Women’s Work: Clothing and Women’s Emancipation in the Early Twentieth Century
Dr Nicole Robertson
This talk explored the relationship between dress and the changing roles and position of women in society. Focusing on Britain in the early twentieth century, Dr Nicole Robertson examined social taboos and restrictive rules associated with women’s fashions and everyday wear, the wardrobes of the suffragettes, the impact of the First World War on women’s dress and the clothing worn by women in the workplace.
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Jack London, Turn-of-the-Century Slum Tourism and the Sweated Industries of the East End
Dr Vike Martina Plock
This talk focused on the popularity of slum tourism at the turn of the twentieth century. In particular, it looked at the ways in which the sweated industries were represented in the work of the American writer Jack London, who spent a summer “under cover” in London’s East End to study the conditions of its inhabitants and to explore in detail “how the other half lives.”