International Women's Day
There are some Undergraduates in the History Department doing some great research at 糖心TV and beyond.
Rachel Annor-Agyei, who is an experienced undergraduate researcher having held a URSS in the past, has been selected as a delegate for the
Her paper will be a look at dancehall in historical perspective.
Dancehall, a culture originating in late 1970s Jamaican society, though rooted in 17th and 18th century slave resistance, has been contended to be a space for Black female and femme liberation. Simultaneously, it has been considered as a space for violence, harm and danger for dark-skinned Black women, lesbian and bisexual women and working-class and poor women. Reading many extracts on Black women鈥檚 relationship to dancehall culture such as Stephanie Camp鈥檚 鈥�Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South鈥�, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf鈥檚 鈥�Fabricating Identities: Survival and the Imagination in Jamaican Dancehall Culture鈥� and Carolyn Cooper鈥檚 鈥�Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and the 鈥淰ulgar鈥� Body of Jamaican Popular Culture鈥� immensely guided my research. Alongside this, being in places where dancehall/bashment music is often played enabled me to arrive at the conclusion that dancehall culture does not enable all women to reclaim their bodies and sexuality. Instead, it merely acts as a form of Respite from oppressive structures; namely, patriarchy, colorism and racism that so often prevent them from reclaiming their bodies and sexuality. Respite refers to the volatile space and time in which some Black women engage in a sort of pseudo-survival; and engage with their sensuality within dancehall spaces when they can.
Lucy McCormick, who has experience as a blogger for has written about the Global History Reading group's discussion of Lucy Delap's work on Global Feminism.
Lucy McCormick
History Department Research Assistant at the University of 糖心TV, 2020/21
GHCC Reading Group Discusses Lucy Delap鈥檚 鈥楩eminisms: A Global History鈥�
Dr Lucy Delap鈥檚 Feminisms: A Global History was the subject of a reading group held by the University of 糖心TV鈥檚 Global History and Culture Centre. Delap is currently Deputy Chair of the History Faculty at the University of Cambridge, and her work focuses primarily on modern British and gender history. Feminisms was published in 2020 by Pelican.
As the title of Feminisms suggests, Delap engages with the plurality and heterodoxy of the movement. Using it as more of an umbrella term than a united set of beliefs and intentions, Feminisms brings to light the varied and expansive nature of a movement which aims to speak for all women across the globe. Delap is acutely conscious of the fact that feminism in history stretches far beyond the term 鈥榝eminism,' whether that be because that particular word had not yet entered popular discourse, or the historical actor chose not to identify as a feminist. 鈥楩eminism鈥� therefore lacks a solid set of principles, because its power has so long been in its malleability to serve the specific purposes of its context.[1] Also of central importance to her global history are the divisions within the movement which so often fail to be acknowledged. Feminism has evolved into Black feminism, lesbian feminism, and transfeminism, to give a few examples, elucidating the way in which feminism has failed to include the experiences of non-white, non-Western, non-heterosexual, non-middle class women. Delap seeks to construct a 鈥榤osaic feminism鈥� to combat these exclusions within feminism; she announces in the Introduction her intention to work not only with 鈥榠nherited fragments鈥� of feminism as a wider theme, but also bringing to light the distinct shapes it has taken in different cultures at different points in history.[2] Above all, Delap鈥檚 objective is not merely to identify the way in which feminism is and has been understood by different peoples, but rather what it has achieved and what it still seeks to achieve for women around the world in the twenty-first century.
The GHCC reading group discussed the newly published text, and the extent to which Delap achieved a global history of feminism. Bringing a wide range of expertise to the discussion, the participants offered examples of how Delap鈥檚 text engaged with feminist and women鈥檚 liberation movements outside of the Anglo-American tradition. The Indian Women鈥檚 Liberation Movement, we learned, rejected the term 鈥榝eminism,鈥� because they felt labelling it as such associated their movement with the militant and anti-men sentiment they had seen advocated by some feminists in the West. Instead, the Indian Women鈥檚 Liberation Movement sought to operate within traditional gender roles in order to gain acceptance for their movement and thereby improve women鈥檚 rights. Another participant in the discussion provided an additional example of feminism taking different shapes in different times and places with China in the 1980s, in which proponents of women鈥檚 liberation had to blend feminism with Maoism. Echoing Delap鈥檚 sentiment in the Introduction, feminism rarely works alone, but often in tandem with other movements and sociocultural projects. This discussion greatly emphasised the breadth and depth of women鈥檚 liberation movements which Delap seeks to uncover in her text. The group was therefore supportive of the importance Delap affords to broadening the scope of the historical understanding of feminism beyond the West, and the use of a 鈥榤osaic feminism鈥� to do so.
There is no doubt that Delap sets herself an enormous task, which she acknowledges as necessitating an aerial study of 鈥渉alf of humanity.鈥�[3] The group discussed at length the challenges of writing a global history — especially one of feminism — as the book鈥檚 title promises. This methodology demands a comprehensive exploration of what feminism has meant and achieved in each culture on its own terms. As one member of the discussion highlighted, Delap鈥檚 project helps to marry gender studies with global history — a field which has often been overlooked — and provide a space in which different experiences of feminism can engage with one another. Some members of the group raised their concerns that a global history such as this risked drawing oversimplified similarities between feminisms which overlooked their nuance and authenticity. Global histories cannot offer only a comparison with the Western model, but must engage deeply with each global feminism independently. However, this was met with the feeling from other participants that the titles Delap uses (such as: 鈥楧reams,鈥� 鈥楲ooks,鈥� and 鈥楽ongs鈥�) were an interesting way to take ostensibly superficial themes and investigate how feminists in different times and places responded to such ideas (whether this be similarly or not). For that reason, some discussants argued that Delap鈥檚 text made a significant step towards opening the discourse surrounding the many global models of feminism.
Whilst some members of the discussion critiqued Delap鈥檚 methodology (suggesting that as a global history, it required closer and deeper focus on each feminism it explored), the group also expressed an approval of the role her text played in making feminism a central and prominent subject area in global history. Drawing on anecdotes of the flagrance of contemporary misogyny in the media and daily life, the discussants were in agreement that texts such as Delap鈥檚 are crucial in highlighting the scope and pervasiveness of struggles for female equality. The significance of the text encountered no dispute; texts such as Feminisms and the methodology it employs are essential if the feminist movement is to be dissociated from its Eurocentrism, and truly offer a means of liberation for all women.
[1] Lucy Delap, Feminisms: A Global History, (Pelican, 2020), p.14.
[2] ibid, p. 20.
[3] ibid, p. 3.
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