Gender, Labour and Consumption in historical perspective
he Department of History are holding a major international conference in September 2019 regarding Gender, Labour and Consumption in historical perspectives.
Over the past four decades or so, gender scholarship has transformed our understanding of many key issues of historical concern. Particularly fruitful have been explorations of consumption in its varied manifestations, undertaken by researchers studying the subject within different disciplines. Labour historians have been slow to address these important developments, though there are signs that the situation is now slowly changing.
This major international conference hosted by the Department of History at the University of Essex aims to begin a conversation between these approaches, in the belief that there are fruitful overlaps of interest between them and that they can learn from each other in productive ways.
We therefore invite papers from scholars working on the interface between histories of gender, labour and consumption, including early career academics and postgraduates, researching in various disciplinary contexts.
Themes and topics might include:
- histories of shopping as work
- market regulation & moral economies
- spaces of consumption as sites of labour
- retailing racism & racialised consumerism
- consumer organising & gender relations
- pleasure, consumption & labour
- masculinities, consumption & labour
- total war & redefinitions of gender, labour & consumption