CfP: Where is the Sex in Sex Work History? Accessing sexual practices through histories of sex work and prostitution (Event: 10/2024, Berlin); by: 05.07.2024

Working Group: Sex work history: Adrina Schulz (Zurich), Alisha Edwards (Bochum), Annalisa Martin (Greifswald), Nora Lehner (Vienna/FU Berlin), Priska Komaromi (HU Berlin), and Sonja Dolinsek (Magdeburg)

Time: 10.-11.10.2024
Venue: FU Berlin
Proposals by: 05.07.2024

In the past decades, the history of commercial sex has become a burgeoning field of research. While early scholarship confined “prostitution” to the fields of social history and women’s history, the past decade has witnessed a broadening of perspectives and methodological approaches – from cultural history to global history and histories of labor, gender, the body, and sexualities. Despite the development of the field and the evident centrality of sex to sex work, it is precisely these sex practices that have received the least analytical attention in historical research. This stems in part from the methodological difficulties involved in accessing past sexual practices and experiences in historical sources. It might also be due to the “respectability” politics that historians engage in when trying to research sex work while avoiding the “prostitution stigma” attached to the topic and to the subjects who performed it. By focusing on governmental perspectives, social and economic factors, and media and social constructions of “prostitution”, historians could attempt to avoid the sex of sex work. Nevertheless, as trends in the fields of the history of sexuality and queer histories have shown, concrete sexual practices are situated in specific times and social environments.
Histories of sexuality have increasingly moved away from a focus on discourse and policing and towards a study of sexual practices and experiences. We propose using the sources and methodologies used by historians of sex work/prostitution to give us an insight into the sexual practices and the subjectivities of historical actors more generally. In doing so, we can also fight back against the stigma surrounding this topic, and against “respectability” politics, by openly and analytically discussing the still-taboo topic of sex practices in the history of sex work and prostitution. The goal of this workshop is to bring the sex of sex work into the centre of historical analysis and to thus truly integrate histories of sex work into histories of sexuality. The organizers also hope to bring the history of sex work closer to queer history, where commercial sex so far had a problematic status since the sex of sex work was and is not Continue reading →

CfP: Transnational Queer Histories (Series); by: open

de Gruyter (Web)

Proposals by: open

The series Transnational Queer Histories aims at encouraging queer historical studies, defined at their broadest, to forge new cross-disciplinary paths and pioneer innovative intersectional approaches. The series is intended to platform and support scholarship from academics at all levels of their careers, and to give voice to researchers and topics that have until now been unrepresented or underrepresented in academic publishing circles. As such, it is the editor’s intention to open the doorways for innovative, new research, highlighting non-traditional approaches and subject matter. TQH’s title is its programme; the editors seek work that is

  • transnational and/or comparative in scope, not (strictly) limited to one geographic locality;
  • queer in the broadest sense, encompassing not just homo- and cis-normative experiences but also a variety of gender and sexual identities, including (but not limited to) bisexuality, pansexuality, asexuality, transgender and intersex lives; and
  • historical, with work drawing principally from modern and early-modern history, in whichever way the contributor defines these.

In this way, the editors seek to encourage the creation of a body of new scholarship that moves away from the confines of (generally) white, male, homonormative, cisgender queer history that has tended to characterise the subdiscipline. While these narratives remain important to queer history, the editors encourage innovative approaches to them through new and hitherto-underutilised avenues of inquiry. Thus, they seek to foreground the broad and vibrant diversity of queer experiences throughout history.
TQH accepts proposals for both monographs and edited collections; work may be submitted in English or German. As noted, the editors seek work from scholars at all career levels. If you are unsure whether the work you have in mind would be a good fit under the TQH banner, please do not hesitate to contact the editors with an informal inquiry. They will do their best to advise you whether we would welcome a more formal proposal from you, as above. Continue reading →

Lecture: Marco Molteni: The effect of the abolition of the ruota (baby hatch) in 19th century Italy, 23.04.2024, Vienna and virtual space

The Socioeconomics Research Seminar & the first WU Economic and Social History Research Seminar

