Doing Gender in Events: Feminist Perspectives in Critical Event Studies(Routledge Critical Event Studies Research Series.)

Exploring the relationship between gender and events, this book delivers an ethnographic analysis of the celebration of gender equality in the context of the culture-led event. Drawing upon Critical Event Studies, Anthropology of the Festive and Gender Studies, this book provides a comprehensive understanding of the entangled, conceptual entities of gender and events. Through a gendered analysis of the culture-led event, Hull UK City of Culture 2017, this work expands epistemological perspectives relevant to the study of events in general and City/ Capital of Culture initiatives in particular. Driven by a feminist, collaborative methodological approach, the book draws on four years of ethnographic, qualitative research in the city of Hull and its celebration of the title, UK City of Culture in 2017 and provides an in-depth analysis of how audiences engage, performances enact, and infrastructures condition the production of cultures of gender equality in the citywide celebration. This will be a valuable resource for upper-level students and academics in the field of Event Studies, Cultural Policy, Geography, Anthropology and Gender Studies.

Table of Contents:
1. Relating gender and events: An introduction. 2. Reprogramming transformative ambitions: Observations of shifting ambitions in city/capital of culture initiatives. 3. Engagements through equality: Studying encounters and dynamics of audiences in equality-themed events. 4. Performance, events and equality: Examining the production of cultures of gender equality in the performed contents of events. 5. Equality in structure: Investigating infrastructural conditions and the production of cultures of gender equality. 6. Doing gender in events: Perspectives for an eventful future.

About the Author :
Barbara Grabher is a trained Anthropologist working on the intersections of Gender, Urban and Critical Event Studies. She currently works as a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute of Geography and Regional Sciences at the University of Graz, Austria. Prior to this position, she was employed as research assistant in the Culture, Place and Policy Institute at the University of Hull, UK, where she contributed to the final evaluation study of Hull UK City of Culture 2017, focusing on the impact area, Society and Wellbeing. In 2020, Barbara completed her PhD at the University of Hull and University of Oviedo, Spain. She holds a BA in Cultural and Social Anthropology from the University of Vienna, Austria, and an MA in Gender Studies from Utrecht University, the Netherlands and the University of Granada, Spain.

Review :
This book is a very successful plea: the author convincingly demonstrates how important it is to consider gender in events—not only for events with a gender theme, but particularly for those that do not address gender at all. And while Barbara Grabher’s work certainly is of scholarly interest, it reaches beyond academia—or should: her results have important implications for event organizers, sponsors, and policymakers, in particular. - Cora Gaebel, University of Cologne, Journal of Festive Studies