Is Gender Dangerous? Unravelling anti-gender and anti-migrant movements and reflecting on the current challenges of doing research on gender.

The Network for the Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality (NAGS) of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) will hold its Interannual Meeting and two-day workshop on 19-20 September 2019 at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Programme:

Day 1: Thursday September 19th, 2019
(Room: HG-07A32)
13:00 – 13:30 Registration
13:30 – 14:00 Introduction to the workshop – welcome by EASA NAGS & LOVA (Dutch Association for Gender Studies and Feminist Anthropology)
14:00 – 15:30 Keynote lecture Joanna Mishtal (University of Central Florida)
“The Backlash against Gender: From Local Experiences to Transnational Considerations”
15:30 – 15:45 coffee and tea break
15:45 – 17:30 Panel: When the Right turns against gender and toward family values – political power, state and democracy
(20 min./speaker)

  1. Zorica Sirocic (University of Graz), From fringe to mainstream? Anti-gender campaigns and their opposition during the right-wing rule in comparison.
  2. Aslı Telseren (Dogus University, Paris 7 - Paris Diderot University, Sorbonne Paris-Cité) Populist Discourse and Gender Politics: The European Context in 2000s.
  3. Iza Desperak (University of Łódź) Entanglements of Right-wing, Gender and Migration in Central and East Europe.
  4. Katja Kahlina (University of Helsinki) Demography and the new sexual nationalism: The interplay of heteronormative, ethno-nationalist, and demographic discourses in the current anti-gender/anti-LGBTQ mobilization in Europe.

17:30 – 19:30 Reception at the pantry of the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, VU

Day 2: Friday September 20th , 2019
( Room: HG-11A33)
09:30 – 10:00 coffee and tea
10:00 – 11:30 Panel: Exploring on- and offline forms of anti-gender right-wing practices
(20 min./speaker)

  1. Aleksandra Sygnowska (Polish Academy of Sciences), Female Ambassadors of Racism.
  2. Melody Jap-Sam (University of Amsterdam), Women Against Feminism: a qualitative research into the understanding of modern western anti-feminism in the context of an online community.
  3. Pia Schramm & Julia Molin (Humboldt-University of Berlin), The “Other” Online: ongoing research on the crisis narrative “Islamization” and anti-feminism within social media.

11:30 – 13:00 Lunch at VU restaurant
13:00 – 15:00 Roundtable (part 1): When the Right and everybody else turns ‘feminist’: Femo- & Homonationalism and its Critiques
(20 min./speaker)

  1. Ladan Rahbari (Ghent University), The instrumentalization of gender within right wing activism and the danger in singling out gender without its interconnection with categories such as race.
  2. Sara Bonfanti (University of Trento), Intersectionality in the mirror: when (alleged) female vulnerability is prey of contrasting forces. A case study from the Panjabi minority in Italy.
  3. Daniel Rueda Toledano (King’s College London), Nationalising the subaltern: Marine Le Pen’s femonationalist and homonationalist discourses.
  4. Nicolas El Haïk-Wagner (Sciences Po Paris & The University of British Columbia), The Parti des Indigènes de la République and homonationalism: An ethnographic analysis of an activist decolonial critique of ‘homoracialism’ in the French Republican context.

15:00 – 15.15 Coffee and tea break
15.15 – 16:15 Roundtable (part 2)
(20 min./speaker)

  1. Hanene Baroumi (University of Tunis), Who Is Afraid of Gender? Re-thinking the Specter of Gender Studies.
  2. Mina P. Baginova (Charles University Prague / University College London), New forms of transnational mobilization and activism in Central Europe in the face of current threats against gender.

16:15 – 17:00 NAGS Network meeting

Concluding reflections on the workshop and discussion of follow-up/ publication?
Presentation of NAGS network and activities. Who and what is NAGS and how can you join?