Strand 3: Teaching ‘Gender’ across the Borders of the Human, Social, Natural and Biomedical Sciences

Strand 3:  Teaching ‘Gender’ across the Borders of the Human, Social, Natural and Biomedical Sciences

Strand 3 of the conference revisits the politics of location by exploring the ways in which ‘teaching and learning gender’ has transformed the disciplinary structure and curricula of the academe across Europe. Since the 1970s, European universities have witnessed the steady development of a wide variety of MA programmes in gender studies, women’s studies and feminist studies. One inevitable outcome of this academic ‘institutionalisation’ of gender has been the initiation of a debate on the extent to which the course materials and research approaches of other disciplines incorporate gender as a primary unit of analysis and engage seriously and critically with feminist and gender issues.

On the one hand, the emergence of Gender/Feminist/Women’s studies departments have been central to, and instrumental in, the historic and radical transformation of the academic disciplines in their entirety. New research directions today, supposedly located ‘outside’ gender studies, relentlessly foreground old feminist questions of materiality, vitality, and the politics of embodiment. Studies from across the social, natural, human and life sciences relentlessly interrogate the political dimensions of medicine and public health policy, the relationship of eugenicist practices to the new genetics in terms of the racialized and gendered relationship of bodies to reproduction/reproductive technologies, the relationship of biology and the life sciences to culture, as well as certain pervasive assumptions about biology, reproduction and the body that inform conventional political and social analysis (reflected in widespread and interdisciplinary use of terms such as ‘biosociality’, ‘biocitizenship’, ‘biopolitics’, ‘bioethics’, ‘biotechnology’ and ‘posthuman’).

On the other hand, this explosion of interest in domains traditionally specific to Gender/Feminist/Women’s studies raises the uncertain question of what makes Gender/Feminist/Women’s studies a distinct disciplinary endeavour. At the beginning of the new millennium, in the wake of changing social, economic, political and cultural cartographies, it is crucial to reflect upon the ways Gender/Feminist/Women’s Studies is taught and how it might continue to play its innovative and critical role. In this conference strand we invite students, teachers, educators and policymakers to propose papers, panels and roundtables that may address (but are not limited to):

·         feminist pedagogies and interdisciplinary practices of teaching gender (such as integrative and intersectional approaches to gender, sexuality, the body, and reproduction);

·         dialogues between the natural and social sciences in learning and teaching practices;

·         creative and critical reflections upon current teaching practices, learning activities, assessment tools, and the role of students in course design/delivery;

·         the impact of geopolitical and cultural diversity on teaching and learning gender;

·         the relationship between teaching and women’s/feminist activism;

·         career opportunities for Gender/Feminist/Women’s studies graduates and the integration of Gender/Feminist/Women’s expertise in teacher training programmes/educational degrees;

·         issues of singularity/collectivity and exclusion/inclusion with regard to admission practices and teacher-student relationships;

·         the use of new technologies and distance learning in teaching practices;

·         transnational cooperation between academic institutions;

·         the role of libraries and documentation centres in teaching gender;

·         the impact of EU educational policies and the Bologna-process on teaching gender, as well as the potential usefulness of the Gender Studies Tuning Brochure.

The editors of the AtGender book series ‘Teaching with Gender’ are interested in publishing edited volumes that address teaching, learning, good practices, feminist pedagogic and innovative projects in the field of Gender/Feminist/Women’s studies. The strand coordinators are looking forward to discuss with presenters the possibilities of proposing new volumes based on the conference.

The strand is coordinated by Edyta Just (edytajust@gmail.com) and Anna Loutfi (LoutfiA@ceu.hu). Please contact us with questions or ideas.

Note that the deadline for the call for papers is August 15, 2011.