Dealing critically with knowledge together

“To enable academic debate in teaching, I have to deal with the fact that I often teach topics that question supposed certainties. When I meet students in a seminar room, we bring with us a variety of knowledge and experience. Some have experienced discrimination in connection with the issues we are discussing. Others have never dealt with them before. Nevertheless, everyone is affected in one form; everyone in our society is assigned to a gender for example and has to behave accordingly.

In addition, gender is often perceived as natural. The opinions and feelings associated with this seem immovable. Academic study of the emergence of the modern gender order, for example, enables us to recognize that notions of gender have arisen in specific historical, political and social constellations and power relations.

We also deal with alternative perspectives that have always existed alongside the prevailing view, indigenous knowledge, subcultural practices and social movements such as those for women’s suffrage or against colonial rule. Through the reflective and critical use of knowledge that we practice together in teaching, students acquire a fundamental ability to think academically beyond the topics of gender studies.”