Panel descriptions

PANEL 1
Inter-/Trans-/Postdisciplinarity within Gender Studies - Current Prospects and Restraints

The criticism of science and of scientific disciplines is a constitutive factor of Women and Gender Studies since their very beginnings, and is inextricably linked to the challenge they pose to relations of power and domination. Therefore Gender Studies have a long tradition of developing practices of knowledge that transgress established disciplinary boundaries (and sometimes also the boundaries of academia), and they critically reflect on those practices in terms of inter-, trans-, or postdisciplinarity. The panel relates this debate to the prospects, restraints and challenges that Gender Studies - in their various institutionalized forms - currently face: Where, how, and under which conditions do inter-, trans-, and/or postdisciplinary practices of knowledge "succeed"? Can we identify regular pitfalls and boundaries (epistemic, institutional or other) that hinder or make them fail repeatedly? Does interdisciplinarity also increasingly function as a supposed marker of innovation and excellence within the science system in a way that inhibits critical thinking? And can we, at the same time, observe a tendency to re-discipline academic knowledge? If so, which challenges does this development pose?

PANEL 2
Canonisation and Mythologies within Gender Studies

Feminist critique of academic knowledge production entailed a profound critique on the established canons of academic disciplines, which mostly have included works of white men only. Women and other marginalized groups have not been represented but rather written out of existing canons. Still they are integrated only in limited numbers. The insight into the limitations of any canon has also consequences for the development of Women's, Gender and Feminist Studies. Feminist academics discussed that there should be no canon in order to prevent such exclusionary power mechanisms. However, the absence of a formal canon is problematic as well. First, it can be argued that an informal canon developed anyway. Second, the absence of the canon does not only prevent its negative but also positive effects that is developing and taking care of the memory of a research field. If there is no discussion of what belongs to a canon and what not, nobody takes care of the memory of gender research. Instead it also causes silences and myths about the history of gender research that cannot be validated because of a lack of historical knowledge. In a positive sense myths can create identity. However, depending on who is producing them from which position and to which end they might omit the fact that at any point of time feminism was structured through a multi-vocal debate and thus always included a range of diverse perspectives. The teleological story of gender studies developing from less to more complexity is one example for this. The assumption of less complexity in the early times of academic feminism excludes the fact that there never was just one feminist voice and that marginalized positions had always been part of the very same discourse. Another example is the myth that Gender Studies today are mostly apolitical. Hence, different kinds of myth - having belief in progress or mourning the past - marginalize the perspective that history as well as presence are always build of discussions in which different streams coincide and coexist.

This is the background of the panel on which the following questions will be discussed: How can we enable a differentiated history of science for Women's, Gender and Feminist Studies? Is it at all possible to develop versions of memory that do not produce exclusions, that are not fixed but fluid? How could this be designed in the current economic situation of European universities?

PANEL 3
Power, Differences, and Situated Knowledge: Challenges within Gender Studies

As an interdisciplinary field of knowledge gender studies are concerned with the critical analysis and contestation of hegemonic, universalized and androcentric productions of knowledge on gender. This view goes together with the basic assumption that knowledge is always situated in a specific way, depending on cultural, social and political factors and as such to a certain point also on the social positioning of the individuals who produce knowledge.

At the same time it has long been clear that gender relations can only be understood in a broader context of multiple and intersectional power relations. This insight is mainly a result of feminist critique of and within the Western feminist movement as it was broad up by Black feminism as well as by gay, lesbian, transsexual, migration and disability movements (and their crossings) just to mention a few. As a result, more complex concepts of power and difference within Western feminist politics and theory have been established. Within gender studies this becomes obvious e.g. in terms of the paradigmen of intersectionality, interrelated theories on postcolonial and queer theory and (self)critical concepts of hegemony as they are subject of critical masculinity studies, critical whiteness studies and/or critical occidentalism, for example. Moreover, the difficult relation between power and difference is also linked to the complex relation between theory, social movements and different fields of practice within feminism and gender studies.

Against this background panel 3 is concerned with the challenges that gender studies face with regard to intricate and shifting social (self)positionings and differences as well as different effects of intersectional power relations. In doing so, it looks at current struggles on differences, representation, social standpoints and adequate practices of knowledge: How could gender studies as a field of theory and practice of knowledge be improved, if these multiple settings, positionings and power relations are taken into account? What kind of methodological and practical strategies as well as higher education policies have been developed within the last years? What are current problems and prospects?

PANEL 4
The Future of Gender Studies in Lower Saxony and Beyond

Joint discussion with Prof. Dr. Ulrike Beisiegel (Göttingen), Dr. Barbara Hartung (Hannover), Prof. Dr. Sabine Hess (Göttingen), Prof. Dr. Doris Lemmermöhle (Göttingen) and Prof. Dr. Silke Wenk (Oldenburg)
Moderation: Prof. Dr. Barbara Schaff