Conference organised by the Centre d’Analyses et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (CARMA), October 11 & 12, 2008 at the University of Lyon, France

The theme of this conference purports to examine the notion of «correspondence» in every sense of the word and to see how the various meanings intertwine. As, for a long time, women were not supposed to speak in public, letter-writing became their privileged mode of expression. Through epistolary exchanges, they found a way to elude confinement to their traditional sphere. The New Historians turned to these precious sources intending to re-write the male-dominated «lopsided» History deprecated by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own.

Over the years and the centuries, other means of communication (not only books, magazines and newspapers but also improved travelling facilities and transatlantic voyages) ensured the opening of new channels through which women were able to build and reticulate a gendered identity, all the while paving the way for the emergence of militant movements.
Emphasis should be given to the circulation of ideas between feminists (women, men or organisations) in a particular country, or from one to any other English-speaking country, or from any English-speaking to any other country (France, for instance, but not exclusively).
These exchanges should reveal how thinking on woman’s rights was not restricted to a few at a particular place and a particular time but how a universal aspiration for human rights as concerning both men and women gradually came into existence. It will be interesting to show how this internationalization occurred early, long before the emergence of a «global feminism» as advocated in the XXth century by the third wave of feminists whose contribution is not to be underestimated, however.
With the exception of strictly literary papers on works of fiction, all schools of thought will be welcome in the conference workshops, with no restriction on the adopted methodological approach.
You are invited to submit propositions for papers (approximately 150 words) with a short resumé before March 31, 2008

To Claudette Fillard, Professor Emerita (American Studies) at Université Lumière-Lyon 2: Claudette.fillard#univ-lyon2.fr
or to Françoise Orazi, Associate Professor (British History & Civilisation) at Université Lumière-Lyon 2: f.orazi#free.fr

aus: Newsletter des AKHFG