Nordic Women's and Gender History Conference

09:00– 

Registration, Faculty of Humanities entrance hall (Humanistinen tiedekunta)

10:00–10:30  

Opening session, welcoming address, Lecture Hall L5

Seija Jalagin, Chair of the organising committee

Paula Rossi, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities             

10:30–12:00  

Keynote: Lecture Hall L5

Professor Ana Carden-Coyne (University of Manchester, UK): Beyond the Veteran Body: Gendered Visions in the History of War Disability

Chair: Tiina Kinnunen

12:00–13:00  

Lunch, Restaurant Mara

13:00–14:30   

Parallel sessions 1

14:30–15:00  

Coffee

15:00–17:00  

Parallel sessions 2

19–20:30            

Reception at Oulu City Hall, Festival Hall, 2nd floor (Kirkkokatu 2a)

08:00– 

Registration, Faculty of Humanities entrance hall (Humanistinen tiedekunta)

9:00–10:30    

Parallel sessions 3

10:30–11:00  

Coffee

11:00–12:30  

Keynote, Lecture Hall L5

Professor Pamela Scully (Emory University, USA):  Biography, Gender History, and the Limits of Reconciliation

Chair: Seija Jalagin

12:30–14:00  

Lunch (Restaurant Mara)

14:00–16:00  

Parallel sessions 4

16:00–18:00

National meetings

19–23            

Conference dinner and party, Aleksinkulma (Aleksanterinkatu 9)

9:00–10:30    

 Parallel sessions 5

10:30–11:00  

Coffee & light lunch

11:00–12:30  

Keynote, Lecture Hall L5

Professor Anu Koivunen (University of Stockholm, Sweden): The caring nation: Queer history, affect and the politics of remembering

Chair: Heini Hakosalo

12:30–13:00  

Closing remarks & discussion

Professor Tiina Kinnunen, University of Oulu

15:00–22:00  

Excursion to Hailuoto Island (separate registration & fee)

The bus leaves from Lasaretti Hotel (Kasarmintie 13b)

13:00–14:30

Session 1a    

Room HU205 (60)

Women facing economic crisis and financial distress in Scandinavia in the 16th–19th century I

Organisers: Sofia Gustafsson (University of Helsinki)

& Riina Turunen (University of Jyväskylä)

Chair: Sofia Gustafsson (University of Helsinki)

Commentator: Karin Hassan Jansson (Uppsala University)

• Anu Lahtinen (University of Helsinki), Riches – to rags – to riches: The choices of a sixteenth century merchant widow
• Guðný Hallgrímsdóttir (University of Iceland), Independent women in the eighteenth century and their struggle for a decent life
• Tiina Hemminki (University of Jyväskylä), Female investors, creditors and debtors. A source critical study at probate inventories in the end of eighteenth century urban Finland

Session 1b

Room HU108 (30)

Queer history on the margins of the Nordic Region (ROUNDTABLE)

Organisers: Íris Ellenberger (University of Iceland)

& Riikka Taavetti (University of Helsinki)

Chair: Riikka Taavetti

• Ásta Kristín Bendiktsdóttir (University of Iceland and University College Dublin)
• Hafdís Erla Hafsteinsdóttir (independent historian, Vienna)
• Elsi Hyttinen (University of Turku)
• Íris Ellenberger (University of Iceland)
• Tuula Juvonen (University of Tampere)
• Riikka Taavetti (University of Helsinki)

Session 1c  

Room HU207 (54)

Humanitarian crises and gender – narratives and practices of transnational relief work from mid-19th to mid-20th Century

Organiser: Maria Småberg (Lund University)

Chair: Karina Hestad Skeie (NLA Høgskolen Bergen)

• Norbert Götz (Södertörn University), Women in Aid Appeals and Relief Work: The Case of the Great Irish Famine, 1846/47
• Lina Sturfelt (Lund University), Swedish Rädda barnen in the wake of the ‘gender order crises’ after the disaster of the First World War
• Inger Marie Okkenhaug (Volda University College, Norway), Transnational Relief and Local Practices: The Swedish School in Jerusalem, 1936–1948 

Session 1d  

Room HU206 (40)

