Events and seminars

The CGF and GEXcel higher seminars featuring invited guests as well as researchers at Karlstad University with a bearing on gender scientific issues. All presentations will be given in English (if not mentioned otherwise).

2024

Prof. Sofia Aboim: From gender rights to gender as a right - Political backlashes and the fight against gender populism

Gender Talk at the Centre for Gender Studies, Karlstad University.

November 20th, 15.15 – 16.45 CET,
Zoom: https://kau-se.zoom.us/j/62932612386
https://fb.me/e/1KVZXiEk8

This presentation examines the evolving discourse of gender rights, tracing the transition from gender rights based on pre-established societal norms to contemporary understandings of gender as an inherent right linked to individual autonomy. This shift reflects broader philosophical, legal and cultural developments that increasingly recognise the right to self-identify and express one's gender as central to human dignity. However, this shift has provoked significant political and social backlash, particularly from conservative and populist movements that oppose these advances, often targeting women and gender minorities. The talk will critically engage with the concept of freedom, a cornerstone of rights discourse, and propose a reconceptualisation of gender citizenship that is rooted in a situated socio-historical context. By examining these dynamics, the presentation aims to contribute to ongoing debates on the intersection of gender, rights and social justice in an increasingly polarised world.

Sofia Aboim, University of Lisbon, is a Research Professor in Sociology at the Institute of Social Sciences. She is the coordinator of the LIFE research group and director of the journal Análise Social. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (2004). She has worked on various topics including gender sociology, critical masculinity studies, sexualities and citizenship, social inequalities and the intersections between gender positions, migration and race/ethnicity in Portugal, Europe and the post-colonial world. Her current research focuses on marginalised groups and covers multiple themes, mobilising an intersectional and transnational perspective. Her recent book publications are Gender Fields. The social organisation of gender identity (Routledge, 2024) and Plural Masculinities. The remaking of the self in private life (Routledge, 2016).

Nico Miskow Friborg: Collective trans care against organised abandonment

CGF seminar - Centre for Gender Studies, Karlstad University

October 17th, 15.15 – 16.30 CET,
Zoom: https://kau-se.zoom.us/j/65200684674
https://fb.me/e/5Hp4V5Ka0

Anchored in my ongoing collaborative autoethnographic PhD project on coalitional trans for trans (t4t) organising in Denmark, this presentation explores the organised collective trans care that trans coalitions cultivate to push back against structural disadvantages and to keep each other alive. These are practices like t4t counselling and peer-to-peer support groups. Further, I am interested in how collective trans care is intermeshed with and upheld by what I term mundane trans care. That is, the carefully crafted, continuous, everyday practices of care, grounded in interpersonal, intra-, and intercommunal relationships and friendships between trans people, that render trans life liveable.

In the presentation I ask, what the practices of mundane and collective trans care can teach us about the state abandonment that makes them necessary? How can we cushion and amplify these care practices? Which potentials do collective trans care practices hold for our struggles to upend the organised, differentiated abandonment of trans people and to build paths to collective trans liberation? And which organising modes support these practices?

Nico Miskow Friborg (they/them) is a Mad, queer, trans coalition organiser and PhD candidate at the Centre for Gender Studies, University of Stavanger. Their PhD project explores coalition-based t4t organising and the practices of mundane and collective trans care in Denmark. Nico’s work is anchored in their commitments to the queer/trans coalitions from where and with whom they engage in knowledge creation, and to cultivating research practices that emerge from and contribute to trans movement-building, collective trans liberation, and trans liveability.

Maya Wind: Towers of Ivory and Steel (Book presentation)

Gender Talk at the Centre for Gender Studies, Karlstad University

September 5th, 14.00 - 16.00.
Campus room: 5A308C

In this talk Maya Wind will provide an introduction to her anthropological study "Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom” (Verso Books, 2024). In the book she problematises Israeli universities as pillars of a system of oppression against Palestinians. Israeli universities have long enjoyed a reputation as liberal bastions of freedom and democracy.

Drawing on extensive research and making Hebrew sources accessible to the international community, Maya Wind shatters this myth and offers an alternative perspective onto the intricate involvement of Israeli academic institutions and academic networks in regional structures of oppression.

Dr. Maya Wind is Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Her new research project addresses the international export of Israeli security expertise and has been supported by the Canadian National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Canadian Killam Laureates Trust.

