What is the Travelling Concepts working group 1A?

Travelling Concepts in Feminist Pedagogy: European Perspectives’ is one of the projects that originated under the umbrella of Athena, which is a Socrates Thematic Network Project. There are three subgroups in Travelling Concepts:

Interculturality, Interdisciplinarity and Selves

Our activities include:

• Practice collaborative teaching across disciplines, cultures and languages
• Engage a gendered articulation of issues of migration, race, multiculturality, globalization, diversity, citizenship, academic exclusion and canonization of feminist studies, community building, and knowledge production
• Develop teaching materials and units
• Disseminate products through translations into languages other than English
• Theorise collaborative practices for publications

What is meant by ‘travelling concepts’?

This is the recognition that ideas or ‘concepts’ alter their meaning depending on where they are used and by whom. It is these differences that we are interested in highlighting and discussing. We believe this work is crucial for the continued development of feminist research and teaching, because without such attention feminism will only represent ideas from dominant cultures, with other perspectives being ‘added on’ without affecting the core concept. We have focused on thirty-three concepts, from notions of migration to theories of identity or care. These concepts are all situated, by one or more of our writers, in a home country or discipline. Their ideas therefore take on an everyday and located meaning that shifts between boundaries and challenges any easy ‘definition’.

What has the Travelling Concepts Group done thus far?

Along with many seminars and teaching events, the group has created an interactive website and published a series of booklets:

http://www.travellingconcepts.net/

WELCOME TO TRAVELLING CONCEPTS IN FEMINIST PEDAGOGY

We invite you to explore and develop contemporary feminist ideas with us.

This site represents work on key concepts used in feminist teaching and learning by the group ‘Travelling Concepts’, which was part of Athena 2 thematic network in women’s studies.

The material you’ll find on the site is the work of 26 feminists from fourteen European locations.

Collaborative projects:

Publication of ONE SERIES:

FOUR BOOKS:

• Teaching Subjects In Between: Feminist Politics, Disciplines, Generations
• Common Passion, Different Voices: Reflections on Citizenship and Intersubjectivity
• Practising Interdisciplinarity in Gender Studies
• ReSisters in Conversation: Representation Responsibility Complexity Pedagogy

TWENTY-TWO AUTHORS: from fourteen different countries

MANY IDEAS:

Each book is written by a different group of academics from across Europe. They have one thing in common: a passionate interest in teaching and feminist politics. Building on this, the authors address specific issues generated by the national and disciplinary boundaries of women’s and gender studies. Using varied collaborative methods they highlight the tensions, pleasures and responsibilities of developing an effective and radical feminist pedagogy that attempts to be truly European.

Travelling Concepts in Feminist Pedagogy: European Perspectives

http://www.rawnervebooks.co.uk/travellingconcepts.html