DATE
Conference
As part of the celebrations for Hull as UK City of Culture 2017 the University of Hull is hosting an interdisciplinary celebration of the life, work and legacy of the political theorist and activist Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797).
Wollstonecraft is most famous for her 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the first feminist political text. She also wrote novels, travel writing and other works of political philosophy. Her life, Virginia Woolf suggested was ‘an experiment’. She mixed with fellow radicals and was in Paris to witness key events of the French revolution. In the words of the new edition of the Vindication, in the Penguin books Great Ideas series, she is one of ‘the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilisation and helped make us who we are’.
Mary Wollstonecraft spent her formative years in East Yorkshire (from the ages of nine to fifteen), longer than anywhere else in her life. It is said to be the only place she remembered with any affection. Initially the family farmed at Walkington, outside Beverley, but three years later took a house in the town centre.
Conference Keynote Speakers
Professor Janet Todd OBE: distinguished biographer of Wollstonecraft ,whose books include:Mary Wollstonecraft : A Revolutionary Life, and The Complete Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft.
Dr. Sandrine Berges , Wollstonecraft expert and lecturer in philosophy at Bilkent University, whose publications include The Routledge Guidebook to Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 2013
Caroline Criado Perez : OBE , prominent campaigner for the memorialisation of women
Roberta Wedge, spokesperson for the high profile Mary on the Green campaign for the memorialisation of Mary Wollstonecraft.