Tweesporendenken in tijden van brede bachelors: Genderstudies en de opkomst van multi- en interdisciplinariteit aan Nederlandse universiteiten

Abstract

Gender Studies have reached their institutionalised status at universities in the Netherlands by working along the tracks of integration and autonomy. The first track consisted of integrating gender into existing monodisciplinary science and scholarship in order to gender sensitise them. The second track entailed setting up a discipline of one’s own. Women’s Studies, now Gender Studies, built feminist academic infrastructures, and did so in multi and interdisciplinary veins. Early feminist academics at Dutch universities were recent graduates. Such young teachers, their students, and their shared questions were crucial for Women’s Studies to develop. Nowadays, Dutch Gender Studies are characterised by an ‘integrated autonomy’, given that many feminist stakes have been taken over by the mainstream. Multi and interdisciplinarity in particular are no longer special at all! They are governmental and university policies. This article asks to what extent encounters with a diverse student body in broad bachelor programmes such as Liberal Arts and Liberal Arts and Sciences assist in ensuring that academic feminism does not lose its critical edge. Such programmes embrace critical and creative reflection on academia because students are to discover or develop their scholarly interests while studying. Given integrated autonomy, feminist teaching, learning, and research can only gain from a diverse student population.