Gender Studies Now 2023: Themed panels

Please submit your abstract using this form. For more information, please contact: kjonnsforskningna.2023@gmail.com.

Accepted Panels 

1. Women's work in the academy in the context of alienation 

Aneta Ostaszewska, University of Warsaw, The Centre for Women's and Gender Research.

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 made gender inequality as one of the most visible social problems. Difficulties in reconciling professional and caring roles, the lack of specific legal solutions and instability in employment are problems that affect women more often than men globally. In the context of university work, there is a lack of research that covers the specificity of the work of women academics in general, both in terms of the complexity of their experiences and social roles, as well as their common goals and interests as a specific professional and gender group. Therefore it seems particularly interesting to verify the stereotypical image of the female academic as a socially privileged woman and to look at women academics as (yet another) group at risk of alienation at work (i.a. due to the complexity of their social roles).  

Starting from the argument that the alienation of work in the academy is an open ongoing process the proposed roundtable aims to explore, describe and clarify what the alienation of work in the academy is in terms of gender. Whether women working in the academy have a sense of “failed occupationality”, or to put it another way: a sense of living in a precarious and ultimately, alienating situation? In view of this, the main questions for discussion revolve around these three issues: 

1. What are women academics' experiences of working at university? 
2. Is women's work in the academy an alienating job? What are female academics' experiences of alienated, estranged work? 
3. Do women academics constitute a distinct collective in the sociological sense (class/group) in the sense of shared goals, interests and experiences? 

This roundtable would be an opportunity to open an important discussion and share reflections, experiences and research on female academics in the context of university work and alienation. 

2. Against Queer/Trans Modernity? 

Jenny Andrine Madsen Evang and Míša Stekl (Stanford University).

The rising visibility of certain queer—and especially trans*—identities has simultaneously become a key index of liberal progress, in Western (trans)homonationalist discourses, and a source of moral panic over Western decadence, in anti-gender rhetoric. This panel seeks to complicate the relationship between queerness/transness and “modernity” that characterizes both liberal and conservative national imaginaries. In times when being against queer/trans modernity has become “symbolic glue” for a host of right-wing anti-gender movements, how do we hold onto queer and postcolonial critiques that also have a history of standing “against” queer/trans modernity in starkly different ways? 

Suggested paper topics include, but are not limited to:  

• Transphobic, xenophobic, and/or nationalist commonalities between homo- and heteronationalism 
• Anti-Blackness in anti-gender and liberal LGBTQ+ movements 
• Heteroactivism, neoliberalism, and globalization 
• The relationship between alt-right populists, TERFs, and state feminists 
• The rhetoric of free speech as it relates to both anti-gender movements and liberal democratic theory 
• The discursive significance of queer/trans* people’s supposed novelty and/or the history of racializing (homo/trans)sexual deviance as “primitive/perverse” 
• Genealogies of (trans)homonationalism and anti-gender movements in the afterlife of slavery and/or colonialism 
• Critiques of homonationalist frameworks in anti-gender times 
• Analyses of how queer “antinormativity” and/or “antisociality” might be related to (being “against”) queer/trans modernity 
• Deconstructions of the Nordic’s supposed insularity from anti-gender movements 

3. Racialization, Gender, and Space – empirical examples 

Marlene Spanger, Dept. of Politics & Society, Aalborg University, Mira Skadegård, Dept. of Culture & Learning, Aalborg University, Magnus Andersen, University of Aalborg.

Much has been said about the theoretical and methodological journey of intersectionality as it has travelled from academic milieus in the United States to European academic contexts. In the Nordic region, some adaptations of intersectionality implied a shift from the intersection of race and gender to a focus on gender, ethnicity, and migration. This is not surprising considering Nordic racial exceptionalism, however, during the last decade, we have witnessed a steady rise in studies on racialization and racism in the Nordic countries. Thus, we argue that another shift within Nordic intersectionality studies is taking place, this time emphasising processes of racialization and different forms of racism. The aim of this panel is to address how race and gender intersect across space and time in Nordic contexts.  

