April 2025 sessionSeminar on Women's and Gender Studies An event organised by Research Unit 7387 DIRE co-organised by Monica Cardenas-Moreno (Hispanic Studies) and Florence Pellegry (English Studies)
"From Women's History to Gender History in France (1990s - 2020s)"
Gwénael MURPHY Professor of Contemporary History at the University of La Réunion
Discussant: Florence PELLEGRY, Senior Lecturer in British Civilisation at the University of La Réunion
Thursday 24 April 2025 from 3pm to 4.30pm Amphi Genevaux and online
Registration link for online viewers: https://univ-reunion-fr.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_uFANr5C8RR-rHJQ1De0IlA
French suffragettes around 1910. Credit: Agence Rol, BNF
Abstract: Over the past forty years, women's and gender history has led to a considerable renewal of historical research. This new field not only enriches history, but also transforms the discipline itself and its methods. The inclusion of women and, more broadly, gender, has changed the chronology and categories of analysis, but also invites us to re-examine the available documentation. Thus, through a series of publications, initially marginal but later very numerous, another history has emerged, based on a wide variety of sources that offer a rich representation of women. Private and public texts, legal literature, archaeological documents, iconography, media, etc. are all essential sources that enable a gender-based analysis of societies in all areas: political, religious, judicial, educational, medical, labour, but also the private sphere. The seminar aims to trace the evolution of this historiography since the 1990s, its subjects and methods, but also to understand who is creating this history and how it fits, or does not fit, into the academic institution. For despite its visibility in the media and literature, is the history of women and gender relations truly known and disseminated, including among history students? This presentation will also serve as a modest testimony from a man who has attempted to participate in research on women's history.
Gwénael MURPHY is a professor of contemporary history at the University of La Réunion, having previously been a secondary school teacher in mainland France, a lecturer at the University of Poitiers and a senior lecturer at the University of New Caledonia. His fields of research lie at the intersection of gender history, justice and French colonisation. Trained by Arlette Farge at EHESS, G. Murphy always uses archives, often judicial, to try to understand social relations in the 18th and 19th centuries in France, but also in New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Réunion and Mayotte. In 2002, he participated in the first symposium on gender history organised in France by the University of Rennes II. His most recent publications deal with the history of domestic violence (Mauvais ménages, L'Harmattan, 2019), penal servitude (Sous le ciel de l'exil, Presses universitaires de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, 2020; Mémoires d’un forçat, Vendémiaire, 2022), anthropophagy (Le cannibale dévêtu, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2024), alcohol in the colonies (Vapeurs coloniales, Editions de la MSH-Pacifique, 2025) and colonial justice (Justice et société coloniale, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2025).
The event will then be available as a webinar on the UNR website, ‘Les Rendez-Vous du Savoir des Humanités’ (Humanities Knowledge Meetings).
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