This year it is 40 years ago that LOVA was established, which we want to celebrate with a seminar around the theme “Gender Moves”. We invite you to join us on May 10, 2019, at Leiden University, to explore how gender is enacted and reproduced in movement and how gendered movement contributes to dismantling and/or reinforcing ideas and norms about gender. The ways we move shape our very senses and the kind of being we become (Young 1980, Carter 2018). The material bodies and social expectations of different people, however, have strong effects on how people move and ‘are supposed to’ move. MacKinnon, for example, argues that: ‘women have learned actual disability, enforced weakness, lack of spirit/body connection in being in motion’ (1987:20). Women emancipation and empowerment through sports might be understood as reversing the learned weakness in women (Theberge 1987). On the other hand, these programmes are arguably ways of disciplined leisure (Coleman and Kohn 2007, Rana 2014), in which women embody cultures of recreation, consumption and self-improvement. And while the realm of sports has for long been described as quintessentially masculine (Dunning 1986, Messner 1992) and homophobic, more recent studies notice a shift to alternative masculinities in sports (i.e. Channon and Matthews 2015). In short, gender norms, and its intersections with sexuality, race/ethnicity, class, age and religion might be reinforced or deconstructed through movement (i.e. Samie and Aartie 2017). While people move their bodies in different ways across time, the concept of gender might move along, and vice versa. What is the effect of the change in physical movement on the way we come to understand ‘gender’? Does the increasing participation of women in sport have an effect on gender categories and how these categories are characterized? Does the influence of the queer movement have an effect on what we understand as ‘gender equality’ in sport, dance, physical exercise and moving in general?
Scholars present their work based on both empirical research on various embodied practices such as dance and sports, and theoretical reflections on movement, embodiment and gender. Join us at LOVA’s annual study day and register at conference@lova.network. Entrance is free, but we ask for a voluntary donation.
Location: Leiden University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Room 5.A.42
Address: Wassenaarseweg 52, Leiden
Programme
09:00– 09:30 Coffee/tea and Registration
09:30 – 09:45 Welcome by Dr. Jasmijn Rana (Leiden University and LOVA)
09:45 – 10:45 Keynote Lecture by Dr. Alex Channon (University of Brighton): Martial arts, embodiment, and the subversion of gender.
10:45 – 11:00 Coffee/tea break
11:00 – 13:00 Panel session 1: Sport
- Kathrine van den Bogert (Radboud University Nijmegen) – Girls only? Moving boundaries of gender and sexuality in girls’ football in the Schilderswijk, the Netherlands
- Caroline Zieringer – En-Gendering Space: Female recreational boxing in South-East London, embodied knowledge and space.
- Amisah Zenabu Bakuri (University of Amsterdam) – “Staying healthy and looking sexy”: physical activities, sexuality and well-being in the Ghanaian and Somali Diaspora in the Netherlands
- Mara Lin Visser –Roller Girls: Performance of Gender in the Roller Derby Community of Barcelona. A visual ethnography in process
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch break
LOVA General Members Assembly (ALV)
14:00 – 15:30 Panel session 2: Dance
- Marion Quesne (Université François Rabelais de Tours) – Lindy Hop: transgression or conformity?
- Anita Datta – Dancing Transwomen, Smoking Lesbians, and the Diasporic Femme: Reflections on Explicit vs. Everyday Performances of Queer Feminine Bodies in Kolkata
- Krizia Nardini – Twerking classes and feminism in Barcelona, a critical auto-ethnographic account
15:30 – 15:45 Coffee/tea break
15:45 – 16:45 Keynote Lecture by Dr. Kathy Davis (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam): Dancing tango: hyper-heterosexuality, queering, and other subversive moves
16:45 – 17:15 LOVA Marjan Rens Master’s Thesis Award Ceremony
17:15 – 18:00 Drinks in ‘Bamboo Lounge’ (third floor)