Events

Menopause: New Perspectives, New Beginnings

University of Sussex

Wednesday 19 June 2024

Tickets available for the full day or afternoon only. Academic panel sessions available to watch remotely via Zoom. Sign up for tickets here.

Programme

Coffee and tea

Rolling display of ‘Round-about Fifty: What we cannot see’ photographic portraits by Fran Monks.

Welcome and introduction to the event.

09.45-10.00

Session 1 Menopause stories and histories

10-11.30

Vanessa Marr and Jess Moriarty (University of Brighton)

Storying menopause using myth.

Marie Mulvey-Roberts (University of the West of England)

Menopause rage in women’s fiction.

Jill Kirby (University of Sussex)

New Beginnings: experiences of menopause in late twentieth-century Britain.

Shira Gottlieb (Open University of Israel)

Menopause, femininity and fashion in nineteenth-century France.

11.30-11.50 Coffee and tea

Rolling display of ‘Round-about Fifty: What we cannot see’ photographic portraits by Fran Monks.

Session 2 Menopause and media

11.50-13.00

Shani Orgad and Kate Gilchrist (London School of Economics and Goldsmiths, University of London)

Disavowal and discipline: fantasies and tensions in contemporary menopause advertising.

Keren Darmon (University of Greenwich)

Blogging the menopause: Analysis of Self-representation narratives about the menopause by members of women-only networks for women in communications.

Michell Hagerty- Wood (De Montfort University)

Perimenopause, PTSD and the Post Office

Lunch 13.00-13.45

Rolling display of ‘Round-about Fifty: What we cannot see’ photographic portraits by Fran Monks.

Session 3 Menopause, craftivism and performance

13.45-17.30

Claire Barraclough (University of Sussex)

The art of menopause: a participative arts-based exploration.

Lena Ŝimić and Emily Underwood-Lee (Edge Hill University and University of South Wales)

Menopause Aesthetic: post fertile body in performance.

Cleo Heywood (Central School of Speech and Drama) and actors (University of Sussex)

‘Comes the Crones’ rehearsed reading of 30-minute play.

15.15-15.45 Coffee and tea

Rolling display of ‘Round-about Fifty: What we cannot see’ photographic portraits by Fran Monks.

Vanessa Marr and Joanne Smith (University of Brighton)

Workshop: Reclaiming words through craftivism – a practical participatory session.

Ali Ramsey (University of Sussex)

Screening ‘Menopause: The Movie’

17.30 Close

Rolling display of ‘Round-about Fifty: What we cannot see’ photographic portraits by Fran Monks.

Menopause: New Perspectives, New Beginnings.

In-person symposium

University of Sussex, UK

19^th June 2024

Menopause has long been understood and portrayed in Western culture as an ending: of fertility, femininity, and visibility. Yet testimony from women is often contradictory, positioning it as the beginning of a new phase of freedom in women’s lives. Recent years have seen increased popular interest in menopause and menopausal women and greater public discourse around issues of women, ageing and representation. Menopause has become a category of cultural production and menopausal women a target for the marketing of a huge range of ‘menopause’ products and services. In many ways ‘menopause’ as a concept has seen a new beginning.

This symposium aims to bring together researchers and stakeholders from a range of disciplines within the arts and humanities to ignite conversations about menopause and build a network of interest to develop and pursue both academic and practice-based work. It is the second event organised by the Scholarly Association of Menopausal Studies, established in 2023, with the aim of connecting multiple disciplines within Arts and Humanities to further understanding of what it means to be menopausal, how menopause is and has been represented, its history and its place in different cultures.

We welcome abstracts for papers, panels, workshops, and creative practice. Topics might include:

Menopause in music, art and film

Histories of menopause.

Creativity and the menopause

Menopause and Class, Race and/or Sexuality.

Humour and the menopause

Representations of menopause.

Women and ageing in the Arts and Humanities

Narratives of menopause.

Tackling menopause through the arts.

Menopause, technology and the humanities.

Menopause in different cultures.

Please send a title, 200-word abstract and short biographical statement to the symposium organiser, Dr Jill Kirby (j.kirby@sussex.ac.uk), by Friday 23 February 2024.

Menopause: New Perspectives 13 July 2023 Watershed

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