Invitation to apply for Visiting Fellowships

Linkφping and Φrebro Universities, Sweden , are the base for the �Centre of Gender Excellence - Gendering Excellence (GEXcel): Towards a European Centre of Excellence in Transnational and Transdisciplinary Studies of Changing Gender Relations, Intersectionalities and Embodiment�. With support from the Swedish Research Council, GEXcel is carrying out new research and seeks to become the foundation for a more permanent Sweden-based European Collegium for Advanced Transnational and Transdisciplinary Gender Studies.

A Visiting Fellows Programme has been organized to attract scholars at different career stages from Sweden and abroad with a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, who will carry out thematically organized, joint gender research, under the direction of one of the 6 professors in Sweden who are responsible for the programme and working in collaboration with invited senior researchers.

In 2008-09, one of the research themes is �Deconstructing the Hegemony of Men and Masculinities� directed by Jeff Hearn, Professor of Gender Studies (Critical Studies on Men), Linkφping University. Positions for doctoral and postdoctoral researchers to participate in thematic research on Deconstructing the Hegemony of Men and Masculinities are now open for competition. Postdoctoral researchers may or may not have graduated recently.

Proposals are invited from doctoral students outside Sweden for five one-month fellowships (2-3 from September 2008; 2-3 in Spring 2009).
Fellowships include salary, housing stipend and travel to Sweden.

Proposals are invited from postdoctoral scholars (priority given to applicants from Europe, including Sweden) for two fellowships of up to 6 months� duration (one from September 2008; one in Spring 2008).
Applications for periods less than 6 months are also welcome.
Fellowships include salary, housing stipend and travel to Sweden.

It is also possible for successful doctoral and postdoctoral candidates to extend their stay at Linkφping with their own funding.

Proposals must include a current CV, an abstract of the proposed project, a description (maximum: 5 pages) of the project to be undertaken during the fellowship, and a short bibliography. Applicants should explain how the work will contribute to understanding at least one of the sub-themes (body/ageing/disability; transnationalisation;
virtuality/ICTs) of the Deconstructing the Hegemony of Men and Masculinities research theme (see detailed description at:
http://www.genderexcel.org/node/101).

Doctoral Candidates must include the name and contact information for their research supervisor(s). Postdoctoral applicants must also include two samples of their work (published or unpublished) on the topic in their application.

*All proposals and supporting materials should be submitted electronically to*:

Professor Jeff Hearn, GEXcel Research Theme 2 Director (jefhe@tema.liu.se )

A committee will evaluate all applications and select those who are successful, with the approval of the GEXcel Board.

*Application Deadlines*:

March 14 2008 for Autumn 2008 (Awards Announced in May 2008)

October 14 2008 for Spring 2009 (Awards Announced in November 2008)



/Theme 2: Theme-leader: Prof. Jeff Hearn/

*Deconstructing the Hegemony of Men and Masculinities: Contradictions of
Absence*

This research program approaches empirical inquiry and theorizing on gender relations, intersectionality and embodiment through a focus on hegemony in relation to men and masculinities. The place of both force and consent of men in patriarchies is illuminated by a concept like hegemony that can assist engagement with both material and discursive gender power relations. Recent conceptual and empirical uses of hegemony, as in �hegemonic masculinity� in the analysis of masculinities, have been subject to a variety of qualified critiques over the last 10 years or more (e.g. Hearn, 1996, 2004; Howson, 2006).
Instead this program examines shifts from masculinity to men, to focus on �the hegemony of men�. It addresses the double complexity that men are both a social category formed by the gender system and collective and individual agents, often dominant agents. It examines through textual (official, media) and material (organizational, private) data how the category �men� is used i n national and transnational gender systems. These uses are both intersectional and embodied in specific ways. Dominant uses of the social category of men have often been restricted by e.g. class, ethnicity/racialization and (hetero)sexuality; these issues have been explored in e.g. postcolonial and queer theory.
Less examined is the construction of the category of men in terms of assumptions about i) age, (dis)ability, ii) nationality/national context, and iii) bodily presence. This program examines how the hegemony of men is being (re)defined in relation to 3 intersectional, embodied arenas: in terms of older age, transnationalization and virtualization. These 3 aspects and �exclusions� are problematized as the focus of this program over the 5 years of GEXcel. In each case these are arenas that can be seen as forms of absent presence (Hearn 1998), by marginalization by age/death, disconnection from nation, and disembodiment respectively. Each of these presents reinforcement s, challenges and contradictions, to hegemonic categorizations of men.

