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Image Call for Contributions: Queer STS Forum #9: Queer-Feminist Solidarities in Times of Social and Political Turbulences

Published on by Birgit Hofstätter

Editors: Birgit Hofstätter & Anita Thaler

In recent years queer-feminist communities have been established as places of comfort and empowerment. At the same time we have had to witness social and political setbacks when it comes to the rights of women* and LGBTIQA*. We experience and/or observe hostile environments – particularly in the online, more anonymous dimensions of society. Even in greater feminist contexts we are confronted with movements excluding vulnerable groups from their aspirations or even rallying against minorities (such as trans persons).

However, we see, hear about and participate in queer-feminist activities of kindness, love and solidarity in so many different contexts, from bicycle clubs, upcycling and repair shops, community gardens, cold swimming societies, book clubs, nature walks, crochet projects to fermenting experiments or coding collectives.

In this year’s Queer STS Forum, we are entirely open in regard to the thematic context and focus on the importance of queer-feminist solidarities across communities and movements. We look forward to contributions on e.g.

  • how to stand up together against antifeminist, anti-LGBTIQA* movements and bashing of ‘rainbow topics’ etc.,
  • how to join forces and overcoming differences,
  • initiatives in support of each other,
  • joint activism against hate speech and discrimination (e.g. bodyshaming),
  • and collect examples of initiative and projects, which aim on kindness, love and solidarity in times of social and political turbulences.

We are interested in a variety of practical, artistical, and academic contributions on queer-feminist solidarities, and so we want to provide two concrete ways of participating in our multi-media open access publication Queer STS Forum #9/2024:

  1. We invite research papers and creative formats using audios, videos, images, texts – to illuminate and reflect ideas, experiences and actions of queer-feminist solidarities. These contributions tell/show stories and share experience, which can inspire and/or offer learning potential.
  2. Additionally, we want to highlight initiatives, communities and projects, which cherish and practice queer-feminist solidarity. These contributions aim at telling interested people about your initiative/project/event. We will provide space to highlight and feature these queer-feminist solidarities in our Forum.
    Please send abstracts describing your idea in 1000 to 2500 signs (blanks included) until April 20th to .

Time schedule for issue #9 in 2024

  • Call for contributions: March 20th 2024
  • Deadline for submitting abstracts: April 20th
  • Feedback on your abstracts: April 30th
  • Submission of first full version of contributions: June15th
  • Review feedback: August 30th
  • Submission final version of contribution: September 30th
  • Planned date of publication: November-December 2024

 

Call for Contributions Queer STS Forum #8: Queer-Feminist Inclusion and Visibility

Published on by Julian Anslinger

Call for Contributions: Queer STS Forum #8: Queer-Feminist Inclusion and Visibility – Overcoming Stories of Exclusion and Invisibility in Science, Education and Technology

Editors: Jenny Schlager & Anita Thaler

In our last Forum #7 we opened a discourse around “academic kindness” as queer-feminist intervention in contemporary violent and hierarchical working cultures and actualization of a feminist ethics of care. By looking closer at different levels of application of academic kindness, in pedagogical settings and research practices, we stumbled upon the notion of inclusion, and wondered why even in equity driven settings (non-)human actors are excluded. 

Noticing practices of exclusion and making (non-)humans invisible, we find that especially now in time of multiple crises, we need to overcome traditional dichotomies and the delegitimization of certain forms of knowledges. We need to change our discourses of socio-eco-technological transformation by telling stories together and valuing situated knowledges (Haraway 2016; Rohracher 2022).

And we have so many questions and points of discussion: How inclusive are participatory research projects actually? How can we reach out to vulnerable groups in our communities in citizen science activities? How can we overcome boundaries and limitations and be truly welcoming in our educational settings? How can we overcome learning practices, which cultivate “epistemological assimilation” and move towards “epistemic diversity” (McNeill et al. 2022)? How can we offer save spaces and brave spaces (Arao & Clemens 2013) for LGBTQIA+? Which roles play architecture, infrastructure and technologies (Boys 2022)? How can we engage in multispecies activities (Haraway 2016; Petitt & Brandt-Off 2022)? In other words: How can we overcome stories of invisibility (Leyva et al. 2022)?

