Who Is Afraid of Gender?: Identitarianism in Service of State Power
December 4th–5th, 2025, Melk, Austria
Gästehaus Benediktinerstift Melk
Organization: Katerina Koci, University of Vienna
Call for Papers
The intensifying political and cultural battles surrounding “gender” have transformed what was once primarily an academic concept into a potent symbolic battleground in contemporary politics. This Fachtagung examines how the term “gender” has been weaponized in political discourse across multiple national contexts, with particular attention to recent developments in the United States and the longer trajectory of anti-gender movements in Central and Eastern Europe.
This Fachtagung invites interdisciplinary contributions that analyze these developments through multiple lenses: political science, theology, religious studies, sociology, history, and media studies. We seek papers that address key questions:
What explains the extraordinary symbolic power of “gender” in contemporary political discourse?
How do we assess the claims that gender research threatens social cohesion and national stability? What evidence exists for such assertions?
To what extent do anti-gender campaigns serve as proxies for broader political agendas related to nationalism, religious authority, or democratic backsliding?
What are the material consequences of these campaigns for academic freedom, knowledge production, and transnational scholarly networks?
How do religious actors and institutions position themselves within these debates?
By bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives, this workshop aims to develop a more nuanced understanding of how gender functions as both target and instrument in contemporary political strategy, and what this reveals about the changing relationship between knowledge, power, and identity in the current moment.
Papers will be presented in German or English. The open discussion will be bilingual.
Please, submit your paper proposal including a short abstract no later than September 30, 2025 to katerina.koci@univie.ac.at