Feminist Archive

FROM THE FAN ARCHIVE

Posted on 13th May 2022

We are currently cataloguing the archive of veteran peace campaigner Helen John and found this front page from 2006. Helen was arrested with Sylvia Boyes under little-noticed new legislation which treated protesters who breached any of 10 British military bases as potential terrorists. Her archive also includes a piece of the Greenham Common fence.

Feminist Book Fortnight is coming!

Posted on 5th May 2022

All around the country lots of independent bookshops will be putting on displays of feminist books. There will also be events – details of these can be found at Feminist Book Fortnight

One event is called The Tide Comes In: Feminist Magazines, Past and Present. It takes place at Nottingham’s Five Leaves Bookshop and features Dr Laurel Forster and Dr Joanne Hollows in conversation with Dr Catherine Clay, looking back on the history of feminist magazines, starting with the iconic publication Time and Tide. The event will also be live streamed online. It takes place on 24 May (7pm-8.30pm). To attend in person book here. To watch online book here.

Archivist wanted for Leeds Animation Workshop project

Posted on 5th May 2022

Special Collections at Leeds University has recently been awarded funding from the Wellcome Institute to catalogue the Leeds Animation Workshop (LAW) Archive.

LAW is a women’s collective set up in 1978 to produce and distribute animated films on social issues. The LAW archive is thought to be the most complete record of a collective animation organisation in existence. It offers a national and international resource for exploring connections between animation, activism, feminism, art, documentary, social history, political movements, co-operative practices, medical humanities research, trade union education, independent film-making, and the history of animation techniques.

The closing date is 9th May. More information

Radical feminist pamphlets 1970-1980

Posted on 2nd May 2022

If you’re interested in how early 2nd wave feminists used the printed medium to elaborate and discuss feminist thinking, this recording of a superb talk by Dr Bec Wonders is well worth watching.

FROM THE FAN ARCHIVE

Posted on 28th April 2022

Sylvia Plath is buried in Hepstonstall, West Yorkshire. Her gravestone named her Sylvia Plath Hughes. She and her husband, Ted Hughes, had separated seven months before her suicide, and many feminists saw this naming as a posthumous patriarchal claim, believing that she should have been buried under her own published name. So a tradition grew of removing the lead letters “Hughes” each time they were replaced. There is a set of these letters in FAN.