ABSTRACT
The field's epistemic status affects teaching, in a range of ways: from the nature of student engagements with the field to the claims that non-Women’s, Gender, Feminist Studies (WGFS) scholars make about WGFS in their teaching. The importance of naming as a form of enactment and management of epistemic status is also evident in discussions within WGFS about the name of the field, one of the most contentious objects of debate vis-à-vis the institutionalisation of WGFS. The frequency with which references to epistemic status appear in the literature on institutionalisation – even if almost always only in passing – shows how central issues of epistemic status are in shaping the conditions of WGFS teaching, learning and research. Literature on institutionalisation which examines how different actors and strategies shape the field's epistemic status – such as Peiying Chen, Kelly Coate, Ellen Messer-Davidow or Sue Wilkinson – go some way in interrogating these context-specific genealogies.
