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Platform for City Culture and Public Debate

11.03.2024

The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule

w/ Angela Saini

Date: Monday 11 March 2024
Time: 20:00 (drinks from 19:30)
Location: Arminius, Museumpark 3, Rotterdam
Admission: €10,- (regular), €6,- (reduced)
Language: English

Note: this public talk is sold out. We hope to see you at one of our other events!

On Monday March 11 De Dépendance welcomes award-winning science journalist Angela Saini on the occasion of her highly acclaimed book The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule.

In her bold and radical book, Saini explores the true roots of what we call patriarchy, uncovering a complex history of how it first became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory into the present. Travelling to the world’s earliest known human settlements, analysing the latest research findings in science and archaeology, and tracing cultural and political histories from the Americas to Asia, she overturns simplistic theories to show patriarchy is neither natural nor inevitable. By thinking about gendered inequality as rooted in something unalterable within us, we fail to see it for what it is: something more fragile that has had to be constantly remade and reasserted.

In our talk we will delve into these diverse histories of male dominance and female submission, to work our way up to the present times. We will discuss what part every one of us plays in keeping patriarchy alive and why we need to look beyond the old narratives to understand why it persists in the present.

Participants

Angela Saini

Angela Saini is an award-winning journalist and author based in New York. She teaches science writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presents radio and television programmes, and her writing has appeared in National Geographic, Foreign Policy, and Wired. In 2022 she was a Logan Nonfiction Program Fellow and a fellow of the Humboldt Residency Programme in Berlin. Her latest book ‘The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule’ was published in spring 2023, and was a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing.

Marianne Klerk

Marianne Klerk is a historian and programme curator. Working on the intersection of academia and the public debate, Marianne researches, curates debates and publishes on a variety of social and political topics, ranging from cultural heritage to neoliberalism. She is a senior lecturer in humanities at the Erasmus University College and a fellow at Debatpodium Arminius in Rotterdam. Currently, she is writing a book on the history of gentrification, titled ‘Stadtschmerz in tijden van gentrificatie’ (Boom uitgevers).