The Agency of Korean Women, 29 September 2018—BAKS Workshop, Wolfson College, Oxford
The British Association for Korean Studies (BAKS) is calling for paper or presentation or panel or round-table proposals for a one-day Workshop to be held at Wolfson College, Oxford, on 29 September 2018. Please direct all communications to James Lewis (jay.lewis@orinst.ox.ac.uk) and Charlotte Horlyck (ch10@soas.ac.uk). All proposals should address the general theme of the workshop. Deadline for proposals: 15 September 2018.
The BAKS Council wishes to celebrate the centenary of the expansion of suffrage to British women in 1918 by taking up the workshop theme of ‘The Agency of Korean Women’. The enfranchised UK electorate expanded from 7.7 million in 1912 to 21.4 million in 1918. Men benefited as well from the Representation of the People Act, because it extended suffrage to all men of 21 and older, while enfranchising women of 30 and older who owned property. Clearly, the advancement of women’s rights had the advantage of carrying men along in its wake. In 1928 all women 21 and older, with or without property, were enfranchised. As the suffragette movement and more recent feminist movements have shown, the enlargement of political, economic, and legal rights to females has not been a gift to women but has been fought for and won as a major expansion of the freedoms that underlie liberal democracies.
The BAKS Council calls for proposals for papers, presentations, panels, or round-table discussions to consider the agency of Korean women in politics, economy, and art and literature, both historically as well as in the modern societies of the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. In the Republic of Korea, women were enfranchised from 1948, but feminist activism has long been directed at the Family Law and laws governing employment and is aligned with de-colonization efforts to battle cultural prejudice against women and historical and contemporary violence directed at women. In the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the 1946 Law on Sex Equality set out an ambitious agenda, which has been expanded through various labour laws and has included women in military conscription from 2015. There are reports that women now dominate the alternate economy of commercial activity and are often principal breadwinners for the family. We call for papers and presentations that explore these themes.
Venue: Wolfson College, Oxford (https://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/gallery/visiting)
Parking available at no cost.
Workshop registration fee (coffee/tea, lunch, wine): £15 for students and concessions; £25 for all others.
Tentative schedule:
10.00 Registration Opens with coffee service
10.50 Welcome by the President of BAKS
11.00 ~ 12.30 Paper Presentations in the Haldane Room
12.30 ~ 1.30 Lunch in the Buttery (sandwich)
1.30 ~ 2.30 AGM (new Council members and award of the Bill Skillend Prize)
2.30 ~ 4.00 Paper Presentations in the Haldane Room
4.00 ~ 4.15 Coffee/tea
4.15 ~ 5.45 Paper Presentations in the Haldane Room
5.45 ~ Closing remarks and wine reception