[Air-L] Feminism & the Far-Right Symposium @ Goldsmiths

[Kathryn Higgins]

Feminism and the Far-Right Symposium @ Goldsmiths

On Friday 6th June 2025, Goldsmiths’ Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies (MCCS) will be hosting a one-day symposium about bodily autonomy, reproductive justice, gender, and the cultural politics of the globally networked far-Right.

Across the globe, far-Right political actors and agitators have been buoyed to seats of legislative power by a sustained cultural incursion around issues of gender, sexuality, and the ‘traditional’ family. From Italy to the United States to India to Argentina to the United Kingdom, far-Right political agendas are galvanized by regressive attacks on reproductive choice and bodily autonomy. Animating and emerging from these attacks are a renewed set of cultural villains: pregnant people who seek abortions, but also feminists, bad wives and bad mothers, women who refuse motherhood (“childless cat ladies”), women who refuse heterosexual marriage (including queer women), and queer and transgender people of all genders. The complex backdrop for this cultural assault comprises abject economic inequality and an intensifying climate crisis, but also strategic moral panics around migration and declining birth rates (including racist conspiracy theories of Great Replacement), aggressive anti-feminist and anti-queer cultural backlashes, and the simmering popularity of “pro-natalist” ideology and discourse across the globally networked misogynistic far-Right—including among its emerging billionaire ringleaders in Silicon Valley.

Feminism and the Far-Right <https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/feminism-and-the-far-right-tickets-1317652978529?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl> is a one-day symposium that will draw connections between these developments to try and situate recent political and legislative assaults on reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy within their broader cultural and political conditions of possibility. It will bring together feminist scholars of media and culture whose work coalesces around: a) shared concern with the misogynistic, racist, and anti-feminist cultural logics of far-Right movements; and b) shared commitment to finding strategies to safeguard the rights and freedoms of women, queer and transgender people in this moment, including in/through media culture as a site of resistance.

The symposium will take place at Goldsmiths, University of London on 6th June 2025 and is free to attend. The day will comprise three panels: on abortion and reproductive choice; on wives, mothers and (anti-)feminisms; and on bodily autonomy, queerness, and transgender rights. Speaker presentations will be 10-15 minutes each, with a large part of each panel session reserved for discussion among panelists and attendees.

Symposium Speakers:
Sarah Banet-Weiser (University of Pennsylvania)
Jilly Kay (Loughborough University)
Akanksha Mehta (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Sama Khosravi Ooryad (University of Gothenburg)
Abel Guerra (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Limichi Okamoto (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Azsaneé Truss (University of Pennsylvania)
Siân Norris (Journalist, Author of Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global<https://www.versobooks.com/products/2825-bodies-under-siege?srsltid=AfmBOootLfR3piRh7STR1E72uJU0U2YwwlE989MjVdFqRnqj3cVUhhIn>)
*Please note that this list is still being updated. A final list of speakers and respondents will be confirmed and circulated in May 2025.

Symposium Respondents:
Catherine Rottenberg (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Jo Littler (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Nirmal Puwar (Goldsmiths, University of London)

Lunch will be provided for all attendees and a drinks reception will follow the final panel.

The symposium is free to attend but places are limited. Please RSVP via the Eventbrite page<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/feminism-and-the-far-right-tickets-1317652978529?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl>, and please return your ticket if you are unable to attend.

For any questions or queries about the event, please contact Kat Higgins (k.higgins at gold.ac.uk<mailto:k.higgins at gold.ac.uk>) or Laurel Rogers (lroge004 at gold.ac.uk<mailto:lroge004 at gold.ac.uk>).

This event is being hosted by Goldsmiths MCCS in collaboration with the Centre for Feminist Research. It is supported by funding from Goldsmiths' Early-Career Research Fund (ECRF).


Dr Kathryn Claire Higgins
Lecturer in Global Digital Politics
Department of Media, Communications & Cultural Studies (MCCS)
Goldsmiths, University of London
(she/her)

Convenor, MC52082A: Post-Truth Politics and Media (Autumn 2024)
Convenor, MC53071A: Global Cultural Politics (Spring 2025)
MCCS International Liaison Officer
MCCS Research Events Coordinator

e: k.higgins at gold.ac.uk<mailto:k.higgins at gold.ac.uk> w: www.kchiggins.com<http://www.kchiggins.com>

Recent Publications
Believability: Sexual Violence, Media, and the Politics of Doubt (Polity Press, 2023; available here<https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=believability-sexual-violence-media-and-the-politics-of-doubt--9781509553815>)

“The Post-Truth of Rape” (with Sarah Banet-Weiser, Routledge, 2023; available here<https://www.routledge.com/Re-thinking-Mediations-of-Post-truth-Politics-and-Trust-Globality-Culture/Harsin/p/book/9781032484198>)

“Cruel benevolence: vulnerable menaces, menacing vulnerabilities, and the white male vigilante trope.” (Routledge, 2023; available here<https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003200871-10/cruel-benevolence-kathryn-claire-higgins?context=ubx&refId=cb71193d-d58f-4a20-81e5-8fb3339439ca>)