Day 1: Thursday 8 January

Welcome: 09.30-09.45

Session 1: 10.00-11.30

Panel A: Hand-Workers

Room 405

Chair: Joanne Begiato

• Melanie Bell and Alice Sage - Handmade: The Invisible Craft and Labour of Film Costume (short film, 6 mins, and discussion).

• Anna Duffield - Embroidery-as-Research: Exploring the history and process of needlework through the re-creation of a family embroidery sampler.

• Kate Sekules - Hand/Mending: News from the Coalface.

Panel B: Victorian Hands

Room 406

Chair: Ross Cameron

• Tilly A.F. Guthrie - Keeping in Touch: Tactile materiality in the correspondence of the British blind community, c. 1840-1905.

• Jay Sullivan - Severed Hands in Victorian Egyptomania.

• Jonathan Westaway - ‘But there is Art and ART’: Winckelmann, Pater and the Haptic Aesthetics of Mountaincraft.

Coffee break: 11.30-12.00

Session 2: 12.00-13.30

Hands on workshop

Room 117

• Ruth Singer is a textile historian and artist. In this session she will share some of her work exploring hands, touch and hand-stitching. You will also have the chance to explore your own sense of touch and the haptic process of stitching cloth while thinking about the meanings and impact of this sensory activity.

Lunch: 13.30-14.30 in the canteen

Session 3: 14.30-16.00

Panel C: Iconic Hands

Room 405

Chair: Helen Victoria Murray

• Eve Connor - The Many Thinking Hands of Jack Sheppard.

• Sarah Potvin - Walt Whitman’s Hands.

• Bertha del Valle - Fidel Castro’s Hands: Sentiment and Affect as Sources of Political Legitimacy in Revolutionary Cuba.

Panel D: Practice Based Research

Room 406

Chair: TBC

• Janine Goldsworthy - Between Hands and Pixels

• Fiona Snow - The Thinking Hand: Embodied Learning in Art, Craft and Design Pedagogy.

• Elise Maynard - The Hand as Temporal Bridge: Cross-Modal Translation Through Practice-Based Research.

Coffee break: 16.00-16.20

Session 4: 16.20-17.50

Panel E: Hands and Healthcare

Room 405

Chair: Michael Brown

• Daniel Grey - Out of Touch? Life and Death in the Hands of Midwives in England, 1871-1914.

• Louise Bell - ‘It’s always been a good fitting leg because I made do myself’: Adapting prostheses in the aftermath of two world wars.

• Doris George Yohannan - Air Anatomy: The Hand as a Medium of Embodied Learning in Anatomical Education.

Panel F: Artists’ Hands

Room 406

Chair: Helen Victoria Murray

• Rebecca Fortnum - A Gesture to Genius.

• Margarita Kamalyan - The Eloquent Hand in Arto Chakmakchyan's Art.

Conference dinner: 18.30 (optional) at the Park Bar and Kitchen, Sadler’s Wells East

Day 2: Friday 9 January

Session 1: 10.00-11.30

Panel G: Virtuality and Touch Phenomenon

Room 405

Chair: Michael Brown

• Gwendolyn Bolderink - I want your hands on me: how to be a sex object.

• Ross Cameron - ‘My sense of touch is most delicate’: Touch, authority and (the limits of) tactile geographies in James Holman’s travel narratives, 1820s-1850s.

• Weerada Muangsook - The Hand in Motion: The Performative Gesture of Page-turning in the Consumption of Jet Age Fashion Media.

Panel H: Victorian Makers

Room 406

Chair: Joanne Begiato

• Lena Ferriday - Touching Skill: The Place of the Hand in Rural Labour, 1840-1910.

• Róisín Quinn-Lautrefin - Victorian women’s domestic crafts and the hands that made them.

Coffee break: 11.30-12.00

Session 2: 12.00-13.30

Parallel hands on workshops: workshops will run as parallel sessions in adjoining rooms, each lasting 45 minutes.

Session 2a: 12.00-12.45

Room 405

• Rebecca Whiteley - Make your own obstetric pocket phantom.

Content Note: In this session participants will be hand-making an articulated paper model of an infant. This may be an emotionally intense experience for some people and participation is not mandatory

Session 2b: 12.45-13.30

Room 406

• Michelle Baruch-Baron - Using haptic experiences from the Clay Field to explore the potential of somatic healing.

Lunch: 13.30-14.30 in the canteen

Session 3: 14.30-16.00

Panel K: Fashion

Room 405

Chair: TBC

• Nico Frederick - Quee(ring) the Hand: Coded Accessories, Lesbians, and Rings.

• Lauren Bell - Covered in Flesh: Fashion, Eroticism, and Music Video Aesthetics.

• Petra Egri - Embodying Heritage: The Hand, the Glove, and the Survival of Craft in Pécs.

Panel L: Hands of Power

Room 406

Chair: TBC

• Kate West - Unruly Hands: Gestural Resistance and Metropolitan Carceral Power.

• Rachael Haslam - ‘Giving his Faith in his Hands’: The Hand and Embodied Trust in Late Medieval Church Court Disputes.

Plenary: Tactile Subjects, 16.20-17.50

Room 117

Chairs: Helen Victoria Murray and Ross Cameron

• Sarah Jackson, Peter J. Capuano and Caroline Seymour.

Closing Remarks, 17.50-18.00

Room 117

• Joanne Begiato and Michael Brown