‘International, intersectional and interdisciplinary’ – Gender and feminist studies degree descriptions and logics of representation in marketised English higher education

Abstract

This article explores how the academic field of gender and feminist studies in England represents itself, by drawing on a discourse analysis of online descriptions from websites of all gender and feminist studies degree programmes and departments in English universities, all but one of which are graduate degrees. Foregrounding the context of the neoliberal university, in which feminist and gender knowledge is simultaneously marginalised and mainstreamed, the article asks how representations of the field are shaped by the marketisation of higher education. This analysis reveals a disjuncture between two representative logics: while most feminist, gender studies and queer scholarship relies on anti-essentialist epistemologies and ontologies, the dominant logic of representation in contemporary universities understands difference as static and representable. This representability enables and is in turn facilitated by marketisation.