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Originally Posted by ella luciana  I'd like to see what you came up with, as I evidently didn't read the whole thread! I think it's a really interesting topic. And I'm glad it went well, too. |
Thanks for responding anyway, my interest hasn't disappeared just because my presentation is done. I sat everyone round two tables pushed together, covered with a big yellow spotty tablecloth, to represent my kitchen (it was also part of a nerves-reducing strategy, to reduce the distance between me and my 'audience', and to stop me shaking or twitching). I wore an apron and started the presentation doing some knitting, and asked what their response to the setting was. Luckily they came up with what I wanted, things like '1950s', 'domestic', 'housewife'.
My presentation focused on knitting, because I thought that was more obviously associated just with one gender. The unifying thread through all this was this drama/anthropology theorist called Richard Schechner who wrote about restoration of behaviour and different frameworks in which it can be seen. I also used a bunch of gender theorists, feminists, marxists and a few artworks to back up my points.
First I talked about how knitting is a performance of memory on both the individual and collective levels (because 'performing memory' was the module title and our only brief for choosing a presentation topic), then I discussed how knitting was used in the 1950s to incorporate gender roles through repetitive performance, and how this supported the economy (through keeping women in the home, unpaid domestic labour, encouraging them to consume and so on). I described how knitting today could be nostalgic, trying to go back to a past that never existed, but because women still have a domestic role it could covertly reinforce gender roles. Then I explained how it could be ironic, almost like drag (tension between actor and behaviour is subversive), but then how the irony might fail - it's interesting to see you mention Nigella Lawson, because I used her as an example of a failure of irony. My conclusion was a paradox about knitting becoming degendered as a skill, but simultaneously reclaiming part of female history and so creating a new collective memory. I finished with a slightly glib little point about how my presentation was contributing to the new collective memory and I hoped that memory was something they'd take away with them.
The idea of the kitchen, my 'performance' of knitting and my creation of a new collective memory for my audience came about because the presentation had to be 'performative' - illustrating its content through its form, involving some kind of acting. I had a pretty powerpoint too that another girl controlled for me, most of the titles were puns, not crucial to the presentation but something I just couldn't resist!
I hope everyone who replied to the thread is happy about how they've been represented. Most (all?) stressed the idea of a skill enjoyed amongst other skills, whilst abscess and veronicafever talked about a connection to female relatives which sparked off the ideas of rehabilitating female history.
Linear Mode
