“Hide and seek”: Coming out of the closet, with a stop in Mytilene
Maria Qef
Abstract
This article was first written for the symposium “The perspective of gender at the university: A reflective approach” in Mytilene on May 18th, 2019, which was organized by the Postgraduate Program “Gender, Culture and Society” of the University of the Aegean. Feministiqá is publishing a second, edited version. The article is an attempt to evaluate my experience of attending the Postgraduate Program “Women and Gender: Anthropological and Historical Approaches”. While it is written by an academic graduate, it does not aim to be an academic text, but rather an attempt to describe the lived experience of studying in that program. It presents some aspects of the effects that attending such a study program can have on one’s choices, while simultaneously formulating social/political commentary on the contemporary Greek context. The main concepts I address in this text are: safe/safer space, networking and community, feminism, as well as openness/closetedness of aspects of a subject’s identity.