CLASS DESCRIPTION
The story of British industry is one that we tend to think of as belonging largely to men, but the work explored in this lecture can help us begin to change that. Many women artists have claimed labour as a source of inspiration, and just as importantly, “ordinary” women workers have long lived creatively, too. Focusing particularly on gendered and racialised depictions of the labouring body, this lecture will begin to consider the different ways these stories have been fashioned on their own terms.
To fully consider the legacies and realities of British industry is to find that women have not only been present, but have long been actively shaping and depicting it. Using work by artists such as Jo Spence, Monica Ross, Jasleen Kaur, the Amber Film and Photography Collective, and Helen Cammock, this lecture will explore the relationship between women and industry in British visual culture. It will provide a potted history of the relationship between labour and feminist art, whilst also introducing different ways of representing working-class women’s stories and the place of organised labour within them.
Bringing together giant swans, edible archives, ghosts, and fairy godmothers, this lecture will argue for the importance of fantasy, dream, and innovation to the story of gendered labour in Britain, and the way we represent it.
Working from the 1960s until the present day, each of the artists and individuals in this lecture has consciously explored the idiosyncratic relationship between working-class femininity and what it means to “fashion” oneself and one’s work. Many of these explorations stem from years of collaboration and innovative working practices, raising their own ethical questions and reminding us of the pressing issues still facing women in the workplace - and women in former industrial communities - today.
Many of these artists have also been particularly interested in the intersections between class, gender, and embodied material culture. By beginning to put their works into conversation - both with one another and with a whole host of other sources, from popular culture to archival research - those intersections can, for the first time, be fully explored.
From the Queens of Industry to the installations of Jasleen Kaur, working-class women have been “fashioning” in this way throughout modern British history, yet little record of such processes can be found within mainstream culture. This lecture aims to introduce its viewers to the fascinating and largely uncharted connections between gendered, classed, and racialised bodies, British industry, and making something new.
ABOUT OUR LECTURER
Jennifer Jasmine White is a writer from the north-west of England. She is currently a final year doctoral researcher at the University of Manchester, where she also teaches across art history and english. At its broadest, Jennifer’s current creative / critical work is an attempt to build a new cultural history of working-class femininity in Britain, with a particular focus on creativity and experiment. She is now in the process of writing a book based on this research, which will be published by Chatto & Windus / Penguin Vintage.
In 2025, Jennifer guest curated From the Earth Comes Light: Women, Creativity and Mining for the National Coal Mining Museum for England. This major exhibition is the first to explore the links between women’s creative practices and British coal, and has been described as a groundbreaking contribution to a now ongoing conversation surrounding industry, gender, and visual culture.
Jennifer writes extensively on class, gender, and popular culture, contributing to publications like the Financial Times, New Statesman, and Tribune. She has given invited talks and lectures at institutions such as Tate Britain, BFI Southbank, the Whitworth Gallery, and Studio Voltaire.
INSTAGRAM: @jenniferjasminewhite
WEBSITE: http://jenniferjasminewhite.com
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AUTUMN/WINTER TERM 2025
Monday 15th September
Luisa-Maria MacCormack (she/her)
Female Sexuality and the Male Gaze
Monday 22nd September
Dr. Kate Pickering (she/her)
Feminist Religious Worldbuilding in Contemporary Art
Monday 29th September
Julia Kotziamani (she/her)
Misogynist Bureaucracies: Administrative Erasure and the Feminist Body
Monday 6th October
Noelle Perdue (she/her)
The Evolution of Post-AI Pornography
Monday 13th October
Erin James (she/they)
The Real Housewives of Racist TV Tropes: a Black Feminist Reading of Reality TV
Monday 20th October
Jo Harrison & Holly Isard
RECORDING ONLY - Breastfeeding as work: the contradictions of breastfeeding under capitalism
Monday 27th October
Luisa-Maria MacCormack (she/her)
The Vagina Dentata: Myths of The Monstrous Feminine
Monday 3rd November
Catherine McCormack (she/her)
Eve and the Serpent: Snake Symbolism and Repressed Histories of the Feminine
Monday 10th November
Dr. Lena Mattheis (they/she)
From Thou to They: Gender Nonconformity Pronouns in Literary History
Monday 17th November
Giulia Palladini (she/her)
The Feminist Before the Archive
Monday 24th November
Gudrun Filipska (she/her)
Eco-Feminist Art and Science Fiction
Monday 1st December
Anna Titov (she/her)
Clarice Lispector: Existentialism and Dark Feminisms
Monday 8th December
Jennifer Jasmine White (she/her)
Fashioning Labour: Feminist Art and The Industrial Body
Monday 15th December
Anna Johnson (they/them)
Writing Motherhood: An Embodied Understanding of our Own Oppression
RECORDING
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