(i) The Body, Older Men and Disability project: An under-explored area is the frequent exclusion of older men, men with certain disabilities and dying men from the category of �men�. (Older) Age is a contradictory source of power and disempowerment for men. This sub-theme links with qualitative/discursive doctoral research on older men and other ongoing research.

(ii) The Men of the World project: Transnationalization problematizes taken-for-granted national and organizational contexts, and thus men in those contexts in various ways, in. One main case here is transnational businessmen in large transnational corporations, but other relevant foci are possible. This builds on Hearn�s existing project: Men, Gender Relations and Transnational Organising, Organisations and Management on:
a) gender relations and gendered management processes in the large business companies, b) men�s gendered organizational practices in 6 European countries, and differential relations of national/supranational policy to the question of �men� and men�s organising �as men�.

(iii) The Virtual Men project: Virtualization processes present sites for contestations of hegemony in terms of bodily presence/absence of men. Building on existing research, the example is the positive, negative and contradictory effects of certain uses of ICTs upon men�s, and women�s, sexual citizenships, as men act as producers and consumers of virtuality, and are being represented and representing women in virtual media.

All these structural and agentic differentiations, with and without force, may suggest multiply differentiated (trans)patriarchies that are stable and changing, fixed and flexible. Charting the particular, changing forms of these rigidities and movements of and around the taken-for-granted social category of men may be a means of interrogating the possibility of the abolition of �men� as a significant social category of power.

/References/: * Hearn, Jeff Is masculinity dead? A critical account of the concepts of masculinity and masculinities, in M. Mac an Ghaill (ed.) Understanding Masculinities: Social Relations and Cultural Arenas Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1996, pp. 202-217 * Hearn, Jeff Theorizing men and men's theorizing: men�s discursive practices in theorizing men, Theory and Society, Vol. 27(6), 1998, pp. 781-816. * Hearn, Jeff From hegemonic masculinity to the hegemony of men, Feminist Theory, Vol. 5(1), 2004, pp. 49-72. At:
http://fty.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/5/1/49 * Hearn, Jeff and Parkin, Wendy Gender, Sexuality and Violence in Organizations: the Unspoken Forces of Organization Violations, Sage, London, 2001. * Hearn, Jeff and Pringle, Keith European Perspectives on Men and Masculinities: National and Transnational Approaches, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2006. * Howson, Richard Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity, Routledge, London , 2005. * Zalewski, Marysia and Palpart, Jane (eds.) (1998) The �Man� Question in International Relations, Westview Press, Oxford.

*Professors Directing Project*

* Anita Gφransson is Professor of Gender Studies with special reference to economic change and organizations. She is an economic and social historian and has done extensive work on an inter- and transdisciplinary basis. Her general research interest is how the gender order and other social hierarchies affect and interact with the formation of societies and their power orders. She has worked with extensive empirical materials and used the results in developing a theoretical approach that combines poststructural and materialist elements and stresses the analytically primary role of masculinity. Her dissertation studied the transition from the household-based to the market-based society and how the old gender order affected the transformation of society in the 19th century. She has also done work on the modern labour market, on social stratification in history and today, and on the role of kinship and other networks, as well as on gender theory. Her most recent research focuses on the Swedish power elite and how different combinations of class, gender and ethnicity affect a person�s access to power in various social fields.

* Jeff Hearn is Professor of Gender Studies, with special reference to Critical Studies on Men. He has a background in geography, urban planning, sociology, social policy and organization studies, leading onto inter- and transdisciplinary gender researches, including studies and collaborations with law, history, social psychology and medical science/gerontology. His doctoral dissertation examined social planning and social theory, with special emphasis on patriarchy theories. He has researched and published books on such areas as sexuality in workplaces, gender and oppression, children and child abuse, information society, men�s violence to women, late 19th century socio-economic change, social welfare, consumption and cultural studies, political change, management, business, European comparative studies - with a focus on empirical inquiry and intersectional theorizing.

