The section of Cultural and Gender History at the Department of History and the section Global Governance at the Institute for the Foundations of Law at the University of Graz
cordially invite you to the Guest Lecture by Elizabeth Dillenburg (Ohio, USA) on ‘Empire’s Daughters. Girlhood, Whiteness, and the Colonial Project’
The guest lecture is part of the lecture series ‘Decolonizing History’.
WHEN: Monday, 7 April 2025, 5:00 p.m
WHERE: HS 15.13, Resowi-Zentrum, Universitätsstraße 15/E, first floor
CONTACT: genderhistory(at)uni-graz.at
Abstract “Empire’s Daughters. Girlhood, whiteness, and the colonial project”
This presentation traces the interconnected histories of girlhood, whiteness, and British colonialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although girls are often consigned to the shadows in studies of colonialism, they nevertheless played a vital role in the empire as migrants, settlers, laborers, and creators of colonial knowledge and were heralded as “empire builders.” Yet their involvement in the empire was anything but straightforward. They not only supported—directly and indirectly—systems of colonial power but also resisted them. To examine the complexities of girls’ engagement and experiences in the empire, this presentation discusses the Girls’ Friendly Society, an organization that emerged in Britain and grew into a global society with branches throughout the empire It specifically explores how the Society’s multifaceted emigration and imperial education programs constructed ideas of girlhood, race, and empire that then circulated globally. This presentation uses the Girls’ Friendly Society as a lens to explore the micropolitics of colonialism and argues that understandings of colonialism remain incomplete without considerations of girls and girlhood.
About Elizabeth Dillenburg
Elizabeth Dillenburg is Assistant Professor of History at The Ohio State University. She is a historian of modern Europe and European colonialism with a particular focus on gender and childhood in Britain and the British Empire. Her recent book, Empire’s daughters: Girlhood, whiteness, and the colonial project, was published in 2024 by Manchester University Press and is available as open access.
About the Lecture Series
The lecture series ‘Decolonizing History’ addresses the question of how colonial forms of power intertwined in history and how coloniality was embedded in political, sociocultural, and economic relationships. From a trans-epochal perspective, the lectures focus on cultural negotiation processes between colonisers and colonised and provide insights into multi-layered historical forms of inequality and racialisation. By taking a critical look at historiographical forms of knowledge production, the approaches presented aim to overcome coloniality in historical research.
The lecture series is organized in cooperation with the sections of Early Modern History, History Didactics, and Cultural and Gender History at the Department of History. In the winter semester 2025/26 we will continue the series with:
Stephan Steiner (Vienna) and Juliana Orsós (Pécs) on the topic of ‘Cannibalism in 1782? Roma trials under Joseph II’
and
Nicole Garretón (Aachen) on ‘Historical Culture and Colonialism’.