Images and Agency of Women in the Political Left and Right

Chair: Kaisa Vehkalahti (University of Oulu)

• Rakel Adolphsdóttir (National and University Library of Iceland), Women in political and self-identity crisis within the Socialist Party in Iceland, 1939–1974. Were they active agents or merely decorations to catch the women’s vote?
• Liisa Lalu (University of Turku), ”Good ideology ruined.” The Collapse of the Soviet Union in personal narratives of Finnish left-wing female activists
• Marja Vuorinen (University of Helsinki), Little wives, feminist whores and Valkyries: The threefold imagery of the feminine in the 2010’s Nordic far right
• Piia Vuorinen (University of Turku), Women who were suspected, followed and possibly interrogated by the Finnish security police in 1919–1944

Session 1e

Room HU111 (30)

Constructing Masculine Identities in 19^th- and 20^th-Century Finland

Chair: Daniel Blackie (University of Oulu)

• Henrik Forsberg (University of Helsinki), Masculine submission: National narratives of the last great famine in Finland, c. 1868–1920
• Cecilia Hortlund (Umeå Universitet), In the name of country, homestead and the domains of our fathers: A study of masculinity, nationalism, citizenship and identity in the Swedish speaking Civil Guards in Ostrobothnia 1918–1944
• Eira Juntti (University of Jyväskylä), ‘Crises of masculinity’ in Finnish literature in the late 19th century

Session 1f

Room HU110 (20)

Gender in times of social and instititutional rupture

Chair: Essi Jouhki (University of Oulu)

• Ainur Elmgren (University of Helsinki), Radical Ambition, Critical Reaction – Ada Norna and the Cultural Crisis of the 1930s
• Heidi Kurvinen (University of Turku / University of Oulu), Finnish male journalists participating in the reconstruction of the nation in the 1950s
• Malin Nordvall (Chalmers University of Technology), Reform and resistance: Responses at Chalmers University of Technology to a gender equal recruitment project in the early 1990s

15:00 – 17:00

Session 2a

Room HU205 (60)

Women facing economic crisis and financial distress in Scandinavia in the 16th–19th century II

Organisers: Sofia Gustafsson (University of Helsinki)

& Riina Turunen (University of Jyväskylä)

Chair: Sofia Gustafsson (University of Helsinki)

Commentator: Karin Hassan Jansson (Uppsala University)

• Tiina Miettinen (University of Tampere), Secret Solutions: Gentlemen and their housekeepers in 18th and 19th century Finland
• Jezzica Israelsson (Uppsala University), Providing for themselves and others: Women's strategies for support in petitions to Swedish county administrations, ca 1730 to 1840
• Riina Turunen (University of Jyväskylä), The question of fairness, but fairness to whom? Conflicting principles regarding the liability of abandoned wives to repay a household´s debts in nineteenth-century urban Finland
• Pirita Frigren (University of Jyväskylä), Makeshift economy of deserted and divorced wives in the nineteenth century Finnish cities

Session 2b

Room HU207 (54)

Borders of Nordic Voting Rights: Economic Eligibility and Gender in Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden before and after Universal Suffrage

Organiser: Fia Sundevall (Stockholm University & Swedish Labour Movement’s Archive and Library)

Chair: Astrid Elkjær Sørensen (University of Aarhus)

• Eirinn Larsen (University of Oslo), Suffrage – first and foremost a question of honour? Norway 1814–1919
• Minna Harjula (University of Tampere), Economic competence and voting restrictions after universal suffrage (1906) in Finland
• Fia Sundevall (Swedish Labour Movement’s Archive and Library), Money and citizenship: Economic suffrage restrictions in Sweden 1921–1945
• Thorgerdur Thorvaldsdottir & Ragnheiður Kristjánsdóttir (University of Iceland), Suffrage (not) granted – or lost. Suffrage, gender and class. Intersectional reflections on the construction and constraints of a lawful citizen in Iceland, 1915–1934

Session 2c

Room HU111 (30)

Otherness, Gender and Boundary Crises: Discourses on Minority Peddlers in Late Nineteenth-Century Finland

Organisers: Jutta Ahlbeck & Ann-Catrin Östman (Åbo Akademi University)

