QUEERING KINSHIP, FAMILY AND INTIMATE RELATIONS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

The course concentrates on the issues concerning what queering kinship, family and reproduction could teach us more about broader societal understandings of belonging, relatedness and intimate relations in variegated societies and contexts. The following topics will be addressed: theoretical approaches to family, kinship, gender and sexuality, methodologies and approaches to research in sensitive fields; the developments of the study fields of New Kinship Studies and Queer Kinship.
The course aims:
• Providing knowledge on recent theoretical and empirical approaches to kinship, family and reproduction and their interconnection with non-normative sexualities, gender and citizenship.
• Widening the understandings of transformations of social, cultural and legal institutions in regard to kinship; in particular, such issues are discussed as the inheritance system, child abandonment, lesbian parenting, non-conventional heterosexual families, and relationality outside-of-the-couple form are foci
• Queering the methodologies of kinship, relationality and family studies
• Elaborating the research tools and practical approaches to kinship and family structures and practices outside the heteronormative sphere

Course Organisers and Contact Persons: Anna Avdeeva (anna.avdeeva@helsinki.fi) & Alisa Zhabenko (alisa.zhabenko@helsinki.fi)