This paper focuses on online education and generic competences such as criticism and creativity. It brings to the fore theories that address processes of meaning making (i.e., a psychological constructionist account of the brain basis of emotion-the conceptual act model (Lindquist et al., 2012; Barrett et al., 2014) and reflect on various patterns of meaning making comprising those that lead to criticism and creativity (i.e., the Deleuzian and Guattarian (1987; 2009) philosophical accounts of affect, concept and stratum) to inspire pedagogical practices that aim to create critically-creative abilities among students. Concomitantly, it seeks to reflect on how such pedagogical undertakings can be actualized in online education and on the possibilities online environment offers to promote criticism and creativity among graduates. By posing questions related to teaching methods, learning activities, software and hardware, and their combinations in online education, and by addressing and problematizing concepts and phenomena of immersion and DFI-digital facial image, I will make an effort to not only highlight, what I call, the promises of cyberspace, but also ponder on how the aforementioned pedagogical practices can be actualized online.

This article discusses and experiments with a psychological constructionist account of the brain basis of emotion—the conceptual act model (Lindquist et al., 2012; Barrett et al., 2014) and the Deleuzian and Guattarian (1987; 2009) philosophical accounts of affect, concept and stratum. Why those two? The conceptual act model theorizes process of meaning making of external and internal sensations including experience of emotions. Deleuze and Guattari, with their accounts, reflect on various patterns of making meaning comprising those that lead to self-/criticism and creativity. Since it is crucial to think about teaching practices that support students in daring to challenge, problematize and generate new meaning of experienced sensations, theories that address meaning making processes are of particular relevance. This article shows that those theories alone and once exposed to an experiment may possibly inspire pedagogical undertakings that aim to create self-/critically-creative abilities among students, but also add to the ways of conceptualizing subject, body, mind and brain.

In my paper, I develop and reflect on a method that is close to writing therapy, in which writing is used to cope with difficult experiences including mental and physical illness and is partially inspired by the principles of narrative medicine. The method which I am proposing is about combining own experience with the body and with medical encounters with supernatural horror (horror movies/books/one’s own horror stories) to tell a story that can ease anxiety. More importantly, to combine own experience with the body/medical encounters with supernatural horror could be a way of telling the body’s stories to oneself and of translating the body language to oneself to reach an understanding (if ever possible), to cope with the body unknown, and to advance communication skills when faced with the medical personnel. To produce such a story does not mean giving in to the neo-liberal culture of an individual who is able to fix every problem on their own. It also does not mean that doctors should be released from the responsibilities set by their profession. In fact, such storytelling, such narrative competence has to do with the need of the embodied, embedded, relational, and multiple self to regain and/or maintain its agency in the flux of life in general and when opening the doors to the medical centres in particular.

The article presents the outcomes of the research project supported by Linköping University, Sweden. The research project constitutes a part of an umbrella project called Pedagogiska Utvecklingsmedel för E-lärande 2019 (Pedagogical Development Tools for E-learning 2019). The research project focuses on the International Master's Program ―Gender Studies - Intersectionality and Change‖ offered at the Unit of Gender Studies, Department of Thematic Studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Linköping University, Sweden. The main aims of the research project are to determine which teaching content, teaching methods, learning activities, teacher‘s role, and students‘ own strategies matter for learning i.e., for acquiring knowledge and skills/competences in an international blended, face-to-face and online, Master‘s Program, and to present students‘ experiences with face-to-face and online education in the Program. The project is based on qualitative, semi-structured interviews with the 2nd year students and alumni who have participated in the Program. The interviews were conducted online in November and December 2019. The article presents which content, teaching methods, learning activities, teacher‘s role, and students‘ own strategies matter for the acquirement of knowledge and skills by the students in blended education. It describes how Campus and online phases of the Program matter for students‘ learning. Next to that, it indicates the challenges related to online study, but also educational methods that may help to overcome them. 