Chair: Ann-Catrin Östman

• Jutta Ahlbeck & Hanna Lindberg (Åbo Akademi University), Anxieties and Peddling in Nineteenth-Century Finland
• Sandra Waller (Åbo Akademi University), Implicit Crises: Othering and Questionnaires
• Anna Sundelin (Åbo Akademi University), Peddlers Settling Down. Crises in Community?
• Johanna Wassholm & Ann-Catrin Östman (Åbo Akademi University), Curiosity, Fear and Conflict: Strangers on the Fair in Nineteenth-Century Finland

Session 2d

Room HU206 (40)

Motherhood and Marriage in Transition

Chair: Sirpa Aalto (University of Oulu)

• Anna Niiranen (University of Jyväskylä), “A source of dread, anxiety, and subsequent regret”? Pregnancy as a potential crisis in nineteenth century British medicine
• Dalrún J. Eygerðardóttir (University of Iceland), “What else could I do?” A historical analysis of single mothers working as housekeepers in the Icelandic rural society 
• Erla Doris Halldórsdóttir (independent historian), Widowers after losing their wives in childbirth in the 19th century

Session 2e

Room HU108 (30)

Encounters with the “Other”: The Personal and the Political

Chair: Seija Jalagin (University of Oulu)

• Christian Gerdov (Mittuniversitet), Kris i befolkningsfrågan – ett (tredje) världsproblem?
• Ritva Larva (University of Turku), Acquiring a new skill during the war times – Marta Keravuori becoming a Japan specialist
• Yulia Gradskova (Södertörn University). Presentation of the book Gendering Postsocialism. Old Legacies and New Hierarchies

9:00–10:30

Session 3a

Room HU110 (20)

Remembrance and emotions I

Chair: Daniel Blackie (University of Oulu)

• Eve Annuk (Estonia Literary Museum), Body, femininity and motherhood: Women’s unspoken stories about Soviet period Estonia
• Ilmari Leppihalme (University of Oulu), Embodied memories and affective (re)mapping in Anu Kaipainen’s evacuee novels
• Maarit Leskelä-Kärki (University of Turku), Life’s catastrophes: Interpreting life crises in biographical research

Session 3c

Room HU207 (54)

Kropp och kön i svensk dags- och populärpress 1920–2015, session I 

Organiser: Emma Severinsson (Lunds Universitet)

Chair: Heidi Kurvinen (Turku universitet & Oulu universitet)

• Ulrika Holgersson (Lunds universitet), I ljuset av hennes död. Begravningar som mediehändelser i liberal dagspress från Sofia av Nassau till Anna Lindh

• Klara Arnberg (Stockholms universitet), Gentlemannens paradis? Stockholms “porrgata” som ett kommersiellt, könat och medierat rum 1960–1990 

• Emma Severinsson (Lunds universitet), Jakten på den ideala svenskan – ras, nationalitet och feminitet i skönhetstävlingar 1921–1933

Session 3d

Room HU111 (30)

New perspectives: letters and crises

Chair: Kaisa Harju (University of Oulu)

• Margrét Gunnardóttir (University of Iceland), The tragedy of a Danish adventurer: “The King of Iceland!” in 1809, Jörgen Jörgensen, as seen in his letters to his mother and siblings
• Marjo Kaartinen (University of Turku), Practices of Coping with Separation: The Case of Vera Hjelt (1857–1947)
• Heini Hakosalo (University of Oulu), Högbergsgatan 13 at war: A microhistorical case study on the effects of the outbreak of the Winter War (1939–40) on the gender and social relationships of a Helsingfors housing company

Session 3e

Room HU205 (30)

Crisis, gender and literature

Chair: Hanna-Leena Nissilä (University of Oulu)

• Katarina Leppänen (University of Gothenburg), Crisis of femininity in early 20th century Nordic novels
• Nina Työlahti (University of Oulu), Crisis as a Literary Device – Sentimentalism in Heikki Meriläinen’s Novel The Girls of Pietola (1892)
• Merlin Kirikal (Tallinn University), Obsessive working and divided self – Crisis and female creativity in Johannes Semper’s Jealousy (1934)

Session 3f

Room HU108 (60)

