American Corner Innsbruck
Lecture by Mag.a Elisabeht Grabner-Niel and Dr.in Kordula Schnegg
Gender, Culture and Social Change -
Interdisciplinary MA Program at the University of Innsbruck
Wednesday, 15 December, 7.00 p.m. Room 4U102a (GeiWi building, basement)
The American Corner welcomed Mag.a Elisabeth Grabner-Niel and Dr.in Kordula Schnegg who presented the Interfacultary Master Program “Gender, Culture and Social Change.” Introducing the audience to the history of interdisciplinary gender study programs in Austria, with its beginning in Vienna in 2006, Elisabeth Grabner-Niel and Kordula Schnegg were proud to present the first Interfacultary Master Program for Gender Studies at the University of Innsbruck.
Established in the winter term 2010/11, the MA Program offers an interdisciplinary perspective on gender as a social structure category. It also seeks to analyze relations and intersections between gender and other social and cultural categories such as class, ethnicity, race, etc. Importantly, the program aims at combining gender studies with questions of social, cultural, economic, and educational politics, an itinerary unique in Austria. The integration of lectures and seminars from various faculties enables students to acquire skills and knowledge in different fields, such as political science and sociology, education and pedagogy, business administration, economics and statistics, philology and cultural studies, philosophy and history, law, and catholic theology.
The program consists of four compulsory foundation modules and offers nine different elective modules of which five have to be chosen. As Mag.a Grabner-Niel made clear on several occasions, the Master's program is aimed at graduate students (with a Bachelor's Degree) of various fields. In its first term, the new MA Program has already attracted a significant number of students and has caught international attention.
(text: Christof Diem and Martina Netzer)
Abstract
Gender is a social category that deeply structures all aspects of our lives and our world. This is especially true for globalization, migration and social change as significant features of our current society. It is only in combining and interrelating different scientific perspectives that gender issues can be understood in a comprehensive way - gender studies are necessarily interdisciplinary.
The new Master program Gender, Culture and Social Change, which combines scientific knowledge from seven faculties, provides training in the multi- and interdisciplinary gender analysis of human society with the focus
on globalization and migration. Its aim is to acquire the necessary skills and competences in the fields of interculturality, difference/s, diversity and development politics with a systematic view on gender analysis.
Mag.a Elisabeth Grabner-Niel pursued feminist studies at Rosa Mayreder College Vienna. She works in the Office for Equal Opportunity Issues and Gender Studies at the University of Innsbruck and is the coordinator
of the Interfacultary Master Program “Gender, Culture and Social Change.”
Dr.in Kordula Schnegg is university assistant for Ancient History and program manager of the MA “Gender,
Culture and Social Change.”
