| The Shadow of Thatcher: Women, Feminism, Politics and Culture 30 Years On |
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Gender & Culture Research Group in association with Bristol Festival of Ideas Key Speakers:
The first British woman Prime Minister. 30 years after Margaret Thatcher’s election as Conservative Prime Minister in 1979, a number of films and TV programmes have looked back reflectively, sometimes nostalgically, on the 1980s and her term of office (This is England, Tory, Tory, Tory!, The Road to Finchley, The Line of Beauty). Thatcher herself has been celebrated as the elder statesperson par excellence, on the pages of Vogue and posing with the Prime Minister on the steps of Downing Street, her personal image as the brightened by an increasingly mythical status. The current revival of ‘eighties’ fashions and music has also mobilised the re-imagining of Thatcherism as a powerful, abrasive, and deeply productive driving force in British popular culture. No other national politician has been so profoundly or so consistently associated with such a wide range of cultural, social and political formations and identities as Margaret Thatcher, while Thatcherism, whether defined as a narrowly political ideology or as a set of tropes about nationhood, identity and culture, retains its resonance in everyday life. Why is this and what does itmean? This conference offered the opportunity to reflect on the continuing impact of Thatcherism and of Margaret Thatcher on feminist politics and popular culture since the 1980s:
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