Paper submissions may, for example, address political rhetoric, the school, the asylum system, the welfare state and/or the labour market. The panel seeks to discuss and highlight how empirical examples from Nordic settings can be understood as discriminatory due to the way that gender and racial differences intersect. 

4. Queer research in Norway: Where are we, where do we want to go? 

Elisabeth Stubberud, NTNU, and Cordula Karich, Nord universitet.

The panel is organized by members of the Queer Research Group, a group that organizes seminars addressing current research topics and projects under development, mainly based at institutions in Norway, but with transnational and interdisciplinary reach. Thereby, the Group provides an arena for inspiration, provocation, collaboration and support for researchers and students who work in queer theory, methodology, pedagogy, and academic praxis more broadly. Responsible for this panel is Elisabeth Stubberud and Cordula Karich. Stubberud is associate professor at the Centre for gender research at NTNU. Over the past years she has been doing research on living conditions among the queer population in Norway in an intersectional perspective, as well as being the leader of the queer Sámi organisation Garmeres – Norwegian section. Karich is a sociologist working at Nord University. She is currently working on a PhD-project where she is investigating lesbian/queer women’s relations to their siblings. She is a university lecturer at the Faculty of social sciences. 

The social conditions that shape queer lives are changing across time and geographic locations. At the same time as the pride movement grows bigger, a lot is still missing in terms of rights and the backlashes are noticeable. The terror in Oslo in 2022 that targeted the queer population during pride was also for many an illustration that we cannot take anything for granted. Furthermore, the situation is different across different groups of the queer population, where the trans population are particularly vulnerable.  

Queer research has relatively poor conditions in terms of funding in Norway, but important work is done in the field despite this. However, there is a substantial need for research both empirically and theoretically. The purpose of this panel is twofold. We want to invite paper presentations that give a taste of what is currently being done within the field of queer research in Norway, but we also welcome papers that look to the future and reflect on what research needs we have. How can queer research contribute to strengthening the fight for rights and good living conditions for queer people? 

5. Out of the drawer, into the open! Open writing workshop 

Elisabeth Stubberud and Siri Øyslebø Sørensen (NTNU), editors of Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning.

Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning (The Norwegian Journal for Gender Research) is organising a workshop as part of Gender Studies Now. The intention is to breathe life into manuscripts that are hiding in drawers and cabinets. Perhaps you were consumed by new projects? Perhaps you were discouraged by critical peer reviewers or the text got stuck in a structural tangle that you can’t see the solution to? In this workshop you can bring your unfinished text and get help and inspiration to find for completing the manuscript.

Everyone who wants to participate is welcome. The texts can be in any stage of work-in-progress. The only thing we require is that you must be willing to share your text with other participants ahead of the conference, and you must be willing to read and give constructive comments to colleagues. 

We will send out a concrete plan for the practical organisation of this workshop when we know how many are participating. 

6.  (Countering) erasure of trans voices in academia 

Nico Miskow Friborg (Centre for Gender Studies, UiS) and Sverre Christoffer Guldberg (Museum of Archaeology, UiS).

Activism has always been a strategy for critical inquiry against structural oppression, for example in anti-racist, feminist, trans, Indigenous and class-based struggles. Trans scholars and activists have analysed and countered the ways that trans experiences are treated, both in the organisation of transition pathways, and the reception of their/our research. By declaring themselves the only authority of the field, monopolised state institutions for trans-specific healthcare have attempted to disqualify critical inquiries by other professionals and sabotage trans and patient organisations from contributing to policy-making, often through claims of activism. This panel aims to create a space to discuss experiences at the intersections of activism and research from trans and/or nonbinary perspectives. We will discuss: --How do we understand and engage in the relationships between knowledge and activism? --How has being trans and/or nonbinary influenced the results and/or reception of our research? --As researchers, how do we (and why should we?) engage in policy-making processes when our experiences and expertise are dismissed? And how may policy-making processes, that exclude those they concern, impact relationships between state, people and research? --What are some possible strategies for dealing with current backlashes against trans-specific healthcare and trans research? 

7. Open Panels

Individual abstracts on topics relevant to the interdisciplinary field of gender studies.