Time: Tue., 23.04.2024, 17h
Venue: WU Wien, Room D4.3.106 – and virtual space

Marco Molteni will present his joint work with Guiliana Freschi (Sant’Anna Pisa) on the effect of the abolition of the ruota (baby hatch) in 19th century Italy. The paper examines the effects of abolishing the ruota system on reproductive decision-making in post-unitary Italy (1863-1883). Baby hatches offered a means for anonymous infant abandonment, often used in Catholic Southern Europe due to social stigma and poverty. As infant abandonment rates and foundling mortality soared in the 19th century, countries began dismantling these systems. Italy mirrored this trend, with provinces abolishing the ruota at different times.
Marco Molteni and Guiliana Freschi investigate the specific impacts of the ruota abolition on infant abandonment, infant mortality, new births, and gender discrimination. Drawing on Becker’s quality-quantity trade-off model, they hypothesize that ending anonymous abandonment would lead to fewer births and improved care for retained children. Using a novel longitudinal dataset of Italian provinces and a staggered difference-in-difference strategy, they confirm these predictions. This research offers historical insights into 19th-century Italy’s social and economic dynamics surrounding child abandonment. It also contributes to the economic understanding of fertility decisions, demographic transitions, and societal responses to poverty.

Marco Molteni is Research Fellow at the Graduate Institute, Geneva (IHEID) and Associate Member of the History Faculty at Univ. of Oxford. Prior to this he was a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the ERC-funded Global Correspondent Banking 1870-2000 project, and a DPhil student at Pembroke College Oxford, where he wrote his thesis on banking failures and crisis management policies in Fascist Italy (1922-1943) using the banking supervision archives at the Bank of Italy. He also studied at Univ. of Milan (BA in History) and at Warwick Univ. (PG Diploma in Economics). He also worked (with Wilfried Kisling) on the importance of the London Money Market for the first globalization, here a link to their 2024 paper on the topic. Read more (Web) and (Web)

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Tagung: Recht umkämpft. Feministische Perspektiven auf ein neues Gemeinsames, 29.-31.05.2024, Berlin

Abschlusstagung der Forschungsgruppe „Recht – Geschlecht – Kollektivität“ (Web)

Zeit: 29.-31.05.2024
Ort: Berlin
Anmeldung: bis 30.04.2024

Programm (Web)

Krisen- und Konfliktlagen in spätmodernen Gesellschaften sorgen für immer dringlichere gesellschaftliche und politische Debatten über Selbstverständnis und Regeln des Zusammenlebens. Dies betrifft auch die Frage, wer überhaupt das „Wir“ ist, dass an diesen Kämpfen legitim teilnehmen darf. Immer häufiger werden diese Kämpfe mit den Mitteln des Rechts ausgetragen. Recht wird mobilisiert, um Recht wird gerungen, Recht ermöglicht und verhindert zugleich. Die Tagung nimmt diese Auseinandersetzungen um Teilhabe und gesellschaftliches Zusammenleben als Ausgangspunkt und fragt: Wie stellen sich gesellschaftliche Konflikte dar, wenn wir sie aus der Sicht verrechtlichter und zugleich vergeschlechtlichter Kollektivierungsprozesse betrachten?
Dazu haben die Mitglieder von der DFG geförderte interdisziplinäre Forschungsgruppe „Recht – Geschlecht – Kollektivität“ dort geforscht, wo Recht als Praktiken und Diskurse, Geschlecht als soziale Position wie als politisches Handlungsfeld und Kollektivität als soziale Gruppen, Konzepte des Gemeinsamen und Prozesse der Kollektivierung aufeinandertreffen. Sie betrachten Kollektive einer mittleren Ebene als wichtige Impulsgeber:innen in den gesellschaftlichen Verhandlungen von Gemeinschaft, Gemeinwohl und Solidarität. In insgesamt sieben Teilprojekten erforschen sie, wie Kollektive entstehen, wie sie aufrechterhalten werden und wie in ihnen um Vorstellungen des Gemeinsamen gerungen wird. Die Abschlusstagung „Recht umkämpft. Feministische Perspektiven auf ein neues Gemeinsames“ stellt die Ergebnisse der Forschungsgruppe vor und will dazu beitragen, die interdisziplinäre feministische Rechtsforschung im deutschsprachigen Raum zu verankern. Weiterlesen … Web)