We are not the first ones asking these questions. We know that there is a lot of valuable knowledge and practical experience in the world already. Therefore, we invite our queer STS community and friends to combine these questions, maybe think even further, and acknowledge previous work: What can we learn from disability studies, from critical race scholars and practitioners working inclusively for decades and helping us with our vision of a queer-inclusive science and technology? What can we learn from feminists and artists thinking and doing museums queer inclusively (Grácio et al. 2020)? What can we learn from multispecies ethnographers working on multispecies communities of social learning (Petitt & Brandt-Off 2022)? What can we learn from educators who broaden up participation in STEM fields among students minoritized by race, gender, and/or sexuality (McNeill et al. 2022)?

We are explicitly interested in practical and empirical implementations of queer-feminist inclusion and visibility. How can it actually look like, how can it be done? We invite contributions from research papers to creative formats using audios, videos, images, texts – to illuminate and share queer-feminist inclusive ideas and experiences in science, education and technology for a multi-media open access publication opportunity in our Queer STS Forum #8/2023.

Please send abstracts describing your idea in 1000 to 2500 signs (blanks included) until April 3rd to .

Time schedule for issue #8 in 2023

  • Call for contributions: March 2023
  • Deadline for submitting abstracts: April 3rd
  • Feedback on your abstracts: April 14th
  • Submission of first full version of contributions: May 31st
  • Review feedback: August 31st
  • Submission final version of contribution: October 1st
  • Planned date of publication: November-December 2023

Image Our Queer STS Forum #6 is out: Queer interventions

Published on by Anita Thaler

In our first issue of the Queer STS Forum we reflected on our queer approach to Science, Technology and Society Studies (STS). We shared how we often find ourselves intervening in meetings, in our social media activities, in our university courses, during conferences, and when we do research. Most of the time, the main topics we deal with do not directly relate to queer studies, but in a wider sense to queer thinking and issues of social justice. Simply by asking ‘queer questions’[1] and thinking in alternatives, we irritate colleagues, we intervene in our classes or during conferences, and we interact with (and thereby learn from) like-minded people.

In the 2021 edition of Queer STS Forum we now invited colleagues, queer scholars and activists from radio shows to museums to share theirexperiences of queer interventions, if you want to print out the whole Queer STS Forum #6 as pdf, here you go.

We want to explicitly thank all our wonderful contributors, who shared their knowledge, their creativity and their time to make this 6th issue happen.

Enjoy!

Birgit, Lisa & Anita

[1] „In general, by adopting a queer perspective, we have to reflect on the ways we, as researchers, contribute to the reproduction of e.g. gender as a binary and the heterosexual norm. We have to identify hegemonic discourses in our field of research and critically question in which ways they exclude or marginalize perspectives. We have to revise our methodology and the assumptions we base our interpretations of data on. One example for these efforts is that in some cases we shifted our focus from gender as a category of differentiation and tried to find other explanations for the phenomenon at hand. This way we could avoid the reproduction of gender stereotypes and conclusions being drawn on basis of heteronormativity.“ (Hofstätter 2012, p. 4)

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon from Pexels

Call for contributions – Queer STS Forum Issue #5: Queer-feminist issues in pandemic times

Published on by Julian Anslinger

The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic changed our professional and private lives suddenly and immensely. The notion of relevance (“e.g. jobs relevant for the system”) shifted, care-work and privileges became very visible. Some hoped that lock-down measures – to “flatten the curve” of infections – will lead to a higher appreciation of paid and unpaid labour of care and corrode its inherent gender inequalities.
However, inequities in our societies have not magically vanished, we learned that gender violence might occur at even higher levels in forced quarantine and many women* experienced a re-traditionalization of gender roles in their homes. Social inequality also plays out in terms of access to education and work through technology and internet, and possibilities of digitized kin making. How has the pandemic affected you and your communit(ies)? What are your observations of social change occurring? What has remained consistent – if anything – and what are new possibilities that have opened up?

