October
2007
WIFIS 2007 - Conference Summary
The sixth annual meeting of Women in French in Scotland (WIFIS) took place on 13 October 2007 at the Glasgow Women’s Library (www.womenslibrary.org.uk), the only women’s library in Scotland. The conference, organized by Joy Charnley and Caroline Verdier (Strathclyde), welcomed participants from throughout Britain as well as from the universities of Ottawa and British Columbia. Conference panels took up the Québécois writer Hélène Monette, chick media, and women’s letter writing, including as yet unpublished letters written to Lucie Dreyfus at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, the letters of nineteenth-century aristocratic girls, and the letters of Flora Tristan. At the WIFIS round table, Professors Lorna Milne (St Andrews), Siân Reynolds (Stirling), and Mary Orr (Southampton) discussed career strategies and pitfalls specific to the experience of women in higher education. The WIFIS plenary was given by Thérèse Moreau (Lausanne), who asked, ‘Les femmes sont-elles solubles dans la démocratie française?’ The organizers remain grateful for financial support to the University of
Strathclyde and the Alliance Française de Glasgow. Next year’s meeting, broadly themed around ‘Women’s History/ L’Histoire des femmes’ will take place in Glasgow on 18 October and will welcome historians from Marseilles as part of the Glasgow/Marseilles Twin Towns Programme. For more information, please visit the WIFIS blog at http://wifis.edublogs.org. (Report by Amy Wygant, Glasgow).