Panels: Ambivalenzen der Rechtsmobilisierung | Das umkämpfte Gemeinsame: Kollektive Konflikte | Care: Sorgen für/mit/umeinander | Zur Politik sozialer Figuren | Ambivalences in Transnational Struggles for Social Justice

Vortrag: Luise Richter: „Fides. Vincit. Omnia!“ Konfessionelle Identität, Agency und ‚vernetzte‘ Mobilität in den Selbstzeugnissen der Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633-1694), 15.05.2024, Wien und virtueller Raum

Vortragsreihe „Geschichte am Mittwoch“ in Koop. mit der Österr. Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des 18. Jhds. (ÖGE18) (Web)

Zeit: 15.05.2024, 18.30-20.00 Uhr
Ort: Univ. Wien, Universitätsring 1, Hörsaal 30 – und virtueller Raum

Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633-1694) gilt als bekannteste protestantische Barockdichterin Niederösterreichs. Die aufgrund der Gegenreformation im 17. Jhd. stark forcierten Rekatholisierungsmaßnahmen sowie auch wirtschaftliche und finanzielle Schwierigkeiten veranlassten sie, wie auch viele ihrer Glaubensgefährt*innen, zu einer zunächst temporären und später dauerhaften Emigration ins süddeutsche „Exil“. Die Wahl fiel auf Nürnberg, das durch seine Aufgeschlossenheit gegenüber verschiedenen religiösen Richtungen insbesondere im 17. Jhd. sehr beliebt bei Protestant*innen war.
Anhand von Greiffenbergs Briefverkehr mit dem Nürnberger Literaten Sigmund von Birken in den Jahren zwischen 1662 und 1681 stehen im Rahmen des Vortrages drei Schwerpunkte im Zentrum: 1.) Die Bedeutung des Glaubens für „Konfessionsemigrant*innen“ hinsichtlich frühneuzeitlicher Identitätsbildungsprozesse. 2.) Der Einfluss der „eigenen“ Konfession auf die Lebensbilder glaubenstreuer Akteur*innen. 3.) Der Stellenwert von Religion im Kontext frühneuzeitlicher Mobilitätsprozesse. Diese Aspekte, die sich aus Greiffenbergs Selbstzeugnissen entnehmen lassen, gewähren einen bis dato unterschätzten Einblick in die Darstellungs- und Selbstrepräsentationsformen sowie in die Gedankenwelt, Kommunikationsstrukturen und Mobilitätsprozesse einer der wohl bedeutendsten „schreibenden“ Akteur*innen der Frühen Neuzeit.

Moderation: Sabine Miesgang

Luisa Richter absolvierte von 2015 bis 2023 das Lehramtsstudium für Geschichte, Sozialkunde und Politische Bildung sowie Latein an der Univ. Wien. Ihre Bachelorarbeiten verfasste sie zu „Ovids Heroides III“ und zur „Selbstrepräsentation der Konfessionsmigrantin Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg im süddeutschen Exil“. In ihrer Masterarbeit Continue reading →

Klicktipp und CfP: Open Gender Journal; bis: laufend

Open Gender Journal (Web)

Open Gender Journal erscheint seit 2017. Es veröffentlicht fortlaufend Fachbeiträge aus dem wissenschaftlichen Feld der intersektionalen Geschlechterforschung. Dies umfasst verschiedene methodische und theoretische Ausrichtungen, einschließlich – aber nicht beschränkt auf – Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Diversity Studies, feministische Forschung, Frauenforschung, Disability Studies, Rassismusforschung, Klassismusforschung, Critical Whiteness, Post- und Decolonial Studies.
Die begutachtete Zeitschrift steht für Diamond-Open-Access, also frei zugängliche und nachnutzbare Beiträge für Leser*innen und eine kostenfreie Veröffentlichung für die Autor*innen. Zu den bisherigen Ausgaben … (Web)

Offener CfP – Einreichfrist: laufend

Artikel können jederzeit eingereicht werden und werden fortlaufend veröffentlicht. Alle Beiträge erscheinen unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International. Ab 2024 erscheint das Open Gender Journal bei Berlin Universities Publishing. Open Gender Journal freut sich über die Einreichung von Forschungsartikeln, Debattenbeiträgen und Rezensionen aus dem vielfältigen Feld der intersektionalen Geschlechterforschung. Dies können deutsch und englischsprachige Beiträge aus verschiedenen methodischen und theoretischen Ausrichtungen aus dem oben genannten breiten Themenfeld sein. Aktuelle Rubriken sind „Digital Gender“ und “Debate Feminista x Open Gender Journal: Geschlechtsspezifische und sexuelle Belästigung, Diskriminierung und Gewalt im Hochschulkontext”. Mehr Informationen zur Beitragseinreichung finden sich auf der Website (Web).

