Barbara Bodichon S Epistolary Education

"This book brings together feminist histories in education with an innovative approach to epistolary narrative analytics. In deploying the notion of the epistolary bildung the author rigorously and eloquently shows how the correspondence of Barbara Bodichon can shed fresh light in a range of personal problems and public issues in women’s lives, which remain relevant today" - Maria Tamboukou, Professor of Feminist Studies, University of East London, UK This book assesses Barbara Bodichon’s significance in the history of the women’s movement in Britain by elaborating a conceptualisation of letters as sources of feminist development. Bodichon was the leader of the first women’s suffrage committee in England, which collected 1,500 signatures in favour of the female vote – a petition presented in the House of Commons by sympathising MPs to support the amendment of the 1867 Reform Bill. This book explores the significance of letter-exchange in Barbara Bodichon’s feminist becoming as she managed to mobilize partisans and secure signatures by means of chains of friendship letters spreading across the country. For letters functioned as platforms where, concomitantly to her making sense of her experiential input, Bodichon adopted, redefined and challenged circulating discourses – transforming them in the process and hence contributing to the production of feminist knowledge, intersubjectively and collaboratively in dialogue with her addressees. At the crossroads of history of feminism, gender history and history of women’s education, this book explores the significance of letter-exchange in Bodichon’s development into one of the galvanizing figures of the women’s rights movement in Victorian England.

Gender History Across Epistemologies offers broad range of innovative approaches to gender history. The essays reveal how historians of gender are crossing boundaries - disciplinary, methodological, and national - to explore new opportunities for viewing gender as a category of historical analysis. Essays present epistemological and theoretical debates central in gender history over the past two decades Contributions within this volume to the work on gender history are approached from a wide range of disciplinary locations and approaches The volume demonstrates that recent approaches to gender history suggest surprising crossovers and even the discovery of common grounds

Through the eighteen essays of this book, the reader becomes the beholder of a challenging survey of “feminism-in-the-making,” from its early stages in the 18th century to the present, in Anglo-Saxon countries and elsewhere, including Eastern Europe and some places under the influence of communism or Islam. The development of exchanges and correspondence enabled feminism to pre-exist the word itself, which leads several contributors to ponder over its meaning as well as over the notion of influence, a pivotal component of their reflection. Through the complex interplay of harmony and disharmony, openly acknowledged or carefully hidden similarities or differences, and the delineation of the converging or conflicting forces which the authors of this volume attempt to disentangle, a fascinating chorus of voices eventually emerges from this volume, a preview of the budding “sisterhood.” It throws light on the major factors in women’s growing consciousness of their plight and of the main stakes in the struggle for the defense of their rights. Scholars of different national origins and methodological approaches here join forces until the book itself amounts to an innovative web of exchanges and correspondences, its medium as well as its avowed message.

That the self is ‘performed’, created through action rather than having a prior existence, has been an important methodological intervention in our understanding of human experience. It has been particularly significant for studies of gender, helping to destabilise models of selfhood where women were usually defined in opposition to a male norm. In this multidisciplinary collection, scholars apply this approach to a wide array of historical sources, from literature to art to letters to museum exhibitions, which survive from the medieval to modern periods. In doing so, they explore the extent that using a model of performativity can open up our understanding of women’s lives and sense of self in the past. They highlight the way that this method provides a significant critique of power relationships within society that offers greater agency to women as historical actors and offers a challenge to traditional readings of women’s place in society. An innovative and wide-ranging compilation, this book provides a template for those wishing to apply performativity to women’s lives in historical context. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women’s History Review.

Hodgson's sympathetic reading of Eliot's work traces her religious pilgrimage from a strongly evangelical Home, through critical humanism to a profound and novel affirmation of "the mystery beneath the real." It unearths a neglected aspect of 19th-century thought.

George Eliot was a deeply religious thinker, despite having abandoned orthodox forms of Christian belief, and religious themes and figures appear in all her novels. This study focuses on that religious part of her life and writings. Peter C Hodgson is the Charles G Finney Professor of Theology at Vanderbilt University. His many books include "Winds of the Spirit", "God in History", and "Revisioning the Church".

That the self is ‘performed’, created through action rather than having a prior existence, has been an important methodological intervention in our understanding of human experience. It has been particularly significant for studies of gender, helping to destabilise models of selfhood where women were usually defined in opposition to a male norm. In this multidisciplinary collection, scholars apply this approach to a wide array of historical sources, from literature to art to letters to museum exhibitions, which survive from the medieval to modern periods. In doing so, they explore the extent that using a model of performativity can open up our understanding of women’s lives and sense of self in the past. They highlight the way that this method provides a significant critique of power relationships within society that offers greater agency to women as historical actors and offers a challenge to traditional readings of women’s place in society. An innovative and wide-ranging compilation, this book provides a template for those wishing to apply performativity to women’s lives in historical context. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women’s History Review.