The Department of Gender Studies at the Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities Research "Euro-Balkan" (Skopje, Macedonia)

in cooperation with the Faculty of Media and Communications at Singidunum University (Belgrade, Serbia)

is pleased to announce:

15th OHRID SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2012

SUMMER INSTITUTE FOR SEXUALITIES, CULTURES AND POLITICS

August 12th-30th, Ohrid, Macedonia

(Full info here)

SUMMER INSTITUTE DESCRIPTION

The Summer Institute for Sexuality, Culture and Politics is a new permanent project initiated

by the Department for Gender Studies at the Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities

“Euro-Balkan”, Skopje, Macedonia.

The general aim of the Institute is to gather young post-graduate students, activists,

scholars and teaching staff from both Eastern and Western Europe and promote a shared

platform for research and trans-disciplinary theoretical reflection on the complex modes of

interweaving sexuality, culture and politics, and consequently of exchanging and

questioning geopolitically determined discourses in the research of sexualities, gender

studies, and queer theory. Our idea is to provide students, scholars and teachers with the

opportunity to question, decenter and democratize these areas by way of deferring the

notion of theoretical and geopolitical privilege which is often implied by these research

areas, and thus to introduce new models of rethinking context-specific phenomena related

to sexualities and, vice versa, to enrich theoretical paradigms with context specific

phenomena and research. In this way, the Institute’s long-term goal is to:

(1) strategically stimulate the particularization and application of key ideas and theories in

sexuality research locally and to

(2) universalize and popularize crucial and underprivileged positions and ideas on the

European level, regardless of the East/West divide which is still central to the development

of queer theory and sexuality research.

Our endeavor is not to relativize the embeddedness and situatedness of knowledges about

sexualities, but to recognize and disrupt the existing invisible borders that obstruct the free

dissemination of ideas as they are being determined by various hegemonic forces – political,

educational, economic - in both Eastern and Western contexts of doing academic and

artistic work related with our desires, bodies, and sexualities.

Please find enclosed as attachment in this email the full description and information about the Summer Institute.

We would also kindly ask you to forward and publicize this information to other interested institutions and individuals.

For any further questions and information, please contact the Summer Institute coordinators:

Slavco Dimitrov, slavco.euba@gmail.com

Stanimir Panayotov, spanayotov@gmail.com