangu

University of Nantes
Time: 16.-17.04. 2016
Proposals by 01.04.2016

This conference will look into changes in women’s work in a historical and European context, in particular the ways in which the transition or passage from an agrarian-type economy to an industrial and post-industrial economy has affected women since the 19th century. It follows our international workshop which took place in Nantes on October 18, 2014 and will focus more particularly on Britain, France and Spain while not excluding other European countries.

The issues raised by this (r)evolution, for families and more specifically women, are multifaceted and complex. In the context of the (work) landscape and environment, one might consider first of all the issue of travel to and from work, or to and from factories in the light of changes between the 19th and 21st centuries. Read more and source … (Web)