[csaa-forum] GCS seminar this Friday - Prof Anna Yeatman

[Melissa Gregg]

The next Department of Gender and Cultural Studies Seminar will be held this
Friday October 16 from 2pm-4pm in the New Law School Annexe.

> Speaker: Professor Anna Yeatman (UWS)
> 
> Chair: Professor Meaghan Morris (USyd)
>  
> Title: Revisiting ³House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme² ­
> Reflections on second wave feminist theory
> 
> Abstract: 
> In this essay Iris Young questions (second-wave) feminist ambivalence
> concerning the values of ³house and home² in an historical context where, with
> the completion of the integration of women (as mothers) into the paid
> workforce, the gender division of labour has loosened its grip on social
> structure.  This is a context where women and men face the challenge of being
> and becoming their own person, Œan individual¹.  Young does not really broach
> this challenge, but she ends her essay with an invocation of Œfour normative
> values¹ associated with house and home: safety, individuation, privacy, and
> preservation.  I argue these values make sense only with reference to the
> conception of the subject as an individual, as a self, a conception that may
> be entangled in gender determinations but that is independent of them.  It is
> as though in her exploration of feminist ambivalence with regard to a
> patriarchal order of house and home, Young leaves this order behind and ends
> up with an individualized order of house and home. Yet is clear that Young
> continues to think that sex difference is a fundamental Œstructural¹ feature
> of human society.  What she (and second wave feminism) opens up is the complex
> conjunction of individual freedom and the structural determination of
> femaleness.  This indicates an account of freedom quite different from the
> liberal idea of choice or (as Hegel puts it) freedom from determination.  I
> conclude the paper by arguing that this non-liberal idea of freedom has been
> inadequately developed in both feminist theory and feminist politics.
> 
> About the speaker:
> Professor Anna Yeatman is the Director of the Centre for Citizenship and
> Public Policy at UWS. Prior to taking up this appointment in 2008 she was a
> Canada Research Chair in the Department of Political Science, University of
> Alberta. Her most recent book (with G. Dowsett, D. Gursansky and M. Fine) is
> Individualization and the Delivery of Welfare Services (Palgrave 2009); and
> with M. Zolkos, she is the co-editor of a collection forthcoming with
> Continuum, State, Security and Subject Formation. She is working on a book of
> essays titled The Politics of Individuality.
> 
> Location:  Seminar Room 442, New Law School Annexe, on Eastern Avenue. This is
> the triangular glass building half way along on your right if entering campus
> from City Road Main Gate. See the map here:
> http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/about/campus.shtml

 
Dr Melissa Gregg

Lecturer in Gender and Cultural Studies
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry
Quadrangle Building A14
University of Sydney NSW 2006

p 02 9351 3657 | m 0408 599 359 | e mel.gregg at usyd.edu.au

http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/gcs/staff/profiles/mgregg.shtml

Enrol in our NEW Master of Cultural Studies:
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/gcs/postgrad/coursework.shtml
 

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