Johanna Sjöstedt: Feminist philosophy: Time, history and the transition of thought (Book presentation)

Gender Talk at the Centre for Gender Studies, Karlstad University

August 28, 15.15 - 16.45
Campus room: 5A308C

Although feminist philosophy is now a recognized field in the institution of philosophy, a tension between the terms feminism and philosophy still seems to persist. From the perspective of philosophy, feminist philosophy might seem too committed to political change; from the perspective of feminism, the practice of philosophy might seem too far removed from the pressing concerns of injustice in ordinary life.

Feminist theory understood as an interdisciplinary tradition of texts that interrogates gender, sexuality, and other similar categories in critical perspectives, has a rather paradoxical relationship to time and history. If philosophy generally takes an omnipresent ahistorical point of view, feminist theory rather tends to stress what Donna Haraway calls “situated knowledges”: the historical, the local, which are first and foremost concerned with questions of transformation.

However, the emphasis of historical situatedness is not necessarily accompanied by an awareness of or interest in the historicity of the concepts that are employed in making such claims. Rather, with the aim of changing oppressive conditions feminist theory runs the risk of overemphasizing the present and the future at the expense of the past.

This anthology argues that feminist theory needs the modes of reflection developed in the humanities in general and in disciplines such as philosophy, the history of ideas and literary studies specifically.

During the seminar the ideas behind the network and experiences from the seminars will be presented, together with the anthology based on it.

The anthology is available OA:
https://bibl-app.sh.se/pub.../home/publication/diva2_1762191

Johanna Sjöstedt holds double MA-degrees in History of Ideas and Gender Studies from the University of Gothenburg. Specializing in the history of feminist philosophy and theory, she is interested in how notions of gender, time, and history intersect in feminist theory and how feminist theory transforms modern notions of temporality and change. Her work has appeared in NORA, Slagmark, and Ideas in history. She is also the editor of the anthology Vad är en kvinna? Språk, materialitet, situation (Daidalos, 2021).

Ageing & Intergenerational encounters in Roald Dahl’s ‘The Landlady’

Co-hosted by Cri-Ageing,CGF, Sociology and KuFo

Leva Stončikaitė (Pompeu Fabra University Barcelona, Spain)
June 10, 9.30 - 11.30
Campus room: 3A 340

This lecture is divided into two parts. In the first part, I will introduce my primary field of research — cultural & literary gerontology. I will briefly explain the evolution of this discipline within gerontological scholarship and will outline the main objectives and purposes. The second part will be focused on the representation of female ageing and intergenerational encounters in a popular short story written by Roald Dahl ‘The Landlady.’ This aim is to demonstrate how cultural & literary gerontology can be applied to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of growing older and intergenerational relationships. We will also delve into the horror genre that helps explore the dynamics of ageing, sexuality, dementia, fears of old age, and the uncanny and dark aspects of humanity, as portrayed in Dahl’s macabre narrative.

Dr. Ieva Stončikaitė holds a PhD, which focused on the intersection of ageing, sexuality, body politics, and the literary creation in the works of Erica Jong. Ieva is a member of the research group GrupDedal-Lit (U of Lleida, Spain) in collaboration with the SIforAGE project, and a member of the ENAS Advisory Board. She is also affiliated with the TCAS (Trent U, Canada) and ACT (Concordia U, Canada). Her current research interests include cultural gerontology, leisure and sexual tourism, and social innovation related to active and healthy ageing. Ieva has also co-taught as assistant lecturer at the Department of English and Linguistics at the U of Lleida.

Register for zoom link with satu.heikkinen@kau.se

Poetic-Philosophic Writing as Research Practice

Nina Lykke, Professor Emerita of Gender Studies (Linköping university)

May 28, 13.15 – 14.30
Campus room: 4A 301A

With examples from my own poetic-philosophic research practice, I will first give a brief introduction to academic-creative mixed-genre writing, and discuss how postqualitative, creative-writing methodologies can enrich academic texts and the work to craft them. Secondly, I shall invite participants to try out some creative writing exercizes focusing on the position of enunciation of the researcher subject and modes of writing-with rather than writing-about. Thirdly, we will focus on joys and pains of writing, and engage in a general discussion of academic and creative writing.