World War I and civil war as frames for gender and crisis

Chair: Tiina Kinnunen (University of Oulu)

• Íris Ellenberger (University of Iceland), Gendered aspects of foreignness in Reykjavík 1900–1920
• Marjaliisa Hentilä (University of Helsinki), Dreaming of a peaceful revolution: Hilja Pärssinen, a Member of the Red Cabinet in 1918 in Finland
• Marianne Junila (University of Oulu) & Tiina Lintunen (University of Turku), Thinking back on the Finnish Civil War 1918 – Young girls’ ways of coping with crises and trauma

14:00–16:00

Session 4a

Room HU111 (30)

Remembrance and emotions II

Chair: Nina Työlahti (University of Oulu)

• Hanna-Leena Nissilä (University of Oulu), War, memories and women writers – “Evacuee literature as creative remembrance
• Kirsi Tuohela (University of Turku), Breakdown – crises in women’s autobiographies of mental illness
• Tuija Huuki & Maija Lanas (University of Oulu), Affective, historical and material entanglements in a painful past-present lecture-assemblage of an Arctic adult-child
• Synne Myrebøe (Umeå University), Rational crises: Martha Nussbaum and the politics of emotions

Session 4b

Room H1

Free and unfree labour in the Nordic countries: A gender history perspective

Organisers: Fia Sundevall (Stockholm University & Swedish Labour Movement’s Archive and Library) & Yvonne Svanström (University of Stockholm)

Chair: Fia Sundevall

Commentators: Astrid Elkjær Sørensen & Ann-Catrin Östman

Papers:

• Carolina Uppenberg (University of Gothenburg), Servants in free and unfree labour: Gender and labour relations in 18th and 19th century Sweden
• Hanne Østhus (independent researcher), Perspectives from free/unfree labour and gender history. The example of service and slavery in eighteenth-century Denmark-Norway
• Yvonne Svanström (University of Stockholm), Unemployed and Forced to Labour: Vagrancy, Legislation and Gender in Sweden 1920s–1950s
• Johanna Overud (Umeå University), Bound by location: The localization of jobs and the activation of women in the 1960s and 1970s Swedish rural north

Session 4c

Room HU207 (54)

Kropp och kön i svensk dags- och populärpress 1920–2015, session II

Organiser: Emma Severinsson (Lunds Universitet)

Chair: Heidi Kurvinen (Turku Universitet & Oulu universitet)

• Helena Tolvhed (Stockholms universitet), Att bygga en kropp. Medierade representationer av och förhandlingar om kvinnors bodybuilding ca 1970–2015

• Wilma Sjöberg (Stockholms universitet), Motorsport och maskulinitet. Konstruktionen av tävlingsförare inom rally och Formel 1 i Svenska medier 1948-1999
  

   

• Paneldiskussion: Kropp, nationalitet och kommersialism. Mediehistoriska komparationer i 1900-talets Sverige  

Session 4d

Room HU208 (20)

State, gender and eugenics

Chair: Niina Timosaari (University of Oulu)

• Merle Wessel (University of Greifswald), Motherhood in Crisis – Eugenic Feminism in the Nordic Countries, ca. 1890–1940
• Sophy Bergenheim (University of Helsinki), Women bringing down and saving the nation: National and collective crises as gendered issues in Finland and Swedish-speaking Finland, 1920s–1950s
• Malin Arvidsson (Lund University), State redress for involuntary sterilization in Sweden and Denmark 

Session 4e

Room HU206 (40)

Women, War and Survival: Coping with Political Crises, Persecutions and Unrest in China and the Middle East, 1898–1930

Organiser: Inger Marie Okkenhaug (Volda University College)

Chair: Inger Marie Okkenhaug

Commentator: Lina Sturfelt (Lund University)

• Inger Marie Okkenhaug (Volda University College), Scandinavian Involvements, War and a Gendered Refugee Crisis, Turkey and the Levant, 1915–1930
• Maria Småberg (Lund University), Sexual Violence and Survival – Humanitarian narratives of Armenian women as victims and agents during the 1915 Armenian Genocide
• Karina Hestad Skeie (NLA University College), Violent death, fear and spiritual warfare: Norwegian Missionaries and Chinese Christians in Hubei and Henan 1898–1930

