The Cornelia Goethe Center for Women’s and Gender Studies (CGC) is an interdisciplinary institute for research, teaching and the promotion of junior researchers at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. It stimulates cooperation among researchers from a variety of disciplines and considers an epistemological and theoretical critique of gender to be instrumental for its analytical work while focusing on the historical, social, and cultural construction of the category. Presently, ten out of sixteen departments/faculties of Goethe University, are represented within the CGC. While individual members carry a large variety of research projects, the center also coordinates a BA Minor in Gender Studies, a certificate program on Master level and runs a Sub-Center which promotes advanced Master and PhD students (GRADE Center Gender). Addressing ambivalent, paradoxical, fragile and asynchronous forms of social reality, feminist analysis resumes and expands the tradition of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. A wide variety of social, ethnic, national, religious and cultural identifications and their relationship with social inequalities is analyzed from an intersectional and decolonizing perspective, in both, research and teaching.
The Cornelia Goethe Center’s research profile varies with the projects and investigations undertaken by its affiliated scholars. Core themes in research and teaching are
- Transnational Migration and Social Movements
- Social Inequality, Gender Justice, Diversity and Care
- Biopolitics, the Body and Gender
- Feminist Theory and Queer Theory
- Transdisciplinary Methodologies and Feminist Critiques of Science
The Cornelia Goethe Center was named after Cornelia Goethe, the younger sister of Johann Wolfgang Goethe who was the eponym of Frankfurt University. The Center places great value on a dialogue between urban society and university. Its conferences, colloquia and workshops provide a space for interdisciplinary academic exchange as well as international cooperation and networking. To stimulate interest outside the university in Women’s and Gender Studies topics, the Center hosts a series of colloquia which have become a regular feature of the “Frankfurter Bürger-Universität”. Another important connection between the university and civil society is the CGC Friends´ Association.