Nina Lykke is Professor Emerita of Gender Studies, former professor in Gender studies at Tema Genus, Linköping University, Sweden. Her current research focuses on cancer cultures, critical patienthood studies, geopolitics of cancer, queer widowhood, death, dying, mourning and spirituality in queerfeminist materialist and decolonial perspectives. She is also doing research on autophenomenographic writing, and experimenting with ways to combine poetic and narrative writing with critical-affirmative philosophical and cultural theoretical inquiries.

She most recently published, jointly with colleagues, Feminist Reconfigurations of Alien Encounters. Ethical Co-Existence in More-than-Human Worlds. London: Routledge (2024), Pluriversal Conversations on Transnational Feminisms: And Words Collide from a Place. London: Routledge (2024) and her recent monograph Vibrant Death. A Posthuman Phenomenology of Mourning. London: Bloomsbury Academic (2022).

Nina Lykke is co-founder of the International Network for Queer Death Studies, and the International Network for ECOcritical and DECOlonial Research.

This workshop is part of the programme of the annual Trans Research Residency at the Centre for Gender Studies, Karlstad University.

Please register for participation with Wibke Straube!

GRADUATE STUDENT ASSOCIATION (GSA) LUNCH SEMINAR

29th of May at 12.00-13.00
(Place TBA)
Registration: https://forms.gle/w3dUUuK2U4Lhgu8u5

ACADEMIC FREEDOM – WHAT IS IT AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR US AS RESEARCHERS?

The theme of Academic Freedom relates to our independence – both as individual researchers and as institutions – towards states, external funders and political agendas in society. It impacts our rights and obligations, and how we are expected to tread the line between private and professional. How free are we to choose our research topics? What rights do we have to make political or ‘unpopular’ claims in our role? What is an ‘academic-activist’? And when does a subject or discipline become ‘political’? These questions are relevant to all academics, and especially to PhD students for whom a career in Academia is waiting.

Join us for a lunch seminar on academic freedom where we will touch on these important questions. The talk will be in English and the guests are: principal Jerker Moodysson (KAU), professor in Poli. Sci. Malin Rönnblom (KAU), and professor in gender studies Annika Rudman (KAU). Moderator: Shahab Mirbabaei, PhD-student in Sociology.

At the end of the talk, there will be time for questions from the audience.

Center for Gender Studies (CGF) warmly welcomes you to “Imagining Palestine” a two-part film screening and discussion taking place on following Tuesdays:

Tue 21st of May at 17.00-19.30
Arenan, Västra Torggatan 26

Foragers (2022) (65min)
Directed by: Jumana Manna

Followed by a panel discussion with: Dr. Minou Norouzi Filmmaker and film scholar at the University of Helsinki.
Dr. Silvia Hassouna Cultural-political geographer at Durham University.

Tue 28th of May at 17.00-19.30
Karlstad University, Fryxellsalen (1B306)

The Silent Protest: Jerusalem 1929 (2019) (20min)
Directed by: Mahasen Nasser-Eldin

Not Just Your Picture (2021) (56min)
Directed by: Dror Dayan and Anne Paq

Followed by a panel discussion with:

Dror Dayan and Anne Paq The directors of Not Just Your Picture.
Dr. Wassim Ghantous International relations and political geography scholar at Tampere University.

All of the films will have English subtitles. The panel discussions will be hybrid in format, with some of the panelists participating online. The language of the discussion will be English with the possibility of audience comments in Swedish.

The events are open for everyone!

Tickets: Pay-what-you-can, and all profits will be donated to humanitarian aid to Gaza. No pre-booking needed.

MINI-SYMPOSIUM “SINGLEHOOD”

Centre for Gender Studies, Karlstad University

May 22, 13.15 – 16.00
Hybrid seminar
Campus room: Fryxell (1B306)

Zoom Registration link

Programme

13.15 Welcome by Ulf Mellström, the head of the Centre for Gender Studies, KAU

13.25 – 13.55 Kinneret Lahad, Tel Aviv University

14.00 – 14.30 Evelina Johansson Wilén, Örebro University

14.30 – 14.45 Break

14.45 – 15.15 Andreas Henriksson and Ulf Mellström, Karlstad University

15.15 – 16.00 Discussion (chaired by Annika Rudman, future head of CGF, KAU)

Kinneret Lahad, Tel Aviv University

Towards an affective reading of female singlehood: some suggestions for a new research agenda

This presentation explores singlehood as an ongoing affective and sensorial process. Taking my cue from affect and non-representational theory, I propose a new theoretical framework which entails critical reappraisal of some of the prevailing ontological and epistemological considerations of singlehood studies. Whereas sociocultural researchers employ mostly a constructionist and discursive mode of inquiry, which privileges narratives, discourses, and social meaning making, here singlehood is conceptualized as an assemblage of forces and capacities which affect and are affected by different kinds of human and non-human bodies.

