The Cornelia Goethe Center for Women's and Gender Studies (CGC) is an interdisciplinary research institute at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt/Main. Founded as "Center for Women's Studies" in the summer of 1997, it was renamed on the occasion of Cornelia Goethe's 250th birthday on December 7, 2000.

At the CGC scholars specializing in various fields cooperate in long-term and short-term research projects, empirically and theoretically studying gender relations past and present, across disciplines and cultures. The CGC also developed an interdisciplinary program "Women's Studies / Gender Studies", where students can earn a certificate after four semesters of study. Classes of this program are co-taught by professors from diverse disciplines.

The CGC recruits its membership among professors and research fellows, visiting scholars, lecturers, Ph.D. candidates and graduate students who are working on questions related to women's and gender studies. The following disciplines are currently represented in the CGC: American Studies, English Studies, Ethics, Film Studies, Education, History of Education, Law, Linguistics, Sociology of Media, Social Sciences and Political Science.

The CGC is committed to promoting Women and Gender Studies in Germany but also in an international context. We explore arrangements of gender relations in all social and cultural fields. We study social inequalities and the regimes of power that shape gender relations. We analyze symbolic constructions and representations of masculinity and femininity in past and present.

The CGC's bases its analytical work on an epistemological and theoretical critique of gender, maintaining its relevance as an historical, social, and cultural construction. This approach addresses ambivalence, paradox, as well as ruptures and non-synchronicities of social reality. Such feminist analyses continue and expand the tradition of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.

The CGC facilitates contacts among national and international scholars, initiates research projects and provides support and advice for scholars in questions of fundraising. It provides a platform to present and communicate the findings of such scholarship and to discuss current issues and challenges in women's and gender studies.