* Anna G. Jσnasdσttir is Professor of Gender Studies. Her background is in political science, sociology, economic history and psychology with social and political theory as the main field of interest. Her doctoral dissertation developed a novel approach to feminist theory of patriarchy in which she sketches three distinct but related theories: an alternative way of using historical materialism for feminist aims; a historically specific explanatory theory of contemporary patriarchy in Western societies; and a theory of gendered interests which establishes a theoretical space that allows for both common concerns and different needs and preferences. Patriarchy is theorized in terms of how love as sociosexual practices is politically organized and love power exploited.
Later she has elaborated further some of the main arguments of her thesis and she has published books and articles on ongoing international feminist theory debates, governance and gender equality politics in Sweden, and feminist theory and research in Nordic countries.

* Nina Lykke is Professor of Gender Studies with special reference to Gender and Culture. From a background within literary theory and cultural studies, she has devoted her academic career to the field of
inter- and transdisciplinary gender research. This has led her to an outspoken interest in feminist theory and epistemologies. Her doctoral dissertation developed a new feminist-marxist-psychoanalytical conceptual framework for analysis of embodied subjectivities and sexualities, based on literary material. In recent years, she has researched and published books and articles on feminist cultural studies of technoscience and studied relationships of sex/gender, bodies, nature, animals, science and technologies in a transnational and cultural perspective. Another current research focus is theorizing of diversity and difference in gender studies through genealogical explorations of conceptualizations of intersectionality and their reflections in feminist theorizing.

* Christine Roman is Professor of Sociology. A main area of research is continuity and change in gender relations in work and family. Her doctoral dissertation, which examines gendering processes in the so-called new economy, addresses questions concerning relations between working life and family life, as well as intersections between class and gender. She has conducted several studies within this research field, including in-depth studies of negotiations between heterosexual couples, studies of the interplay between the social sciences and family policy, and studies on feminist theory on intimate relations. Another of her research interests is social movements, with a focus on how redistribution and recognition claims are balanced, both vis-ΰ-vis the state and vis-ΰ-vis groups within movements, i.e. how major social divisions such as gender, sexuality, disability, and ethnicity intersect in claims for social justice.

* Barbro Wijma is Professor of Gender and Medicine, a medical doctor with gynaecology as her area of specialization, and a psychotherapist.
Her thesis 1982 approached �Fear of childbirth in pregnant women� from a quantitative and a qualitative approach, and was at that time pioneering. Combining feminist perspectives on sex/gender with her medical expertise has led her to explore interdisciplinary ways of bridging the gap between natural science approaches (with focus on biology and quantitative methodology, e.g. epidemiology) with ethical, philosophical and sociological ones. Her research includes studies of women�s and men�s experiences of violence and violations in various context e.g. partner relationships and in health care, and based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, and on theories from ethics and sociology. Another field of interest is empowerment of women vis-ΰ-vis gynaecological examinations and methods of teaching medical students how to do gynaecological examinations in a caring, sensitive and empathic way. To take control over the body, in particular in relation to sexual practices, is a related research area. Among others she leads a project about young women who feel pain during intercourse, reflected as an effect of dominating attitudes to sex and gender relations.

*International Advisory Board*

Elzbieta Olesky, Prof., Centre for Women�s Studies, University of Lodz, Poland

Raewyn Connell, Prof., University of Sydney, Australia

Rosi Braidotti, Prof., Netherlands Research School of Women�s Studies, University of Utrecht, Netherlands

Karan Barad, Prof., Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

Kathleen B. Jones, Emerita Prof., Women�'s Studies, San Diego State University,San Diego, USA

Birte Siim, Prof., Gender Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark

Leonore Davidoff, Emerita Prof., Sociology, University of Essex, UK

Berit Schei, Professor of Women�s Medicine, The Technical University of Norway, Norway