Herausgeber*innen des Open Gender Journals sind die Fachgesellschaft Geschlechterstudien: Käthe von Bose; das Margherita-von-Brentano-Zentrum (FU Berlin): Heike Pantelmann; GeStiK – Gender Studies in Köln (Univ. zu Köln): Susanne Völker; das Zentrum für transdisziplinäre Geschlechterstudien (HU Berlin): Gabriele Jähnert; und das Referat Genderforschung (Univ. Wien): Sabine Grenz.

Vortrag: Brigitte Geiger: AUF, an.schläge, Missy & Co. Von der ,Frauenzeitung‘ zum feministischen Pop-Magazin, 28.05.2024, Wien

Frauenhetz in Kooperation mit STICHWORT (Web)

Zeit: Di., 28.05.2024, 19.00 Uhr
Ort: Frauenhetz, Untere Weißgerberstr. 41, 1030 Wien

Die Schaffung eigener Räume und Kommunikationsstrukturen begleitete ab den 1970er Jahren die Konstituierung der zweiten Frauenbewegung. Feministische Printmedien wie Informationsblätter und Zeitschriften dienten dem Austausch nach innen und der Mobilisierung und Intervention nach außen. Seither hat sich die feministische Medien- und Kommunikations­landschaft vielfältig ausdifferenziert.
Der Vortrag blickt zurück auf die Anfänge und zeichnet zentrale Entwicklungen und Strukturen nach. Angesichts der Verlagerungen feministischer Debatten in den digitalen Raum soll diskutiert werden, welche Rolle feministischem Journalismus und Zeitschriften heute zukommt.

Moderation: Irmtraud Voglmayr

Brigitte Geiger ist Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschafterin, langjährige Lehrbeauftragte an den Universitäten Wien, Salzburg und Klagenfurt. Zuletzt hat sie gemeinsam mit Johanna Dorer, Brigitte Hipfl und Viktorija Ratković das umfangreiche „Handbuch Medien und Geschlecht. Perspektiven und Befunde der feministischen Kommunikations- und Medienforschung“ (Springer 2023) (Web) herausgegeben. Mitbegründerin und Obfrau von STICHWORT.

Conference: Women and the history of state building in Africa, 06.-07.06.2024, Vienna

HAWPP-Project „A history of African female parliamentary pioneers“; Anaïs Angelo, Inst. für Afrikawissenschaften at the Univ. of Vienna (Web)

Time: 06.-07.06.2024
Venue: Univ. of Vienna

Program (PDF)

As African countries became independent, being represented in state institutions was a political goal for many women, but undoing the legacy of colonial politics and gaining public visibility in the political field was no easy task. Despite serious difficulties and challenges, women vied for offices, campaigned, talked and wrote about politics, voted, and expressed their ideas within various institutions (organizations, political party, unions, local and national assemblies…). They were strategic actors in the processes of postcolonial state building. Yet, their history has remained confined to a separate section of African politics, the “women’s section”. While African political history has long been dominated by male actors, the history of African women in politics has been primarily written from the perspective of grassroots politics and women’s role in social and economic development projects. A new wave of scholarship has recently begun to address this discrepancy in the historiography, with scholars exploring the ways women have challenged established political orders “from the top”, from creative writing to frontal opposition to presidential rule.[1] This literature shows that African women’s politics must be placed at the heart of narratives of state building, party politics, governance and presidential rule, that political narratives need to be complexified, concepts rethought, and that new sources must be sought to acknowledge African women’s complex modes of political imagination, action, and language.
Building on this trend, this conference aims to retrieve histories of African women’s contribution to the postcolonial politics of state building. Who were the women who vied for positions of power, how/why did they campaign (or were appointed), for which ideas? What did they achieve during their political mandates, which challenges did they face? What did they do afterwards, what impact did they have? Which sources are available to document their stories? What are the methodological challenges that emerge when retrieving these sources and/or writing these histories? Read more … (Web)

