Gender, Sexuality, Race, and Equality in ScandinaviaSemester Course

Program
Gender & Sexuality Studies
Week-Long Study Tour
Berlin
Core Course Week Study Tour
Sweden
Major Discipline(s)
Anthropology, Gender Studies, Sociology
Type
Core Course
Available
Fall/Spring semester
Credit(s)
3

Sweden is the most gender equal country in the world and paid parental leave for all parents, a high number of women in leadership positions, progressive sex education, and equal rights for LGBTQIA+ persons are among the hallmarks of all Scandinavian societies. However, Sweden also has the most gender-divided workplace in the world and gender equal policies do not automatically lead to gender equal behaviors. With a comparative look to neighboring countries in Europe, this course explores how concepts of gender, body, sexuality, and race intersect in current debates about changing family structures, children’s rights, and new ethical dilemmas in Scandinavia.

Faculty

Iwo Nord

DIS Stockholm Semester Faculty

Iwo Nord is a trans researcher and educator interested in transgender and queer lives and culture, nuances of agency and power, intersections of the transnational and the local, and questions concerning mobility (travel and migration). The past years he has been committed to building and strengthening Transgender Studies in both the Nordic region and in the former Yugoslav space. Devoted to social change for trans people, he is involved in trans academic and activist alliances, resulting in the forthcoming collaborative volume In Transition: Trans Lives, Activisms, and Culture in the Post-Yugoslav Space, edited by Bojan Bilić, Iwo Nord and Aleksa Milanović. He was one of the founding members of Trans Fest Stockholm, an activist collective that strives to create inclusive and empowering cultural and community events in the Swedish capital. Iwo is a PhD candidate in Gender Studies at Södertörn University, and is affiliated with the Center for Baltic and East European Studies. His doctoral project ethnographically explores Belgrade as a transnational destination for gender-affirming surgery. He holds an MA from the University of Oslo, Norway, and has formerly taught at the Institute of Scandinavian and Finnish Studies at the University of Gdansk, Poland. Iwo’s publications include “Routes to Gender-Affirming Surgery: Navigation and Negotiation in Times of Biomedicalization” in Body, Migration, Re/constructive Surgeries: Making the Gendered Body in a Globalized World, edited by Gabriele Griffin and Malin Jordal (Routledge 2018).  With DIS Since 2020.