This workshop will begin with a talk from Erin Maglaque (Sheffield) on gender and the family in early modern Italy. Dr Maglaque’s latest article, ‘Care Work and the Family in Catholic Reformation Tuscany’, examines the care work undertaken by wet-nurses employed at Florence’s foundling hospital and reflects upon the assumptions made by historians and feminist economists on the commercialisation and measurements of women’s work.

Following a Q+A, we will then open the floor to discuss the role of care work in histories of gender, the family, labour, as well as our own positionality in these histories. How can we speak about care work and the academy, and the tensions within and between them?

This event follows on the Postgraduate Symposium: Gender History and the Worlds of Care (13 October 2021) which was co-organized by the Centre for Gender History, University of Glasgow (coordinator); the Centre for Gender, Identity and Subjectivity, Oxford University; the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies, Sabanci University; and the Centre for Research on Culture and Gender, Ghent University.