Folklore & Women: The power of folklore in reclaiming female sto

Dr Shelby Judge brings her touring lecture, Folklore & Women, to The County Assembly Rooms in Lincoln on Monday 19 October. It's a talk that works its way through the great female archetypes of European folklore — the witch, the shapeshifter and the maiden — and looks at what each was built to hold, drawing on contemporary feminist thought.

If you've ever wondered why the same few figures keep cropping up in the stories we tell about women, this is where it gets into the why of it. It's not just a trip through the myths themselves, but a look at how they've shaped feminist thought over time. The witch, the shapeshifter and the maiden are the three that Judge focuses on, and the talk spends time on each one rather than just skimming across them. It's a way of seeing how these old roles have been used to define women, and how those definitions still echo in the way we talk about gender and power today.

The lecture runs for around 90 minutes, so there's plenty of room to sit with the ideas rather than rushing through them. And it doesn't end when the talking does — there's a Q&A with Judge afterwards, so if you've got a question or something you want to push back on, you can raise it and get a proper answer rather than just wondering about it on the way home. It's the kind of thing that works better when you can actually talk back to it.

It's all happening at The County Assembly Rooms on Monday 19 October, with the talk itself running for about 90 minutes followed by the Q&A. If you're into folklore, feminist theory, or just how the stories we inherit still shape us, it's one to keep on your radar.