Please note that this talk will make repeated reference to sexual assault and violence against women and girls. Audience members should feel free to leave the room if necessary.
Description
My research into women’s walking during the early modern period has revealed, dismayingly, that not enough has changed in the intervening centuries. The rhetoric and discourse may alter on the surface, but the underlying structures – the victim blaming when lone girls and women walkers are attacked by men, the notion of deserving and undeserving victims, and the onus on girls and women to keep themselves safe rather than on men to change – are strikingly, and disturbingly, similar. This paper reflects on this finding through the model of the ‘wormhole’, or the connection of women’s experience across disparate points of space and time. As well as introducing the audience to some of the research and methodologies underpinning my work on histories of walking, it will also outline ways in which I have used public engagement projects to try to disrupt and resist the overarching systems which affect girls’ and women’s free movement through the world.
About the Speaker
Eleanor Rycroft, an Associate Professor in Early Modern Performance at the University of Bristol, UK, is the author of Facial Hair and the Performance of Early Modern Masculinity (Routledge, 2019), and co-author of Predramatic Theatre: the Radicalism of Early British Performance (Palgrave, 2026). She is currently writing the British Academy-funded monograph Walking the Early Modern Stage and her work on this topic has appeared in English Literary Renaissance and the London Journal, as well as chapters from the edited collections Shakespeare/Play (ed. Emma Whipday, 2024) and Walking in the Middle Ages (ed. Katie L. Walter, forthcoming 2026)
About Colloquium
Colloquium is a weekly series of talks featuring staff, fellows, and scholars who are working with the library’s vast collections. These events bring together experts from various fields to share their research on a wide range of topics, followed by an opportunity for the audience to ask questions and engage in conversation.
Colloquium is open to the public and offers a chance to explore fascinating ideas and new discoveries. No advance registration is required.