Moreover, turning away from an overreliance on a unified and bounded individual subject, this line of inquiry provides new conceptual opportunities in which the connectivities and potentialities along the indeterminate and amorphous path of singlehood can be explored. To exemplify this approach, I revisit my earlier studies on female singlehood and loneliness and consider how these conceptual pathways allow us to address the more-than-human and more-than-representational dimensions of solo living.

Evelina Johansson Wilén, Örebro University

The epistemic standards of the incel movement

In recent years, a line of serious incidents of violence towards women have been committed by men who self-identify as involuntary celibates, or ‘incels’. Incels are part of what is described as a political sub-culture or online community, marked by misogyny and driven by affects like resentment, shame and revenge. There is a growing field of research dedicated to online incel communities, describing these as fostering sexist, anti-feminist and pro-violence worldviews and values, as well as hegemonic and toxic forms of masculinity.

A distinctive aspect of the incel community is indeed the elaborate ‘theoretical framework’ that is used to explain the situation of involuntary celibacy among its members. In this framework incel men are portrayed as voiceless, excluded and wronged victims and losers at the (hetero)sexual market, a marginalization understood as stemming from incel men’s biological inferiority and from the increased subjugation of men as a group within a context marked by hegemonic feminism.

However, in the scholarly literature about the incels phenomena, a notable gap exists in the examination of the epistemic standards of knowledge production taking place within these communities. This presentation aims to fill this void by scrutinizing the epistemic logics and practices used by members at incel forums to validate their knowledge production on gender relations. By shedding light on the epistemological dimensions on knowledge production within incel communities, and the way users mobilize science as well as counter-hegemonic forms of knowledge production to legitimize their knowledge claims, the presentation offers a nuanced understanding of the intricate relation between movements and counter-movements’ knowledge production.

Andreas Henriksson and Ulf Mellström, Karlstad University

The (im)possibility of transformation: how migrant bachelors imagine routes to future coupledom in European borderscapes

The transformative encounter that requires openness is a significant idea that is sometimes associated with Western notions of romance. While far from describing how couples really meet, the imaginary of the transformative encounter is central to how many single people understand themselves and others. How is this imaginary taken on by single migrant men, as they seek to understand their singlehood between cultures, in borderscapes and as racialized and marginalized individuals? Is it perceived as a hinderance or an asset as their singlehood is shaped? And what are the alternative ways in which they imagine meeting a future partner (if at all)? We draw on 12 interviews with Syrian single men in Sweden.

Our results show that the men to a significant extent identify the ideal of transformative encounters with the West. While some embrace it as liberating, others see it as less relevant for their situation. In particular, experiences of discrimination and rejection lead some of the men to question the ideal’s importance to them. We discuss how these considerations inform their understanding of singledom.

WHEN THE PERSONAL BECOMES THE UNPOLITICAL

Co-hosted by Media and Communication Studies, Karlstad University and the Centre for Gender Studies, Karlstad University

May 8th, 13 – 15.00
Higher Seminar
Room: Fryxell

Maria Jansson and Jono van Belle

“Well, now when we talk about it, I can see that it is about racism”: Audiences’ negotiations of identities and values in the series Lupin (Netflix, 2021).

Departing from an intersectional approach we discuss audiences’ reactions to the popular Netflix series Lupin (2021). The series presents a heist-story interwoven in a critical assessment of racism and class-differences in contemporary France. The protagonist is a (rather) nuanced character, portraying a black self-made gentleman thief, challenging the stereotypical white portrayal of this kind of persona. However, the women in the series are portrayed as either (good) mothers, or as unreliable, upper-class, white, and sexualized and promiscuous. Discussing this series in focus groups with different demographic groups, such as white, young women, queer women, second generation immigrants and 45+ white Swedes, we have found substantial differences in identification and reception. Our tentative conclusion is that representations of different groups are important. However, only when these representations challenge stereotypes audiences perceive them as possible to identify with. Participants who identified as racialized could identify with the protagonist even if they were women. However, nobody – neither women nor men – identified with the female characters, despite the fact that they were important to the story.

