Dr D-M Withers
Lecturer in Publishing
Overview
Queen's 255
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My research is concerned with how feminist knowledge is transmitted across time and space; my thinking is rooted in the practice of publishing, and the concept of the archive.
I have a particular interest in the publishing cultures and activist businesses that emerged from or alongside the feminist social movements of the 1970s and 1980s. I have published research on Virago Press and Honno, the Welsh Women's Press.
My work often focuses on forgotten figures, actions and texts. It is animated by cultural logics of untimeliness and delay, and grounded in archival methods and oral history.
My most recent book is Virago Reprints and Modern Classics: The Timely Business of Feminist Publishing (2021).
My monograph, Feminism, Digital Culture and the Politics of Transmission: The Theory and Practice of Cultural Heritage, was awarded the Feminist Studies Association Book Prize in 2016.
I joined the University of Exeter as Lecturer in Publishing in 2022. Prior to this I worked at the University of Reading. Between 2018-21 I was Research Fellow on the Leverhulme-funded project the Business of Women’s Words: Purpose and Profit in Feminist Publishing, a partnership between the British Library, University of Sussex and University of Cambridge. In this role I worked closely with the personal and business archives of Virago founder Carmen Callil, which are held at the British Library.
In 2023/24 I am Co-Director (terms 2 and 3) of the University of Exeter's MA in Publishing programme and welcome enquiries about the course from prospective students.
Research
My current research focuses on the following areas:
- Lurid Editions Ltd: a micro but culturally ambitious publishing project, reprinting overlooked queer and feminist texts from the twentieth century and beyond.
- The career of folklorist, polymath and cultural entrepreneur Deben Bhattacharya (1921-2001). Bhattacharya was a prolific field-recordist, radio presenter, author, translator, LP curator, film maker and video educationalist whose contribution to traditional and folklore collection in the post-war period has been woefully ignored. My research focuses on different elements of his practice, and aims to reconstruct a vibrant and boundary pushing career.
I have several other research interests, and have published articles and/ or produced public events in the following areas:
- Kate Bush, Subjectivity and Narrative – my PhD focused on Bush’s oeuvre, and in 2019 I delivered the opening keynote at This Woman’s Work, the first ever academic conference devoted to Bush’s career.
- Technics, Memory and the thought of Bernard Stiegler
- ‘Free’ improvisation and diabolic aesthetics – in 2016 I produced an Arts Council funded tour for Les Diaboliques, the doyennes of feminist free improvisation.
- Cultural activism (and especially music) in feminist social movements of the twentieth century
Publications
Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.
| 2024 | 2023 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 |
2024
- Withers D-M. (2024) “I pictured you only as an adventurous explorer”: Deben Bhattacharya, Ella K. Maillart, friendship and polygraphic influence, Studies in Travel Writing, DOI:10.1080/13645145.2024.2310536.
2023
- Withers D. (2023) Deben Bhattacharya at the BBC, 1949–79: Cultural entrepreneurism, precarity, and the business of post-war folklore collection, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, pages 1-22, DOI:10.1080/01439685.2023.2256636.
- Withers D-M. (2023) Virago Modern Classics: the making of a reprint series, The Edinburgh Companion to Women in Publishing, Edinburgh University Press.
- Withers D-M, West E. (2023) Mrs. Norah Smallwood: 'The Most Formidable Woman Publisher of Her Generation'?, Publishing History.
2021
- Withers D-M. (2021) Green spines, back story: delving into the early history of Virago reprints and modern classics. LSE Review of Books.
- Withers D-M. (2021) Honno: The Welsh Women’s Press and the Cultural Ecology of the Welsh Publishing Industry,c. 1950s to the Present, Women: a cultural review, volume 32, no. 3-4, pages 354-371, DOI:10.1080/09574042.2021.1973726. [PDF]
- Withers D-M. (2021) Virago Reprints and Modern Classics The Timely Business of Feminist Publishing, Cambridge University Press.
2020
- Withers DM. (2020) Wounding poppies: hyper-commemoration and aesthetic interventions, Critical Military Studies, volume 6, no. 3-4, pages 429-433, DOI:10.1080/23337486.2019.1575123.
- Withers DM. (2020) Enterprising Women: Independence, Finance and Virago Press, c.1976-93, Twentieth Century British History, volume 31, no. 4, pages 479-502, DOI:10.1093/tcbh/hwz044.
- Withers D-M. (2020) The politics of the workshop: craft, autonomy and women's liberation, FEMINIST THEORY, volume 21, no. 2, pages 217-234, DOI:10.1177/1464700119859756. [PDF]
2019
- Withers D-M, Fannin M. (2019) Digital literacy in the age of the screen? Re-imagining the social pedagogy of the archive, Education in the Age of the Screen: Possibilities and Transformations in Technology, Routledge, 127-139.
