Cosmopolitan feminists : the dynamics of interfaith collaboration in an age of empire

Séminaire de recherche en civilisation britannique, organisé par Marie Ruiz, maître de conférences en civilisation britannique, le mercredi (17h-18h30), à l'Université de Picardie-Jules Verne, site de la Citadelle, 10, rue des Français Libres (salle E002).

L’objectif du séminaire “In search of Britain” est de rassembler des chercheurs en histoire de la Grande Bretagne, toutes périodes et spécialités confondues, intervenant sur le thème “mémoire et patrimoine”. Cette problématique est en effet centrale dans la recherche en histoire et en historiographie. Il s’agit d’explorer la transmission des traditions, de l’histoire et de la culture britannique, mais aussi comment les « crises », révoltes et autres renversements historiques ont contribué à redéfinir le patrimoine britannique. 

"Cosmopolitan feminists: the dynamics of interfaith collaboration in an age of empire", intervention de Clare Midgley (Sheffield Hallam University).

Résumé/Abstract :

This paper offers an overview of my current research into the development of feminisms in the nineteenth-century world.  Focusing on groups of religious dissenters in India, Britain and the USA who were in the vanguard of campaigns to improve women’s social position in their respective nations, it explores how cross-cultural collaboration between these groups played a crucial role in shaping transnational debates and campaigns on the ‘woman question’ in the nineteenth-century age of empire.

The paper discusses the sustained debate and co-operation on the ‘woman question’ between members of the Brahmo Samaj, a religious and social reform movement among Hindus, and British and American Unitarians, groups located on the heterodox fringe of Protestant Christianity.  It suggests that these cross-cultural interchanges were characterized by a collaborative approach rather than by the imposition of western reform agendas. This liberal cosmopolitan approach to the ‘woman question’, it suggests, offered a more egalitarian, model for promoting female emancipation at a global level than the better-known phenomenon of ‘imperial feminism’.

Short biography of the presenter :

Professor Clare Midgley is Research Professor in History at Sheffield Hallam University. Her publications include Women Against Slavery (Routledge, 1992/1996), Feminism and Empire (Routledge, 2007), (co-author) Cosmopolitan Lives on the Cusp of Empire (Palgrave, 2017), (editor) Gender and Imperialism (M.U.P., 1998), and (co-editor) Women in Transnational History (Routledge, 2016). She is currently completing a book on ‘Cosmopolitan Feminisms’ for Manchester University Press. Prof. Midgley has served as deputy editor of Women’s History Review and co-editor of Gender & History and from 2010 to 2015 was President of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History. She is currently involved in a collaborative research project, ‘Beyond Empire’, funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant.

Ce séminaire est organisé au sein du laboratoire CORPUS EA 4292 (Conflits, représentations et dialogues dans l’univers anglo-saxon).

Evènement soutenu par la MESHS dans le cadre de l'appel à projet Soutien scientifique ponctuel 2019

Cette action est soutenue par l'État et le Conseil régional des Hauts-de-France dans le cadre du CPER ISI-MESHS