Thanks for Typing: Wives, Daughters, Mothers, and Other Women behind Famous Men

8 – 9 March 2019

Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, Wolfson College

When Bruce Holsinger, a novelist and a professor of English at the University of Virginia, started a series of twits with #ThanksForTyping hashtag in 2017, picking brief references to wives’ assistance from the acknowledgement sections of academic works, these tweets went viral. They demonstrated that even in the 20th century wives of male academics, who did significant work towards their husbands’ research and publications, rarely got any proper credit and mostly remained anonymous. The movement expanded, with people sharing similar references to different female family members of the male authors, academic and not, in different languages. The phenomenon appeared to be universal.

Our conference is aimed at uncovering these mostly forgotten lives and writing them into existence. We accept proposals for 20-minute papers on wives, partners, daughters, mothers, and other women who laboured in the shadows of their famous husbands or male relatives – academics, men of letters, activists – or stood out to have a career of their own. It is anticipated that selected papers will be published in a book emerging from the discussions and conversations held at the conference. Please send your abstracts of approximately 250 words to thanksfortypingconference@gmail.com by 1 September 2018.

DEADLINE EXTENDED 15 DECEMBER