Panel: Women and the Invisible Labor of CareWomen in French Panel
NeMLA 2022Baltimore, MD March 10-13
Deadline for Abstract Submissions: September 30, 2021
Chair: Anne Brancky
Session Description:
So much of the caretaking that makes the world turn falls into the category of “invisible labor” or “invisible work.” It is underpaid, ignored, maligned and marginalized. Yet many writers, thinkers and filmmakers have focused their attention on this essential but unseen labor of care. In her recent work, Françoise Vergès has emphasized capitalism’s fundamental reliance on the invisible cleaning and care work undertaken largely by women of color. “The cleaners’ invisibility,” she writes, “is required and naturalized.” This invisibility is duplicated in cultural representation. Feminist theorists like Janelle Hobson and bell hooks critique the absence and erasure of Black women in film and offer oppositional ways of looking that create new forms of agency. In her work, Assia Djebar has explored and exposed the invisible worlds of women in domestic spaces and of Europe’s obsession with visually penetrating those worlds.
This panel seeks to direct our gaze to the unseen, invisible work of care undertaken by women in literature, film and other cultural artefacts. Who cares for whom? What kind of care is unseen? How do writers, artists and filmmakers draw our attention to these otherwise invisible responsibilities, charges, nourishments? What happens when light is shone on this work of care? How does it open to new perspectives, new approaches, new epistemologies?
Please upload your proposed abstract (~250 words) to the NeMLA portal by September 30, 2021.
Contact Anne Brancky (anbrancky@vassar.edu) with any questions you might have.