Lecture and Workshop: Lora Wildenthal: Equal and Free? Waged Agricultural Laborers in the Prussian Reform Era | The Language of Human Rigths in History: Abstract Universality and Historical Narratives, 22.-23.05.2024, Vienna

Vortragsreihe „Geschichte am Mittwoch“ (Web) und Gerald Stourzh-Vorlesung zur Geschichte der Menschenrechte und Demokratie (Web)

Lecture: Equal and Free? Waged Agricultural Laborers in the Prussian Reform Era (PDF)

Time: Mi., 22.05.2024, 18.30-20.00 Uhr
Venue: Hauptgebäude der Univ. Wien, Gerda-Lerner-Saal/HS 41, Universitätsring 1

In 1807 Prussian reformers announced the emancipation of subjected farmers. They thereby placed Prussia among the array of countries that legally freed enslaved, enserfed, and subjected people in the eighteenth and nineteeth centuries. The question of outcomes for freed farmers long organized the comparative history of emancipations. Did emancipation lead to farmers‘ independence, or to their proletarianization? The latter was long the consensus for the Prussian case. Since the 1970s a revisionist historiography on Prussia has used agricultural and quantitative evidence to undo that consensus. This scholarship tells us that freed farmers in Prussia largely held onto their land. Moreover, it tells us that the agricultural labor done by free workers—waged workers who had never been subjected—was more important economically than that of subjected farmers already decades before emancipation. This lecture puts these free waged agricultural laborers at the center of the famous moment of peasant emancipation in Prussia. What were the outcomes for them? It traces how Prussian reformers connected the equality and freedom of these free waged agricultural laborers to their visions for economic and social reform. The free waged agricultural laborers came out of the Prussian Reform Era with less freedom than before—why?

Moderation: Birgitta Bader-Zaar

Workshop: The Language of Human Rigths in History: Abstract Universality and Historical Narratives (PDF)

Time: Do., 23.05.2024, 13:30-15:30 Uhr
Venue: Hauptgebäude der Univ. Wien, Seminarraum 9, Hof 3, Tiefparterre Continue reading →

Workshop for Master’s and PhD students: Clare Hemmings: Feminist Archives, 15.05.2024, Vienna

Referat Genderforschung an der Univ. Wien: Gender Talks Workshop (Web)

Time: 15.05.2024, 11.30-14.45 Uhr
Venue: Univ. Wien, HS 29, Universitätsring 1, 1010 Wien, Stiege 7, 1. Stock

In this interactive workshop, the participants will be introduced to the critical and creative interventions within feminist archiving practice. Why have feminists found existing archives to be insufficient for recording and generating feminist history? What archival developments have emerged over the last (at least) 50 years to record, store and share feminist knowledge?
The focus in the first part of the workshop will be on archival knowledge, methodology and practice, showcasing a range of different archives and asking how feminist archival forays have shaped recent understandings of the scope of archives themselves. In the second part, the participants will look at their own emerging projects from an archival perspective: how might they draw on and/or generate archives to enrich their own feminist research? Clare Hemmings will also introduce the participants to some of the archival work she has done over the last 30 years as part of demonstrating the different approaches that can be drawn on.

The workshop will be held in English. Online registration is required for participation (Web)

Clare Hemmings is Professor of Feminist Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has been working at the Dep. of Gender Studies (formerly Gender Institute) since 1999. She has two main areas of research focus – feminist and queer studies – and is particularly interested in thinking through the relationship between these, as well as the ways in which both fields have been institutionalized at national and international levels. She is currently working on two projects: 1) „Inheritance: A Memory Archive“ engages questions of gender, sexuality, class-transition and nation through a series of short stories drawing on stories of family histories. 2) „Unnatural Feelings: Anti-Gender and the Right“ intervenes in the narratives of ‚anti-gender‘ mobilisations – with a specific focus on attacks on Gender Studies as a field of inquiry – to highlight the role of affect in their success.