From Situated Academic Marginalization to Situated Togetherness: Gender and Women’s Studies

With an almost 30-year-history, Gender and Women’s Studies (GWS) graduate program is not only an
institution of knowledge production but also an area of political action in Turkey. Different from
mainstream academic disciplines, GWS resides in a sophisticated, multi-dimensional and
interdisciplinary vantage point making accounts of patriarchal system and of the world from women’s
lenses. This paper aims to discuss the influence of three different political conjunctures within the
historical development of GWS on the situation of (GWS) graduate programs within mainstream
academia of Turkey with a critical Feminist Standpoint Theory approach. The study is derived from 17
semi-structured in-depth interviews with GWS academics from two universities. In the light of these
interviews, I analyzed how GWS influenced from political conjuncture and probed its potential in
reaching at situated togetherness through situated academic marginalization.