Jono Van Belle is a postdoctoral researcher on the project Digiscreens and senior lecturer in the department of Media- and Communication Studies at the School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. She earned her joint PhD in Communication and Cinema Studies at Ghent University and Stockholm University in 2019.

Maria Jansson, professor of gender studies and associate professor of political science at Örebro University. Her research concerns women's conditions in society, how politics contributes to shaping and changing these conditions, and how women themselves through political actions contribute to change. She has also been interested in issues of equality and learning for a long time. She is currently leading the Swedish team in the Digiscreens project.

Inställt:

Johanna Sjöstedt: Feminist philosophy: Time, history and the transition of thought.

February 28, 2024
Time: 15.15 - 16.45
Room: 5A 308C

In this seminar, the new anthology Feminist philosophy: Time, history, and the transformation of thought (Södertörn studies in intellectual and cultural history 2023) will be presented by one of the editors, Johanna Sjösedt.
The publication is based on a four-year network, the aims of which were to a) research the philosophical roots of feminist theory; b) emphasize the importance of time and history as analytical concepts for feminist theory; c) scrutinize philosophy from a feminist perspective, yet insist on the importance of philosophy for feminist theory and the feminist movement today d) create a forum where these concerns were at the center, not the margin of inquiry.
Although feminist philosophy is now a recognized field in the institution of philosophy, a tension between the terms feminism and philosophy still seems to persist. From the perspective of philosophy, feminist philosophy might seem too committed to political change; from the perspective of feminism, the practice of philosophy might seem too far removed from the pressing concerns of injustice in ordinary life.
Feminist theory understood as an interdisciplinary tradition of texts that interrogates gender, sexuality, and other similar categories in critical perspectives, has a rather paradoxical relationship to time and history. If philosophy generally takes an omnipresent ahistorical point of view, feminist theory rather tends to stress what Donna Haraway calls “situated knowledges”: the historical, the local, which are first and foremost concerned with questions of transformation. However, the emphasis of historical situatedness is not necessarily accompanied by an awareness of or interest in the historicity of the concepts that are employed in making such claims. Rather, with the aim of changing oppressive conditions feminist theory runs the risk of overemphasizing the present and the future at the expense of the past.
This anthology argues that feminist theory needs the modes of reflection developed in the humanities in general and in disciplines such as philosophy, the history of ideas and literary studies specifically.
During the seminar the ideas behind the network and experiences from the seminars will be presented, together with the anthology based on it.

The anthology is available OA:
https://bibl-app.sh.se/pub.../home/publication/diva2_1762191

Global South Perspectives on Feminist Foreign Policies of the Global North

Ekatherina Zhukova:
January 31, 2024,
15.15 - 16.45
Room: 5A 308C

Introduced first by Sweden 2014, Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) has soon been adopted by other countries. FFP aims to mainstream gender equality in all of its levers of influence such as aid, trade, defense, and diplomacy. Since the majority of FFP countries represent the Global North, where liberal feminism is dominant, and a number of them explicitly focus on development cooperation this presentations looks at how countries in the Global South understand what FFP is and whether and how it is of relevance to their own contexts.

Based on 40 interviews conducted with diplomats, practitioners, and academics from 19 countries of the Global South (primarily small postcolonial states, not regional powers, on different continents - 9 in Latin America, 6 in Africa, 3 in Europe/Eurasia, 3 in the Middle East, and 5 in Asia) and from 6 Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) countries of the Global North, the presentation explores FFP’s challenges and possibilities of practicing cultural humility, respecting local agency, giving room to local feminisms, engaging the state in feminism, going beyond projectification in aid and foreign policy, and other aspects of cross-border engagement. It argues that by including the voices and knowledge of the Global South in the process of drafting and implementing the foreign policies of the Global North in a participatory manner might carry a potential to build a more just world.

Bio:
Ekatherina Zhukova is Senior Lecturer in Intercultural Studies at Karlstad University. She is a member of CGF and KuFo at KAU. She is working on a RJ-funded project on external perceptions of Feminist Foreign Policy and on Formas-funded project on the influence of renewable energy on gender equality in Yemen’s conflict.