- Withers DM. (2019) DIABOLIC MARKS, ORGANS, AND RELATIONS: exiting symbolic misery, Angelaki - Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, volume 24, no. 5, pages 88-103, DOI:10.1080/0969725X.2019.1655277.
- Withers D-M. (2019) Laboratories of gender Women's liberation and the transfeminist present, RADICAL PHILOSOPHY, no. 204, pages 3-8. [PDF]
2018
- Morris BJ, Withers D-M. (2018) The Feminist Revolution The Struggle for Women's Liberation, Smithsonian Institution.
- Withers DM. (2018) DIY institutions and amateur heritage making, The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage, 294-302, DOI:10.4324/9781315299310-29.
- Withers D-M. (2018) 'neither pure love nor imitating capitalism': Euro WILD and the invention of Women's Music distribution in Europe, 1980-1982, FEMINIST REVIEW, no. 120, pages 85-100, DOI:10.1057/s41305-018-0138-3. [PDF]
2017
- Withers DM. (2017) Playing with time: Kate Bush's temporal strategies and resistant time consciousness, Popular Music, volume 36, no. 1, pages 98-110, DOI:10.1017/S0261143016000702.
- Withers D. (2017) Ephemeral feminist histories and the politics of transmission within digital culture, Women's History Review, volume 26, no. 5, pages 678-691, DOI:10.1080/09612025.2016.1166887.
2016
- Withers D. (2016) Theorising the women’s liberation movement as cultural heritage, Women's History Review, volume 25, no. 5, pages 847-862, DOI:10.1080/09612025.2015.1132871.
- Perrier M, Withers D. (2016) An archival feminist pedagogy: unlearning and objects as affective knowledge companions, CONTINUUM-JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES, volume 30, no. 3, pages 355-366, DOI:10.1080/10304312.2016.1166561. [PDF]
2015
- Withers DM. (2015) Feminism, Digital Culture and the Politics of Transmission Theory, Practice and Cultural Heritage, Rowman & Littlefield International.
- Withers DM. (2015) Strategic affinities: Historiography and epistemology in contemporary feminist knowledge politics, European Journal of Women's Studies, volume 22, no. 2, pages 129-142, DOI:10.1177/1350506814551759.
2014
- Withers DM. (2014) Intangible cultural heritage and the women's liberation music archive, Sites of Popular Music Heritage: Memories, Histories, Places, 125-139, DOI:10.4324/9780203514528.
- Withers D. (2014) Re-enacting process: temporality, historicity and the Women's Liberation Music Archive, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HERITAGE STUDIES, volume 20, no. 7-8, pages 688-701, DOI:10.1080/13527258.2013.794745. [PDF]
2012
- Withers D. (2012) Women's liberation, relationships and the 'vicinity of trauma', Oral History.
2011
- Withers DM. (2011) ss Great Britain and the containment of British collective memory, International Journal of Heritage Studies, volume 17, no. 3, pages 245-260, DOI:10.1080/13527258.2011.557835.
2010
- Withers DM, Chidgey R. (2010) Complicated Inheritance:Sistershow(1973–1974) and the Queering of Feminism, Women: A Cultural Review, volume 21, no. 3, pages 309-322, DOI:10.1080/09574042.2010.513494. [PDF]
- Withers DM. (2010) Transgender and feminist alliances in contemporary U.K. feminist politics, Feminist Studies, volume 36, no. 3, pages 691-697.
- Withers DM. (2010) Kate Bush, the red shoes, the line, the cross and the curve and the uses of symbolic transformation, Feminist Theology, volume 19, no. 1, pages 7-19, DOI:10.1177/0966735010372165.
- Withers DM. (2010) What is your essentialism is my immanent flesh!: The ontological politics of feminist epistemology, European Journal of Women's Studies, volume 17, no. 3, pages 231-247, DOI:10.1177/1350506810368907.
External impact and engagement
I am an experienced curator, with expertise in feminist and activist collections, and oral history.
Most recently, I was Curatorial Consultant on the British Library exhibition Unfinished Business: the Fight for Women's Rights (2020-21), conducting research, selecting objects and shaping the interpretation of a major exhibition exploring the history of women's rights.
In 2019, I was invited to curate a section in the exhibition Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender and Resistance Act 3, drawing on the literary and activist collections of the Feminist Archive South.
I have also curated two solo exhibitions on the cultural heritage of the women's liberation movement, both funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (as was). Sistershow Revisited: Feminism in Bristol, 1973-75 (2011) and Music & Liberation (2012) which toured to five venues in the UK.
Additionally, I have worked with community organisations such as the Single Parent Action Network, Self-Injury Support and Trinity Bristol to provide training in curatorial practices, oral history interviewing and archival research.
Media
I was interviewed for a BBC Radio 3 documentary about Deben Bhattacharya: Recording on the Nomads' Trail, which aired on 10 December 2023.