A little Romancing the Tomes herstory!

This #ThrowbackThursday, as a co-organiser of #RomTom2 along with Roanna McClelland and Johanna Commins (yes, a triumvirate of witches on the heath – sorry, PhD students who love law literature and feminism, same thing!) did a little takeover of the Twitter account of the Institute of International Law and the Humanities (IILAH). Putting the intel here as an article while also including the link to the Twitter thread here.

The purpose of the thread and this post is to tell you a bit about the original Romancing the Tomes conference held in 2000. Our conference, to be hosted by our institution, Melbourne Law School , at the 澳大利亚墨尔本大学 , will be a sequel of sorts, almost a quarter of a century later.

?Let's set the scene: Y2K: the start of a new millennium, the 21st century.??

Australia's PM is John Howard, who chooses not to apologise to Stolen Generations when attending a historic 250,000 people walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of reconciliation with Australia's Aboriginal/First Nations people. ?

Over in New Zealand (still 18 years before petition to add 'Aotearoa') Helen Clark is PM; Jenny Shipley is opposition leader. New Zealand was confronting terrible rates of child abuse and just began the Gisborne Cervical Smear Inquiry into underreporting of abnormal smears by a pathologist.

We're 3 years before Twitter or MySpace's launch, 4 years before Facebook. Many feminist blogs, sites are yet to be born!

In fact, most original participants of the 2000 Romancing the Tomes conference aren’t on Twitter (but please hit us up if you are and if we’re wrong!)?

It's at this turn of the century moment that Prof Margaret Thornton and the Humanities Research Centre at 澳大利亚国立大学 held the 1st Romancing the Tomes conference, bringing together an exciting group of #feminist academics.

See Margaret's ANU profile here!

Margaret was pursuing the instinct that there was rather a lot to say and study about the interactions between law, feminism and pop culture. It was an exciting meeting that brought together many names that we now recognise as leading feminist academics of our time.

An outcome of the 2000 Romancing the Tomes is the edited collection of essays, where you can see some of the fabulous attendee names, including Melbourne Law School 's Prof Ann Genovese, the faculty sponsor of our sequel conference 23 yrs later, #RomTom2! Here's a link to the book.

Of course, the Romancing the Tomes book is an outcome of more names who were contributors in many other ways that feminists remind us are often invisibilised. At #RomTom2, we hope to convene a similar generative, generous space - together with the original participants!

This intergenerational aspect of #RomTom2 is what we're especially excited about: conversation with the original 2000 conference participants and today's early career researchers (ECRs). Our call for papers provokes you to think about what has happened in these 23yrs: we're almost at the 1/4 century mark!

#RomTom2 co-organiser Jo Commins and Prof Ann Genovese had a great conversation with Margaret last year during the @IILAH_UniMelb festival of conversations.?Have a listen to learn more about the OG conference via this recording on the IILAH podcast.

Now that we three (all Melbourne Law School PhD students and early career researchers ourselves) have told you some of the herstory of Romancing the Tomes, we hope you'll send EOIs by 24 Feb for #RomTom2! Here’s the CfP again.

We really want this to be a kickass, intergenerational feminist space. So join us and make it so!

Remember: even if you don’t label your own work as feminist, you might still be leaning on pillars of feminist theory, feminist organising, feminist terminology (think Bechdel test, intersectionality theory) that has helped shape your thinking and the way you do your work. (Yes, we’re leaning fully into #ThankAFeminist vibes here!)

We’ll post more in the coming weeks and months to remind us of the huge range of research and activism of over two decades linking back to feminist furies in law, academia and activism. So write to us by 24 Feb. Tell us about your cool idea (we're all for works in progress to prune together in May!)

Not keen on doing more labour for another paper this year? That's fine. We still want an EOI from you to tell us you want to come: tell us about your fangirl soft spot, your interest in helping out by chairing, volunteering for busy work, or simply attending #RomTom2.

Tl;dr: We want you! This intersectional, intergenerational, feminist AF space we’re hoping to convene can only be with YOUR help. It's a hybrid event, anything is possible with your participation.

?? from #RomTom2 conveners,

Sanam, Roanna, Jo (openly seeking suggestions for a mashup name as lame as #Bennifer which brings together both our pop culture / romance loving hearts and badass feminist witchery)