Tender Study: a feminist study group

Are you interested in exploring writing, art, film and feminisms? Tender Study is a study group exploring different kinds of feminist practices.

The study group will:

  • read things together
  • look at things together
  • share first impressions
  • discuss different texts, films and artworks
  • explore what a feminist study group can be and do

No preparation is necessary. Just bring yourself and a generous commitment to exploration of feminism and visual culture in a small group setting.

How to join the group

The group meets fortnightly on Thursdays.

Open to all programmes of study at the University of Leeds, and all genders.

Please email Elspeth Mitchell if you would like to join or have a question.

More information

The aim of the study group is to explore, together, feminist questions that are political, personal, theoretical and pedagogical.

What kinds of activities, ideas, images, sounds, discussion support or generate feminist politics? How have different practices challenged unjust hierarchies along the axes of race, gender, class, sexuality, (dis)ability, geography and language, and other and unseen axes? How do we start to explore this together? 

The name ‘Tender Study’ draws from tender’s different root meanings: to be soft, to stretch, to attend to another. 

The study group is not taught. It relies on all group members to contribute and show up. If we read, those who feel comfortable read aloud, we follow together paragraph by paragraph, stopping to look up words and puzzle over difficult sentences. We will watch shorter or longer films (space dependent) and look at artworks together. 

The study group aims to be a brave space, i.e., an environment of learning, sharing, and growing together built on the awareness that creating and sustaining a comfortable and safe space is an incessant, collective, and brave endeavour, based on political practices of solidarity, engagement, diversity, and the active challenging of the unjust hierarchies. By joining the study group, you accept the invitation to make it a safe, intellectually engaging yet challenging experience for everyone.

Image

Photo by Elspeth Mitchell.