Emily St Denny: "Timing gender: How time constructs the gendered subject"

Beschreibung

Modern governance and social life are often organized around the myth of ‘neutral’ time – a linear, quantifiable force that marches forward regardless of the lives it measures. However, as feminist and queer scholarship has long argued, the clocks we live by are calibrated to the rhythms of power.

 

In this presentation, Emily St Denny explores how we ‘time’ gender. While existing research has illuminated specific facets of temporal power, including reproductive domestic labor or non-normative queer life paths – these insights often remain in specialized streams. The talk proposes a holistic, multi-dimensional Framework to bridge these gaps, arguing that gendered time operates simultaneously across four key dimensions:

 

• Institutional: How the state and workplace impose gendered schedules and life-stages.

• Bodily: The disciplining of biological processes from puberty to aging.

• Narrative: The gendered scripts we use to make sense of our pasts and futures.

• Affective: The gendered experience of temporal emotions like waiting, nostalgia, and

anticipation.

 

Through case studies ranging from contemporary parental leave policies to the temporalities of

conflict-related violence, this talk demonstrates how time acts as a central medium through which

gendered inequality is organized, contested, and reinforced.

 

Emily St Denny is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of Copenhagen. Her research investigates how policies and policymaking can reduce inequalities, with a particular focus on health and gender. She was awarded the Paul Lazarsfeld Professorship, a scholarship created by the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Vienna for outstanding scholars with an innovative profile in the areas of theory and methodology in the empirical social sciences. During her stay at the Department of Sociology (14-21 April 2026), Emily St Denny will lead the doctoral seminar "Time and temporality in social science".

Zur Webseite der Veranstaltung

Veranstalter

Institut für Soziologie

Kontakt

Helena Kierst
Institut für Soziologie
01427749201
soziologie(at)univie.ac.at

Erstellt am Donnerstag, 02. April 2026, 15:14
Letzte Änderung am Dienstag, 07. April 2026, 11:27