Cluster of Excellence SCRIPTS: Maximilian Klose and Tobias Klee (Web)

Zeit: 03.02.2022
Ort: Berlin
Einrichfrist: 31.10.2021

The Research Unit Borders of the Cluster of Excellence „SCRIPTS – Contestations of the Liberal Script“ at Freie Universität Berlin invites applicants for a workshop that seeks to investigate the role of gender in both the expansion and contestation of imperial power.

Political and military leaders in empires across the globe have resorted to gendered rhetoric and demeanor in an effort to increase and find recognition for their power at home and abroad. Often supported by actors in media, science, or business, they have employed discourses of dominance and suppression, manliness and effeminacy to legitimize their conduct towards their local subjects, colonial populations, and foreign governments. Individual actors or groups from within or without empire have in turn shaped or contested imperial power by questioning imposed gender ideals and hierarchies. The period between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries experienced rapid global colonial expansion, industrial advancement, the eventual decline of western monarchies and the rise of both democratic and totalitarian political movements. During this period, issues of scientific racism and social Darwinism, the corrosion of class hierarchies, technological innovation, and political (in)equality came to inform the dynamic relationship between gender and imperial power.

The aim of the workshop is to analyze the multifaceted ways in which both powerful and disempowered actors employed gender in the context of the rise, decline, territorial expansion, and ideological legitimacy of imperial rule. For this purpose, we invite early-career and senior scholars working on the history of both western and non-western empires. Issues of investigation can include diplomatic, economic, social and cultural encounters with others, and on the role of both state and non-state actors in shaping the nexus of gender and imperialism. Read more and source … (Web)