Gendering epistemologies – Gender and situated knowledge perspectives from central, eastern and southeastern Europe
More than 30 years ago, Donna Haraway published her iconic essay “Situated Knowledge. The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”, where she discusses the issue of objectivity in feminism. She understands “objective knowledge” as bound to a specific historical point in time and space – precisely as “situated knowledge”. We seek to reflect its current pertinence, considering the differentiation of gender related debates from feminism to queer theories, to trans activism and beyond, but also in the face of current social challenges like hate speech and fake news, conspiracy theories and public questioning of established scientific values. Thus, the conference “Gendering Epistemologies” looks at how gender-shaped (especially scientific) knowledge and truth claims are tied to gender (politics) in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Program
Thursday, 13.10.2022, Prague&zoom
18:00-18:30 Welcome and Introduction
18:30-20:00 Keynote
Aleksandra Derra: The Role of Feminist Theory in Building Complementary Knowledge
Moderation: Dietlind Hüchtker
(venue: Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Gabčíkova 2362/10, 182 00 Prague 8 (limited capacity, to participate please contact Jan Surman surman@mua.cas.cz)
Or via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/
Friday, 14.10.2022, Liblice (Liblice Castle – Conference Center of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Liblice 61, 277 32 Byšice)
13:15-13:30 Short introduction
13:30-15:30 Activism and Objectivity
Moderation: Jan Surman
Duygu Altınoluk: Feminist Standpoint Theory Strengthens Feminist Academic Activism
Anna Eroshenko: Knowing Transgender Experience through the Indirectness: Narrative Psychology as a Collective Oral History
Eszter Kováts: Paradoxes of Situated and Universal Truth Claims in Central Eastern Europe
16:00-18:00 Gendered Politics
Moderation: Karin Reichenbach
Adela Hîncu: Women’s Invisible Labor in Socialist Romania: Feminist Methodology and Theories on Rural Transformation under State Socialism
Ella Rossman: How to Be a Soviet Girl? Constructing Knowledge on Women’s Puberty in the Postwar USSR (1946-1991)
Izabela Kowalczyk: Feminism Meets Catastrophes
Saturday 15.10.2022, Liblice
9:00-12:00 Scientific Authority and Gender
Moderation: Aleksei Lokhmatov
Evangelia Chordaki: Locating Science to Silence: Discussing Gender and Knowledge through the Politics of Silence
Katharina Kowalski: Between Intersectionality and “Authenticity” – On Developments and Epistemic Distinctions in the Feminist “Thought Style” during the Transformation Era in Poland
Darya Litvina/Anastasia Novkunskaya/Anna Temkina: “Sociologists in White”: Feminist Epistemologies in Medical Field
Berna Zengin Arslan: Claiming Epistemic Authority of Women in Science and Technology: Case Studies of Women Engineers in Turkey
13:00-15:00 Gendering Institutions
Moderation: Bernhard Kleeberg
Martyna Miernecka: “Work in Peace”. Gendered Practices in the Literary Institutions of Polish People’s Republic
Suzana Milevska: Do Archives Have a Gender?
Barbara Schnalzger: “Haunting the Ruler’s house” – Women’s and Lesbian Libraries and Archives as an Interface between Academia and Social Movement
15:30-17:30 Media of Truth
Moderation: Friedrich Cain
Ksenia Shmydkaya: Woman’s Metaphors and Universal Truths: On one Episode in Poland’s Interwar Intellectual Life
Juliane Tomann: Doing Gender in Historical Reenactment
Lisa Füchte: Who Put the Object in Objectivity? Gender and Visual History of Care Work in the Soviet Union
17:30-18:00 Conclusions
Concept and Organization
The research initiative Political Epistemologies of Central and Eastern Europe (PECEE) investigates modes of (self-)reflexivity in the history of the sciences and the humanities. Eastern, Central, and South-Eastern Europe have served as starting points to gain a perspective on the interconnectedness of historical theories, practices and figures of knowledge production – “epistemologies” – within their political environments. Thus, we aim to strengthen research in Historical Epistemology with a special focus on political implications, to radically situate historical theories of knowledge.
The conference is organised by the research initiative Political Epistemologies of Central and Eastern Europe (PECEE, for details see www.uni-erfurt.de/to/
