Department for Gender Studies
mdw-Gender Studies is oriented towards the cultural humanities with a research focus on Gender and Performing Arts. As a cross-sectional field of critical reflection between science and art, the department focuses on performing arts such as music, theater, dance and film, and at the same time offers a variety of cross-disciplinary courses tailored to the mdw, inviting interested parties from all departments to work together.
Our teaching and research profile is broad and reflects the disciplines represented at mdw from the perspectives of Gender and Queer Studies. It includes work on and with artistic objects and processes, questions of aesthetics and mediality, as well as current epistemological, theoretical, critical and political debates. Our examination of the historical and social conditions of the arts also takes into account transnational and global historical as well as practice-oriented perspectives.
In our courses, we provide fundamental analytical perspectives on different gender constructions and their aesthetic treatments in specific social, economic, institutional, and historical contexts. Research approaches of Queer and Trans Studies are equally important as the critical discussion of racism and colonialism. The question of artistic forms and political stagings as well as the connection between hierarchizations and mechanisms of exclusion in different fields are of particular importance. In order to do justice to the international orientation of mdw, we also offer selected courses in English.
Unique for an artistic university in Austria, there is also the possibility to do a doctorate with a focus on Performing Arts.
On site we have our own specialized library with a selection corresponding to our profile.
In addition, we invite the public to participate in discussions at numerous events, focusing on the interfaces between science and art. The constant expansion of our international cooperations is also an integral part of our work.
