Previously known as Department of Gender Studies https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/20530 2026-05-21T11:05:25Z 2026-05-21T11:05:25Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/146654 2026-05-21T10:06:32Z 2026-05-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Queering the gaze : ANDERSRUMportrait and 15 years of queer-feminist art activism in times of backlash Abstract: This presentation examines ANDERSRUMportrait as a distinctive form of queer-feminist art activism that responds directly to rising right-wing backlash, anti-gender politics, and renewed attacks on LGBTQIA+ lives. Founded in 2010 by photographer, artist, and gender researcher Alexa Seewald, the project has generated more than 4,200 portraits and 33 large-scale, open-access exhibitions in public space, including participation in the Critical Art Ensemble at dOCUMENTA (13).; What makes ANDERSRUMportrait unique is the combination of linguistic, visual, and political reversal. The German slang term andersrum — literally "the other way," historically used to stigmatise queer lives — has undergone a process of reappropriation within LGBTQIA+ communities. ANDERSRUMportrait extends this reclaiming by turning the logic of portraiture itself "the other way around." Instead of framing identity through the face — a dominant site of recognition, surveillance, and norm enforcement in Western visual culture — the project photographs people from behind.; This inversion queers the portrait. It interrupts normative expectations, loosens the pressure of gendered and racialised beauty standards, counters the voyeuristic male gaze, and opens space for more authentic, self-determined participation. The absence of the face transforms portraiture from an instrument of classification into a tool of resistance. Individuals are not captured as objects; they participate as agents in a shared political gesture. The presentation argues that ANDERSRUMportrait functions as collective visual protest against stigmas and intersecting oppressions — heterosexism, racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, and classism. Each portrait becomes a deliberate act of visibility without exposure, intimacy without surveillance, individuality within solidarity. ANDERSRUMportrait's public installations — on streets, at Prides, in government buildings, queer centres, universities, and community spaces — circumvent institutional barriers and reclaim public space for those routinely pushed out of it.

2026-05-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/146653 2026-05-21T09:57:53Z 2026-05-01T00:00:00Z

Title: The politics of temporal displacement and social reproduction : aging women under neoliberal restructuring in postwar Kosova Abstract: This paper, drawn from a chapter of the book Social Reproduction Through Labor and Coffee, investigates how aging women in postwar Kosova negotiate the sweeping social, economic, and temporal restructurings produced by neoliberal state-building. After NATO's intervention and the establishment of UNMIK, Kosova's reconstruction was guided by Structural Adjustment Policies aligned with the Washington Consensus, embedding privatization, market liberalization, and fiscal austerity into the foundations of governance. In this setting, women emerged from war-induced dispossession and trauma into an order that individualized responsibility and redefined citizenship through human-capital paradigms. Their strategies for recovery — migration, small-scale entrepreneurship, reliance on remittances, and forms of social solidarity — demonstrate both resilience and the reproduction of violence through new economic dependencies.; As these women age, neoliberal "acceleration" reshapes their temporal and spatial orientations. The shift from village-based kinship systems to market-driven, urban rhythms has weakened intergenerational bonds, fragmented community life, and devalued reproductive labor that once grounded their social significance. Nostalgia thus becomes not merely an affective response but an analytical lens through which women trace ruptures in moral order, belonging, and the pace of everyday life. Their narratives foreground the erosion of communal care, the commodification of social relations, and their growing marginalization as bodies no longer legible as economically productive.; By situating these experiences within broader debates on neoliberal temporality, social reproduction, and postwar reconstruction, the paper shows how aging reveals the limits and exclusions embedded in Kosova's development project. While younger women are mobilized as symbols of the "New Kosovar Woman," aligned with modernization and Europeanization discourses, older women become peripheral to these agendas and increasingly dependent within nuclear family structures promoted as normative. Ultimately, the paper argues that aging in neoliberal Kosova is shaped by shifting regimes of time, labor, and social relation-making.

2026-05-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/146652 2026-05-21T09:50:50Z 2026-05-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Targeting the beast along my illness trajectory : coping strategies of women with triple-negative breast cancer Abstract: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive breast cancer subtype, lacking targeted therapies and having higher mortality and recurrence rates. It is disproportionately diagnosed in younger women and those with a family history of breast cancer. Despite this, there is a dearth in the literature about the coping strategies of women with TNBC. This qualitative study explores the coping strategies of 11 adult women aged 26–63 years with non-metastatic TNBC. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and transcribed texts were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.; Findings reveal that coping was deeply embedded in women’s relational worlds and cultural constructions of femininity, responsibility, and resilience. Participants mobilised support from spouses, friends, and peers with breast cancer, reflecting gendered norms that position women as relational caregivers who must renegotiate their own need for care when illness disrupts these roles. Many described the pressure to remain emotionally and physically present for children and partners, highlighting how motherhood and family roles functioned both as sources of strength and as burdens that intensified illness management.; Meaning-making practices, such as spirituality, gratitude, and altruism, helped participants reframe their struggles and sustain a coherent sense of self amid bodily changes resulting from aggressive treatment. Lifestyle modifications, such as dietary adjustments and exercise, alongside cognitive strategies, such as distraction through work or hobbies, enabled women to reassert agency in contexts where treatment options were limited. Such multidimensional coping strategies underscore the complex interplay of gendered identity, relational commitments, and embodied vulnerability in coping with TNBC.; This study highlights the need for gender-responsive survivorship care that acknowledges women’s caregiving identities, the sociocultural expectations shaping their coping, and the struggles intrinsic to maintaining family roles, while confronting a life-threatening illness. Integrating relational, psychosocial, and existential support into TNBC care pathways is essential to address the gendered realities of women’s experiences.

2026-05-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/146651 2026-05-21T09:48:31Z 2026-05-01T00:00:00Z

Title: ANDERSRUMportrait : participatory queer-feminist artivist photoshoot Abstract: This participatory art action invites all conference participants to join ANDERSRUMportrait, an ongoing intersectional queer-feminist art and activism project created by photographer, artist, and gender researcher Alexa Seewald. Since 2010, Seewald has photographed more than 4,200 people "andersrum" (= the other way around) — from behind — transforming a once-stigmatizing term for queerness (andersrum) into an empowered visual and political gesture.; The photoshoot offers participants the opportunity to become part of a growing international archive of visual resistance. By taking part, individuals make a deliberate artistic and political statement against heterosexism, queerphobia, lesbophobia, racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, and other intersecting forms of discrimination. Rooted in lesbian and queer-feminist activism, the project is explicitly inclusive: LGBTQIA+ individuals and allies of all genders, sexualities, religions, ages, and backgrounds are invited to participate.; Photographing people from behind queers normative portrait conventions and challenges the facialcentric logic of identity in Western visual cultures. Without the pressure to "perform" a face — often shaped by internalised beauty standards, gender norms, and societal expectations — participants respond more spontaneously, authentically, and confidently. This approach has proven especially empowering for marginalised and camera-shy individuals, and has enabled broad participation at Prides, queer community centres, art festivals, schools, government buildings, and major events including dOCUMENTA (13). For the conference, Seewald will install a temporary open studio, offering a low-threshold space for community participation, reflection, and creative political expression. With participant consent, the resulting images become part of the international ANDERSRUMportrait archive and may be exhibited in future public installations.

2026-05-01T00:00:00Z