We are seeking for contributions – audios, videos, images, texts – to illuminate and share queer-feminist experiences of these pandemic times. We are explicitly interested in intersectional analyses and experiences from different living contexts and geographical areas
Please send us abstracts describing your idea in 2000 to 2500 signs (blanks included) until July 20th to .

Time schedule for issue #5 in 2020
Call for contributions: June 18th
Deadline for submitting abstracts: July 20th
Feedback on your abstracts: July 31st
Submission of first full version of contribution: August 31st
Review feedback: September 18th
Submission final version of contribution: October 30th
Planned date of publication: November 30th

 

Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

Queer STS Forum Issue #3 is here!

Published on by Daniela Jauk

While 2018 takes its last breath, we present the third edition of our Queer-Feminist Science and Technology Studies Forum, in which we aimed at ‘queering diversity’ and searched for the queer and the class in academia and research. Our idea behind this issue was to take a closer look at the – supposed – gap between diversity policies and actual practices.

We have four exciting contributions: Claudia Chiang-Lopez from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, critically discusses the various hegemonic interpretations of students leaving/being pushed out of secondary and tertiary education. Daniela Zanini-Freitag, member of our Queer STS working group, held with Jay Pongruengphant, the current UNDP national officer on Governance, Human Rights and LGBTI of the Being LGBTI in Asia programme. Tessa Leach critically examines the sexbot inherent conflict of neoliberal commodification of women’s bodies and the fear of objectification and violence of some feminist discourses and is also a teaser for next year’s fourth issue of our Queer STS Forum which will be discussing “Queer-feminist perspectives on sex robots” (CfP here!).The fourth and final contribution is a conversational interview between Daniela Jauk, co-editor and member of our Queer STS working group and Reni Hofmüller who is a multidimensional queer-feminist artist, art organizer, media maker, DIY tech activist, educator, and so much more.

Enjoy and happy, queer-feminist 2019!

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Workshop “‚Bodies & Technologies’ – Queere Perspektiven auf Körper und Technologien”, 6.9.2018 in Graz

Published on by Anita Thaler

Im Rahmen eine Serie von Workshops anlässlich des 30. Geburtstags des IFZ (www.ifz.at) veranstalten wir einen zum Thema:

„‚Bodies & Technologies’ – Queere Perspektiven auf Körper und Technologien“.

Zeit und Ort: Donnerstag, 6. September 2018, 17-20 Uhr, IFZ, Schlögelgasse 2, 2. Stock, 8010 Graz

In diesem Workshop wollen wir zentrale Forschungsinteressen der Arbeitsgruppe Queer STS in den Mittelpunkt stellen. Im ursprünglichen Sinn bezieht sich die Idee hinter dem Begriff ‚queer‘ u.a. auf die Kritik an heteronormativen Wertvorstellungen und an einer binären, dichotomen Geschlechterordnung. Eine ‚queere Perspektive‘ versucht aber auch generell Norm(ierung)en, Standardisierungen und Kategori(sierung)en zu hinterfragen. Normierungen und Kategorisierungen gehören im alltäglichen Leben zwar zu den Mechanismen erfolgreicher psychologischer Komplexitätsreduktion und im wissen­schaft­lichen sowie technologischen Bereich dienen sie dazu, Prozesse nachvollziehbar und vergleichbar zu machen. Immer dann jedoch, wenn solche Normsetzungen Menschen betreffen (z. B. deren Körper, deren Leistungsvermögen, deren Einstellungen etc.), können Stigmatisierung, Diskriminierung und Ausschlüsse als negative Folgen beobachtet werden.

In diesem Workshop laden wir Interessierte ein, ihre Erfahrungen und Konzeptionen (aus Forschung, Kunst, Praxis …) auf „Körper“ und „Technologien“ einzubringen und für uns be-greif-bar zu machen. Alle Teilnehmenden haben 3-5 Min. Zeit für ihren individuellen Input/ihre Performance zu ‚Bodies & Technologies‘, in weiterer Folge moderieren Anita Thaler (IFZ Graz, AG Queer STS) und Lisa Scheer (Uni Graz, AG Queer STS) den Workshop, in dem es vor allem um das sich Kennenlernen, voneinander Lernen und gemeinsame Interessen Entdecken geht.

