No, it’s not what you think, the F word in this context refers to Feminism. What does it mean? Is it still relevant? Can a feminist wear high heels?

The Postgraduate Contemporary Women’s Writing Network (that’s quite a mouthful, so let’s call them PG CWWN) interrogates and explores the many meanings of feminism in it’s next conference, The F Word, this April. A great opportunity to bring early career researchers together to do some networking and learn from each other. Read more about the conference and PG CWWN here.

I’ll present a paper on Fight Club and Joyce’s Carol Oates’s Foxfire, exploring whether a female alternative to masculine gang violence is possible. Gender and femininity keep coming up as I read and write so this is an excellent opportunity to explore these complicated issues and hear other people’s opinions about them.

I’ll also chair one of the panels. Interestingly enough, this one is called Challenging Disempowerment and by looking at the titels of the papers I can tell they will be an interesting contrast to my own work. This will be my first conference where I appear as a presenting delegate, I’m really curious what kind of responses I’m going to get.