This response paper focuses on three important aspects brought forward by Sarasadat Khalifeh Soltani’s text, which I always associate with Gender Studies. The first are the daring methodologies, which include various writing strategies, and stemming from these, new epistemologies. The second is the value of networking and community building across differences. The third is personal transformation.

The Gender Studies Tuning Brochure contains the reference points for the design and delivery of degree programmes in Gender Studies. Undergraduate first cycle courses, MA- or second cycle programmes preparing students for a professional life and the third or doctoral cycle for students who train for scholarly research. The Reference Points that are offered here are intended to help those involved in the design and delivery of degree programmes in Gender Studies to reflect on their own quality requirements, their choices and decisions and their students’ needs – wherever they are and whatever their background.

In this paper, the body as subject is seen as the focus of learning generic skills and competences such as criticism and creativity where learning is conceptualized as a complex making of meaning. I want to deepen an understanding of meaning making processes and of what occurs in learning skills and competences such as criticism and creativity. I will attempt to do it by focusing on the embodiment and embeddedness of a learner. I will work with a psychological constructionist account of the brain basis of emotion— the conceptual act model (Lindquist et al., 2012; Barrett et al., 2014), my own theoretical reflections, which are built on the conceptual act model and the Deleuzian and Guattarian (1987, 2009) philosophical accounts of affect, concept and stratum, and the theories developed within the field of Gender Studies that focus on body/matter and intersectionality. By discussing various theories in an experimental manner (i.e., I read theories that belong to different fields of knowledge such as Neuroscience, Philosophy, Gender Studies together to find out what results this may have), I will try to reflect on meaning making processes and on what occurs in learning skills and competences such as criticism and creativity but also on the implications this may have for pedagogy.

During the last few years, the concept of generic skills and competences has become widespread across universities. An introduction to generic competences is, as such, important because it enables redefinition of educational goals and may positively rearrange forms of interaction in classes. It also indicates that education should inspire students to develop and use critical and creative forms of thinking, feeling and doing. On the one hand, the need to promote generic skills can be seen as driven by neoliberal desire. On the other, however, generic competences can enable students to think, feel and act differently, but also respect and welcome various forms of life and ways of living. Responding to the growing need to reflect upon generic competences, this book contributes to the various ways of conceptualising generic skills and the methods in which they might be acquired. The volume engenders adventurous encounters between different theories, which predominantly come from the feminist conceptual framework, that result in appealing meanings of affect and concepts. It also experimentally explores and discusses ways in which theories of affect and concepts may complicate understanding of generic competences and inspire generic skills-oriented education. Consequently, this collection revitalizes the concept of generic skills, but also advocates daring pedagogical practices that invigorate the meaning of and approach to teaching and learning in present landscapes of higher education.

The book is aimed at providing an assertion of Gender Studies as a vital community in our time, united in a commitment to inquiry. It brings forward an interdisciplinary set of early career researchers’ accounts of their motives for engaging in Gender Studies and, of the encounters with limitations as well as possibilities they experience on the paths they have chosen.

Each chapter is accompanied by a brief response paper where a more senior researcher involves in conversation with respective chapter’s content and shares reflections regarding Gender Studies, its integration, and developments. The first level corresponds with the significance of research in the field and its transformative power in and, crucially, outside the academia. The second relates to the value of networking and community building for doing research.

The book presents Gender Studies in a communicative, open manner that invites the reader to engage in and continue the displayed discussions. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of gender studies, sociology, queer studies, women’s studies, trans studies, anthropology, and literary studies.