Session 4f

Room HU108 (30)

Kunskapens kön – perspektiv på akademisk maskulinitet

Organisatörer: Helena Bergman & Kirsti Niskanen (Stockholms Universitet)

Ordförande och kommentator: Sigrídur Matthiásdóttir

• Anders Ahlbäck (Åbo Akademi), Om att identifiera akademisk maskulinitet inom undervisningskulturen
• Helena Bergman (Södertörns högskola & Stockholms universitet),  Vetenskapens osynliga män – vetenskaplig auktoritet och maskulinitet i svensk alkoholforskning, 1940–1960-tal
• Hanna Lindberg (Åbo Akademi), Om män, för män, av män – Den finländska efterkrigstida alkoholforskningen som en maskulin arena
• Kirsti Niskanen (Stockholms universitet), Maskulinitet i förändring – filosofen Einar Tegens akademiska persona mellan 1920- och 50-talen

Session 4g

Room HU109

(20)

Men and honour in the time of crisis from the 17th to the 19th century

Organisers: Mari Välimäki (University of Turku) & Saara Hilpinen (University of Helsinki)

Chair: Mari Välimäki (University of Turku)

• Saara Hilpinen (University of Helsinki), The anatomy of personal scandals and life crises of men of the elite in 19th century Grand Duchy of Finland
• Anna Koivusalo (University of Helsinki), “Redemption” or southern honor? Change in honorable emotional expression in the U.S. Suth during Reconstruction (1865–1877)
• Jonas Liliequist (University of Umeå), From the frustrated duellist to the steadfast man – changing social logics and emotional practices of honour and manliness in early modern Sweden
• Mari Välimäki (University of Turku), Sexuality, honour, communities and men in 17th-century urban Sweden

9:00–10:30

Session 5a

Room HU205 (60)

The conscious emigrant: Emigration as a crisis or conscious act?

Organisers: Sigrídur Matthiásdóttir (Reykjavík Academy) & Ann-Catrin Östman (Åbo Akademi University)

Chair: Hanna Lindberg (Åbo Akademi University)

• Ulla Aatsinki (University of Tampere), Immigrant women educating new citizens into American society
• Sigrídur Matthíasdóttir (Reykjavík Academy), Transnational agents or fleeing victims? Single women who emigrated from Iceland to North America
• Ann-Catrin Östman (Åbo Akademi University), Education, edification and respectability in life stories of rural men

Session 5b

Room HU207 (54)

Using Big Data in Historical Research: New Approaches, New Results

Chair: Heini Hakosalo (University of Oulu)

• Emil Marklund (Umeå University), Teachers needed! The socio-economic background of teachers in northern Sweden 1870–1950
• Inger Nørgård (Museum of East Jutland), More records about individuals! Does it bring us closer to a more gender equal history?
• Lotta Vikström & Erling Häggström Lundevaller (Umeå University), Did disability bring crisis? Gendered and demographic life-course findings on disabled and non-disabled people in 19th-century Sweden
• Tiina Männistö-Funk (Chalmers University of Technology), The Gender of Walking and the Crisis of Mobility in the Car City: Female Pedestrians in Street Photographs 1890–1989

Session 5c

Room HU111 (30)

Gendered post-crises memories

Chair: Marianne Junila (University of Oulu)

• Hafdis Hafsteinsdottir (independent historian), Crises in memory: The image of the “war-bride” in Reykjavik and the construction of female sexual deviance
• Anu Heiskanen (University of Helsinki), Gendered coping and surviving strategies in the aftermath of World War II
• Emma Lundin (Queen Mary University, London), Writing Women Out of History: Post-Crisis Lessons from Southern Africa and Scandinavia
• Erla Hulda Halldórsdóttir (University of Iceland), Housewives in crisis: Conflicting ideologies 1945–1970

Session 5d

Room HU108 (30)

Resistance and Empowerment: Gender in Art and Media

Chair: Seija Jalagin (University of Oulu)

• Elina Karvo (University of Turku), Crises in men’s friendships – a televisual view
• Susan Lindholm (Malmö University), Boundaries of Sisterhood – a comparative approach to US and Latin American Hip-hop feminism