Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Gender is a key category for organizing and identifying practices in professional associations in academia. Within the context of these associations, fields of research are developed, coordinated, and reproduced. The associations are venues for communication enabling the exchange of ideas that define disciplines, facilitate networks of scholars who jointly constitute the professorial body that makes up a field, and become the public face of the discipline in interactions with those on the outside, including practitioners and critics. In many ways, academic organizations are critical to constructing the very essence of a discipline, giving it an identity. They are crucial sites for discursive engagements that shape the production, configuration, and dynamics of a discipline. Because of their constitutive force, academic organizations are a pivotal site for analyzing the role of gender in the reproduction and transference of disciplines. The literature on the role that gender has played in scholarly associations is as diverse as it is sparse, but sufficient foundational work exists to contextualize the significance of the role of gender in influencing the development and future direction of the disciplines. Studies of scholarly associations that have given attention to the role of gender are notable for their focus on how gender plays into discipline-forming debates. For example, ... log in or subscribe to read full text