Head: Prof Dr Karen Ellwanger, Prof Dr Silke Wenk

This research focus was located between various cultural studies (art, textile and media studies) and political science. The focus was on the entanglements of material and visual culture and the significance of gender constructions for the formation of political formations, which can only be analysed through the integration of different disciplinary approaches. This involved vestimentary stagings of authority (e.g. through the suit) and community (e.g. traditional costumes) as well as visual representations of institutions (e.g. university) and imagined communities (nation) and their reciprocal relationship. Corresponding historical research and research focussing on contemporary phenomena has been reflected in various publications, but also in dissertations in the field of gender studies in cultural studies.
Current issues of post-colonial and queer politics and theory formation led to an expansion of the range of topics with regard to the politics of visualisation in various social movements, particularly in the context of migration and globalisation and with the inclusion of various forms of mediality and materiality (e.g. press coverage, war films, current artistic productions, fashion; see also the list of doctoral topics of students of Cultural Studies Gender Studies).
In addition, this research focus has resulted in further co-operation between cultural and political sciences in the interdisciplinary project "Gender constructions and violence. Ambivalences of Modernity in the Process of Globalisation".

Key publications:

Ellwanger, Karen (2002): Changing clothes in politics? On the vestimentary staging of gender in the space of the political (modified reprint). In: Clothes make politics. On the representation of the nation state and politics through clothing in Europe from the 18th to the 20th century. Exhibition catalogue, ed. by the State Museum of Art and Cultural History Oldenburg, editors Siegfried Müller and Michael Reinbold. Oldenburg, 108 - 124

Ellwanger, Karen (2002): Reform clothing, gender and nationality. In: Clothes make politics. On the representation of the nation state and politics through clothing in Europe from the 18th to the 20th century. Exhibition catalogue, ed. by the State Museum of Art and Cultural History Oldenburg, editors Siegfried Müller and Michael Reinbold. Oldenburg, 86 - 92

Wenk, Silke (2005): Imperial Stagings? Visual Politics and the Iraq War. In: Sabine Jaberg, Peter Schlotter (eds.): Imperiale Weltordnung - Trend des 21. Jahrhunderts? Baden-Baden, 63 - 93 (Abridged version in: MÖWE, Materialien zur Dekade "Frieden denken - Frieden machen", ed. by Uwe Trittmann and Thomas Ehrenberg (Amt für Mission, Ökumene und kirchliche Verantwortung), Dortmund, 17 - 25

Wenk, Silke (2005): Borussia, Brunsviga, Bavaria ... and Germania: Unity and difference. In: Elisabeth Cheauré et al. (eds.): Father Rhine and Mother Volga. Region, Discourses on Nation and Gender in Germany and Russia. Würzburg, 75 - 90

Potts, Lydia/Wenk, Silke (2003): "Geschlechterdifferenz und Konstruktion des Nationalen aus einer transkulturellen Perspektive". In: Allmendinger, Jutta (ed.): Entstaatlichungen und soziale Sicherheit. Proceedings of the 31st Congress of the German Sociological Association in Leipzig, Opladen