"The interdisciplinary project “Picturing ‘gender’: Visual translation, popularisation and contesting of a key discourse in the New Europe” (PICTURING GENDER) investigates examples of translating and adopting the new philosophical concept “gender” into popular visual culture in various European cultural contexts. Within this larger framework, the project comprises the following specific objectives: • to collect examples of visual adoptions of the gender concept • to analyse these images with respect to the meanings staged in them and how they interlink with meanings created by visual culture, set in motion by other social agents • to investigate the reception histories these images set in motion. • to compare examples in various European countries with each other and to investigate the cultural conditions of their adoption • to re-evaluate the productivity of the use of the concept of gender as well as the meanings created in this way. Hence the quality of PICTURING GENDER lies in its original view of the popularisation of the gender concept within Europe. The innovative approach consists in focusing especially on images and visual worlds into which this concept is translated. This focus on the image and the specificity of its communicative powers makes it possible to access the complex reworking of the popular imaginary that goes along with the dissemination of gender discourse. In this way the more involuntary, hidden creations of meaning concerning gender and sexual difference as well as unintentional linkages with other popular discourses, which remain closed to other perspectives, become graspable. The relevance of the project for current political culture in Europe therefore lies especially in this emphasis on the broader popular as well as artistic signification processes concerning a key notion of current emancipation strategy and on the public life of the images created in this way."