Contemporary American landscape is wrought with ongoing processes and phenomena of technicization observable at the intersections of multiple layers of society. The book brings into attention their cultural and political aspects, emphasizing timeliness and necessity of academic intervention into, and evaluation of, their specificity and ramifications. Presenting critical and analytical account of cultural narratives which define, speak of, and use diverse technologies (of writing, sound, media representations, surveillance, war), the texts compiled in this volume investigate the coalescence between technological production on the one hand and textual on the other.  The idea of the book responds to the current academic appeal - inspired by postmodern questioning of the foundations and realized, most importantly, by deconstruction - to dismantle one of the constitutive pillars of Western civilization, namely, between techne and episteme. In their interpretative mode the texts proceed largely experimentally, bridging the gap between techne and episteme. In doing so, they endeavor to reformulate and complexify an experience of American culture. The book aims to clarify and exemplify that the junction of text and technology implies that meanings are embedded in a material. Consequently, the publication introduces and popularizes the assumption that American cultural experience emerges as a genuine experiment of an esthetic nature.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present some of the findings (which were reported on more extensively in earlier work) regarding the visibility of gender issues in the literature on selected information and communication technologies (ICTs) with a view to make predictions about potential ethical issues that the application of these ICTs may bring about in the future. This paper is part of the larger research project called ETICA (Ethical Issues of Emerging Information and Communication Technologies), a collaborative project funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union.

Design/methodology/approach – On the basis of the analysis of around 100 published sources, which dealt with various aspects of selected ICTs, conclusions have been drawn regarding gender issues and concerns that the applications of these ICTs may cause. The authors' analysis is theoretically informed by critical discourse analysis (CDA) which assumes that texts, both written and spoken, as well as other forms of symbolic representations, are indicative of social practices. Of particular methodological relevance was the survey of methods of text and discourse analysis presented in Titscher et al. and especially the application of keyword search as a way to measure the prominence of each investigated method. This approach to literature surveying proved very useful in selecting analytic material: only those published sources on the selected four ICTs have been included in the survey, for which the analysis of keywords, abstracts and indexes of terms indicated authors' interest in gender issues.

Findings – First, ICTs such as affective computing, ambient intelligence, and artificial intelligence, have been found to have the potential of positively affecting gender power relations and thus positively affecting gender balance in the areas of labour market related to ICT across EU countries and worldwide. Second, more research on the relationship between gender and ICT design, application and representation is needed, so as to enhance a better understanding of ethical issues resulting from unequal participation of women and men in all aspects of ICT production and implementation, which in itself is an ethical dilemma with which both the ICT business and legislators have to grapple.

Originality/value – The paper offers insight into the relationship between the level of attention devoted to particular ICTs by ICT researchers, as evidenced in the reviewed literature, and the likelihood of the application of a particular ICT in the future, which is looked at and assessed from a gender perspective.

The contributions represent graduate studies and senior positions at universities in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Metaphorically speaking, of course, a gathering of voices can be understood as a collection of opinions or votes among a given number of alternatives. The notion of a choir as the structuring of voices into a conducted format may be too close for comfort. The undoing gender theory on the other hand, explains how Ghanaian women miners recently stepped forward, finding that the time had come to express dissatisfaction with masculine dominant cultures in the mines. With the voices elaborating the frontlines and avoiding comprehensive final words, this book presents Gender Studies in a communicative, open manner that invites the reader to engage in and continue the displayed discussions. The readers may be, for instance, early career researchers or advanced level students of Gender Studies.

This paper contributes knowledge on the effects of materiality and space on teaching and equal access to teacher education. Through an intersectional analysis, with a specific focus on orientations, bodies and materiality, we show how student-bodies orientate closer to or further from various parts of teacher education as an effect of the materiality of emergency remote vs. on-campus education. We elaborate on three different student-body orientating processes that take place during teacher education. These are all related to the emergency remote education implemented as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. We call these processes ‘remote education as relief’, ‘the embodiedness of raising the hand on Zoom’ and ‘energy-draining pre-recorded lectures’. We show how the materiality of emergency-remote education orientates the participants situated within the bodily horizons of intersectional positions of being deaf, female, racialized as non-white and not having Swedish as a first language, both closer to and further away from various parts of their teacher education. The analysis is based on both individual and group interviews with twelve teacher students. The paper contributes insights to emergency-remote education, remote education and on-campus educating.