The Centre for Gender Studies, European Humanities Univ. (Lithuania), Almira Ousmanova, Tania Arcimovich (Erfurt Univ., Germany), Olga Plakhotnik (Univ. Greifswald), and Antonina Stebur (Women in Tech program, EHU , Univ. der Künste Berlin)

Time: 14.-15.05.2025
Venue: Univ. Vilnius – and virtual space
Proposals by: 01.02.2025

The conference focuses on the socio-political dimensions of emotions, examining how they are deeply embedded within the interplay of gender, technology, and capital. Emotions are not neutral; they are shaped by political, economic, and social contexts, influencing how we re/act, on our ability to co-operate, solidarize, or atomise. Drawing on capital theory, we explore how different forms of individual capital—financial, human, emotional, symbolic, social, and others—impact emotional and gender perspectives. The triad of ‚gender, technologies, and capital‘ is central and interdependent, forming complex dynamics.
The concept of emotional capitalism—a dual process in which emotional and economic systems influence each other, particularly within gendered labour and the IT industry—plays a significant role here. Emotional capital is often built upon gendered expectations, rendering emotions a site of exploitation and productivity, and making technologies tools for perpetuating gendered inequality and injustice. Exploring these complex dynamics—between the emancipatory potential and the exploitation of technologies—the conference will investigate how emotions, capital, and gender interact within technological contexts. It will also examine feminist theories that frame emotions as tools for resistance and collective agency.
Following Judy Wajcman’s perspective, the organisers view technology as both a cause and a consequence of gender relationships. They invite scholars from different fields and disciplines (gender studies, sociology, history, anthropology, cultural studies, law, media studies, art and others) with various theoretical perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches to reflect on the following topics: Read more and source … (Web)

Mariann Steegmann Institut. Kunst & Gender (Bremen), netzwerk mode textil e.V. und FB Gestaltung/Modedesign – Hochschule Trier; Christiane Keim, Astrid Silvia Schönhagen, Barbara Schrödl und Christina Threuter (Web)

Zeit: 11.-12.04.2025
Ort: Hochschule Trier – und virtueller Raum
Einreichfrist: 18.01.2025

Mode spielt seit langer Zeit auf vielfältige Weise eine wichtige Rolle in den Beziehungen zwischen Mensch und Hund. Aktuell wird der Hund von einer immer einflussreicher werdenden Industrie, die sich auf das vermeintliche Wohl des liebsten Heimtiers konzentriert, als Wirtschaftsfaktor in den Blick gerückt. Stetig werden neue Lifestyle-Produkte auf den Markt gebracht, für die viele Hundehalter:innen keine Kosten und Mühen scheuen: Insbesondere für Hundekleidung und -schmuck, aber auch für spezielle Spielzeuge und Möbel gibt es einen wachsenden Markt. Gleichzeitig werden die Verflechtungen zwischen dieser sogenannten Pet Economy und der Modeindustrie zunehmend medial aufgegriffen: Kommerzielle Modestrecken oder Home-Stories von Celebrities, Schauspieler:innen sowie Popstars inszenieren Mensch und Hund etwa als modeästhetisch aufeinander abgestimmte Teams.
Dass Hunde integraler Bestandteil des Selffashioning von gesellschaftlichen Trendsetter:innen oder avantgardistischen Kreisen sind und waren, davon zeugen auch Darstellungen vergangener Epochen (z.B. in der Bildenden Kunst, der Fotografie oder dem Film). Darunter befinden sich auffallend viele (Selbst-)Porträts von Künstler:innen. Die Bedeutung der Mode bzw. des Modischen für das mensch-hundliche Verhältnis ist also keineswegs ein neues Phänomen, vielmehr war es über Jahrhunderte hinweg integraler Bestandteil dieser besonderen Form der Beziehung. Das betrifft sowohl die Vorliebe für bestimmte Züchtungen als auch die vestimentäre Ausstattung bzw. Bekleidung der Tiere. Der Hund als Partner:in, als Familienmitglied, als Statussymbol oder als Erkennungszeichen (Signifier) spezifischer Gruppen und Gemeinschaften, wie beispielsweise queerer Communities, scheint wie kein anderes Heimtier prädestiniert dafür, diese mensch-hundlichen Beziehungen visuell zum Ausdruck zu bringen. Stil, Farbe und Material der Mode für den Hund sind dabei ebenso geschlechtlich konnotiert wie die verschiedenen Züchtungen bzw. das körperliche Erscheinungsbild der Tiere im Allgemeinen. Darüber hinaus avancierten im Laufe der Kulturgeschichte verschiedene Züchtungen – man denke etwa an den Mops oder den Foxterrier – zu sogenannten Modehunden. Die angesagten Züchtungen unterlagen dabei ebenso wie die Mode einem permanenten Wechsel. Weiterlesen und Quelle … (Web)

Christopher Fletcher, Anaïs Albert, Julie Marfany, Marianne Thivend, and Valentina Toneatto (Univ. de Paris-Cité)

Time: 19.-20.06.2025
Venue: Univ. de Paris-Cité
Proposals by: 06.01.2025

The control and use of money are clearly perceived as a gender issue in the present day. In France, the possibility for a married woman to open a savings account in her own name dates to 1881, to control her own salary to 1907, and the right open a current account to 1965: so many milestones on the road to emancipation. As a pessimistic counterpoint, in The Handmaid’s Tale, published in 1985, Margaret Atwood imagined a dystopian future in which the brutal suppression of access to money was the first marker of the enslavement of women. Historians, however, have not yet fully taken up this theme, which makes it difficult to understand developments over the long term and from a comparative perspective. Specialists in the literature have been more active, tracing, for example, the conceptual link between the corruption brought about by money and the corruption brought about by women. Women’s work, too, has been and still is a well-established theme in historical research. Yet money itself – its management and control, the way it can be used as a tool of domination or as a lever for action, the question of who owns it and who controls it – has rarely been posed as an independent long-term historical question. Although the question of gender and money has emerged peripherally in many fields of study, it has never been taken on as an issue in its own right.
One of the main reasons for this relative neglect is the difficulty of defining what money is over a very long period and in a wide variety of historical societies. This polysemous term refers both to wealth (income and assets, in stock or in flow, which can be accounted for abstractly through accounts, tables or balance sheets) and to the materiality of money in circulation (cash, coins and banknotes, as well as the alternative currencies studied, for example, by the sociologist Viviana Zelizer). Sociologists and anthropologists have helped to distinguish money – which is a social, political and moral fact – from currency, a more limited concept used in economics to designate the instrument of exchange. Money encompasses, but is not limited to, cash, because it takes on its meaning through the prism of the social context, but also of affects, values, mores, beliefs, the collective imagination and, more generally, the symbolic order that underpins them (Baumann et alii, 2008). This definition invites us to look at the gendered aspects of relationships with money: money is a concrete means of ensuring masculine domination, but it can also be a tool used by women to create room for manoeuvre. This broad understanding of money is also a welcome invitation to historians: highly variable from one era to the next, money becomes a powerful indicator of gender norms and social relations between men and women. Read more and source … (Web)