| Issues of gender and corporeality have taken root in every discipline housed at the university. As fields of study that cross through the sciences and humanities they are exemplary of the state of interdisciplinary work. Since the close of the Belle van Zuylen Research Institute for the Multicultural and Comparative Gender Studies, the Universiteit van Amsterdam has scattered scholars of gender. ASCA has often brought these far-flung researchers together in the theory seminar where feminist perspectives in anthropology, visual culture, postcoloniality etc. are regularly highlighted. In this context, gender as it relates to corporeality is one axis of inquiry where an interdisciplinary trajectory is necessitated and deliberated. As such, embodiment and gender has a bearing on nearly every cultural object, forming diverse and widespread analyses in ASCA s research. This project began as an investigation of corporeal literacy under Maaike Bleeker's NWO project See Me, Feel Me, Think Me: The Body of Semiotics that productively brought together scholars from performance studies, art history and gender studies, among other fields. With an expanded aim, Theorizing Bodies and Genders is currently an umbrella project that will function as a meeting point for researchers of various levels that approach the issue of gender and/or the body in their work. As such, it seeks to foster critical engagement with the full range of approaches that inform contemporary body and gender theory, such as feminism, phenomenology, semiotics, and performativity. Scholars are welcome from all areas of disciplinary interaction (e.g. film and media, art history, literature, music, theatre, anthropology, the sciences). |