Es gibt Zeit und Kulinarisches, um miteinander ins Gespräch kommen und zu netzwerken!
Da wir für diese Veranstaltung nur eine begrenzte Anzahl an Plätzen zur Verfügung haben, bitten wir euch/Sie, euch/sich bis spätestens 24. August 2018 verbindlich und mit dem Titel deines/ihres Beitrags per mail anzumelden:

Wir freuen uns auf euer/Ihr Kommen!                                                                                      Anita & Lisa

Queer STS Forum #3: Call for Contributions

Published on by Anita Thaler

“Queering Diversity” – In Search of the Queer and the Class in Academia and Research

Within the Bologna Process “making our [European higher education] systems more inclusive” is one of the latest main goals, as it was formulated by the ministers of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in the Yerevan Communiqué of 2015. Despite efforts to create universities as more open by diversifying students and faculty, academia is still a place of “homosocial reproduction” (Kanter 1977; Möller 2014). The commercial space of technology and engineering also promises remarkable social mobility opportunities for “diverse” individuals (ie. working class, rural, ethnically diverse, queer, etc.), yet these are not kept when examining actual workforce composition. Vivianne Castello put this reality bluntely in her article “Why Most Conversations in Tech About Diversity Are Bullshit — and What to Do About It“.

Intersectionality theory became a great tool to theoretically dissect mono-dimensional shortcomings of diversity efforts, yet Bilge (2013) analyzes how a specific form of academic feminism in tune with the neoliberal knowledge economy works to “depoliticize intersectionality,” neutralizing the critical potential of intersectionality and stripping it from its important power-reflexive analytical potential. Same applies to “diversity studies” which is being translated into managerial voice and then becomes a means to increase profit by and to work more effectively on multinational and multicultural projects, rather than to critically reflect biases and work environments. Class is often completely left out of these conversations. For academia Warnock (2016) describes stereotypes and micro-aggressions working class academics encounter and how their struggling to pass in a middle-class culture leads more and more to increased precarious job situations.

In this issue of Queer STS Forum we seek to unmask shallow applications of diversity in academia, research, and innovation and detach it from the ‘wellness-marketing-corner’ of tech corporations by bringing the question of power into focus: Where specifically is class and queerness in queer and intersectional Science and Technology Studies? We are looking for work that centers power issues and dares to speak about working class identities and advanced discrimination (Dressel et al 1994) lying within production systems of knowledge.

We invite contributions in English that may take experimental forms. In addition to academic journal articles and interviews, we can accommodate video-contributions as well as other multimedia essays and visualizations, since this is an open access online journal.

References
Bilge, Sirma. (2013). “Intersectionality Undone: Saving Intersectionality from Feminist Intersectional Studies.” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race. Special Issue: “Intersectionality: Mapping the Movements of a Theory. Vol.10, Issue 02, p. 405-424.
Castello, Vivianne (2017). “Why Most Conversations in Tech About Diversity Are Bullshit — and What to Do About It”. UX Collective, May 7, 2017.
Dressel, Paula, Weston Hartfield, Bernadette, Gooley, Ruby L. (1994). The Dynamics of Homosocial Reproduction in Academic Institutions. In: Journal of Gender and the Law, Vol 2:37., p. 37-62.
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss (1977) Men and Women of the Corporation. New York: BasicBooks.
Möller, Christina (2014). Als Arbeiterkind zur Professur? – Wissenschaftliche Karrieren und soziale Herkunft. Download: https://www.academics.at/wissenschaft/als-arbeiterkind-zur-professur_57198.html [29-9-2016].
Warnock Deborah M. (2016). Paradise Lost? Patterns and Precarity in Working-Class Academic Narratives. In: Journal of Working-Class Studies Volume 1 Issue 1, December 2016.p.28-44.

Timeline
• Please send an abstract of your idea (250 words) until April 6, 2018 to anita.thaler’at’queersts.com
• Feedback/acceptance letters by May 1, 2018
• Contributions submitted until June 30, 2018
• Publication online December 31, 2018

Editorial Team
Daniela Jauk
Lisa Scheer
Anita Thaler

 

Photo: © Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons) edited by J.A.