SKY Masterclasses 2024

Topelia fountain park
Bulletin 13.4.2021

This bulletin contains information on SKY Masterclasses during the academic year 2024. The bulletin is updated with new course information regularly. Information on courses is published in the primary language of the course. If you have questions on SKY Courses, please contact the doctoral programme's planning officer Lauri Turpeinen (lauri.turpeinen@helsinki.fi).

See also our archive of past SKY Masterclasses 2014-2023.

 

SKY Masterclass: Transformative Approaches in Queer, Trans and Feminist Activism and Research  

Organizer: University of Helsinki Doctoral Program in Gender, Culture and Society (SKY) 

Time and place: Monday 22 and Wednesday 24, January 2024, time 11:00-15:00. City center campus. As part of the course SKY Christina Research Seminar lecture by Natalie Kouri-Towe will take place on Tuesday January 23, 16:15-17:45, 2024 

Course teachers: Dr. Natalie Kouri-Towe, Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University (Montreal Quebec) and Dr. Elina Penttinen, Gender Studies, University of Helsinki 

Credits: 5 ECTS 

Codes:  SKY-918, SKY-919, SKY-921

Deadline for student papers: January 12, 2024 (You are welcome to submit the paper before Christmas holidays)  

Synopsis: This SKY Masterclass examines the possibilities around community building under the conditions of rising right-wing populist movements. Moving from a focus on the individual to the collective, the course will examine how the challenges of building and acting in solidarity have coincided with an increasing focus on a politics of the self; wherein the language of self-care, self-identification, accountability, and boundaries come to define new political discourses in recent years. Considering how the politics of the self and self-care can be both the basis of solidarity, and the condition that makes solidarity difficult, we invite participants to reflect on the role of power and ideology across their research interests to interrogate how transformation is supported or undermined. The course will look at concepts such as transformative justice, care, mutual aid, and solidarity to understand how and why collective organizing and responses take shape. The goal of the course is to help identify how related conceptual frameworks from feminist and queer theory, trans studies, and theories around social and transformative justice can be applicable to their own work.  

Course structure and requirements 

The course will be structured around a small number of readings as prompts for discussion, and collaborative discussions around how the above themes and topics emerge in relation the participants’ own research. Participating students present their own research, get detailed comments, and discuss research strategies with the course teachers. 

Prior to course: 

  1. 3000-5000 word paper part of the doctoral thesis, to be presented during the SKY Masterclass. Papers due January 12, 2024 and will be submitted on the Moodle platform.  
  2. Reading other PhD students’ pre-delivered materials.  
  3. Familiarizing oneself with the reading list of recommended literature that will be sent to the participants upon the acceptance.  

During the course:  

  1. Attending in person the full two-day workshop on 22nd and 24th January, 11-15:00. Attendance involves commenting other students’ papers and discussing one’s own project.  
  2. Attending Natalie Kouri-Towe’s lecture in the SKY Christina Research Seminar on Tuesday January 23, 16:15-17:45, 2024, either in person or online  

  ----------- 

Bio: Natalie Kouri-Towe is an Associate Professor and Program Director for the Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality program at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University, in Montreal, Quebec. Her research has been published in both academic and non-academic venues on topics related to affect theory, solidarity, kinship, queer activism, trigger warnings, gender and sexuality pedagogies, and masculinity in conditions of war in the Middle East. Her edited collection, Reading the Room: Lessons on Pedagogy and Curriculum from the Gender and Sexuality Studies Classroom, is under review with Concordia University Press, and she is currently working on a book manuscript on feminist and queer solidarity under neoliberalism.  

Bio: Elina Penttinen is Senior University lecturer and Director of Gender Studies Master’s program at University of Helsinki. Docent Elina Penttinen is a Senior University Lecturer in Gender Studies, University of Helsinki. She has published widely on gender and violence in the context of global political economy, global mobility and intimate partner violence. She is the co-author of Emotional Workplace abuse, a new research approach (2019), Gender and Mobility: a critical introduction (2017), and author of Joy and International Relations: a new methodology (2013) Routledge. Her areas of expertise in research and teaching are feminist methodology, gendered violence, creative analytic writing, and contemplative pedagogies.