Women, Money and Markets

Annual Symposium

University of Sussex, Brighton

June 13^th and 14^th 2024

This year’s symposium will address themes including consumerism, shopping, global trade, domestic trade, markets (literary and otherwise), currency, and varying practices of exchange. Our annual symposium is interdisciplinary in nature, bridging literature, material culture, gender studies and economic history, and aims to relate the debates of the period to modern day issues about the presence and position of women in the economy and media.

We invite exploration, whether literary, historical or economic, of the experiences of women across the social spectrum. Although we welcome submissions on a wide range of topics connected with women’s involvement in the marketplace and finance, of especial interest to the conference are women involved in the receipt or delivery of relief; volunteerism; working class experience; trading networks; social and/or economic bonds forged between the poor and the non-poor; attitudes and emotions associated with wealth and poverty; women’s engagement in banking, finance, gambling, or exchange, especially as documented through under-used sources.

More broadly, we welcome submissions in the form of individual papers, panels and roundtable discussions on the following themes:

• The varying practices of women associated with currency, global and/or domestic markets and marketability
• Material practices associated with value, exchange and/or female creativity
• Women as investors, risk-takers or gamblers
• Women as producers and/or consumers in the literary or other marketplaces (including, but not limited to, food, clothing, agriculture and raw materials)
• Representations of women at work or women’s involvement in: Trade and industry; professional services (such as law, finance, hospitality and the media); domestic service; the rural economy
• The place of women in the literary marketplace (past and present)

We particularly invite cross-cultural considerations of the above issues.

WMM members who are contributing to our edited collection, under contract with Boydell & Brewer, are welcome to present their chapter to the group.

For those submitting for the first time to Women, Money and Markets, please indicate if you would like your paper to be considered for publication in an edited collection.

Please send up to 300-word abstracts to Emma Newport with an indication of your proposed format (individual paper, panel, roundtable, etc.).  If you are submitting a proposal for a panel, please include an abstract for each paper (up to 300 words each).

Deadline for submissions: April 10th 2024

Organisers: Dr Emma Newport (University of Sussex) and Dr Joyce Goggin (University of Amsterdam)

For enquiries regarding the programme, please see www.womenmoneymarkets.co.uk or contact: e.newport@sussex.ac.uk