Graduate Student, Arts and Law
Post Graduate Student and General Editor of the Journal of History and Cultures
Centre of West African Studies
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Dr. Kate Skinner
Dr. Lynne Brydon |
About
My current work is concerned with the relationship between transnational feminist organisations and “native” colonial women during the interwar period. I propose to explore this relationship by focussing on the work of the Council for the Representation of Women in the League of Nations (CFRWIL). This council was based in Britain and much of their work concerned “improving” the lives of women in the colonies. It is clear that members of this council formed orientalist images of their ‘sisters under skin’ and that they deployed these images as a means of asserting their own usefulness to a particular version of progressive colonialism. Much less explored, however, is the ways in which women in the colonies were also writing about ‘Western’ women and deploying these images in agendas of their own. This is not simply a case of ‘writing back’ from the Empire. My broader doctoral project will move beyond Orientalist and post-colonial frameworks, seeking instead to place urban women’s writings in a specific historical context and identify an early interaction between Western and African feminisisms. This paper draws upon the work of scholars such as Antoinette Burton, Leila Rupp and Sarah Paddle. However, it seeks to place “native” women firmly into the historical discourse on imperial feminism.
I am also the General Editor of the Journal of History and Cultures (JHAC). Please see our website for further information: www.historyandcultures.com.
Contact Information
| IM: | holly.ellis12 |
