Ell Rutkat

''Research Areas, PhD Project & Curriculum Vitae'

Ell Rutkat conducts empirical research from a social science perspective, with a focus on Gender, Queer & Trans Studies, Post-Constructivism, and Feminist New Materialisms.

As part of their doctoral project on “Genital Fluids and Gender,” Ell Rutkat conducted narrative, experience-based interviews with trans* and cis women, transmasculine, non-binary, and agender individuals about their experiences with genital fluids. Through the analysis of these interviews, Ell Rutkat’s dissertation explores the following questions: How is the experience of genital fluids connected to the experience of gender? How do bodies and gender constitute themselves in interaction with this viscous-fluid matter? How do multiple consistencies of genital fluids and gender manifest themselves?
The focus is not only on the experiences that FLINTA* individuals have with non-reproductive genital fluids, but also on the role of matter in the continuous, processual becoming of bodies and gender. Such a neo-materialist and simultaneously experience-oriented conception of bodies and gender as an intra-active and processual becoming represents a quest whose aim is to find answers to debates within Queer and Trans Studies. It enables a unique perspective on gender: the diverse ways of experiencing genital fluids can be captured by a theory of the multiple aggregate states of gender— namely, one that takes as its starting point the varying consistencies of genital fluids (liquid, viscous, dried solid, or evaporated) and applies these to the multiple ways of experiencing gender, thereby encompassing both the materiality and the fluidity of gender.

Ell Rutkat studied Gender Studies at the University of Freiburg and is currently a research assistant in the Gender Sociology department under Prof. Dr. Tomke König.