Embodiment and institutionalisation of violence, conflict & conciliation

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

In this module we explore links between violence and conflict in society and its inscription into the body, memory, and habit. We consider the establishment of such connections within social institutional orders, and within disorder, questioning the salience of such distinctions. Therefore, module readings will, in Nancy Scheper-Hughes' words, 'continually juxtapose the routine, the ordinary the symbolic and normative violence of everyday life ("terror as usual") against sudden eruptions of unexpected, extraordinary or "gratuitous" violence (as in genocide, state terror, dirty wars and civil wars).' We explore the dialectic between body and society, as mediated through violence but also pleasure: efforts by society and state to appropriate bodies such as through initiation ritual, military drilling, and everyday rituals of social ordering, the responses of embodied subjects ranging from 'thralldom' and accommodation to resistance, and issues they raise around gender, personhood, and agency. We examine the inscription of nation, race, ethnicity, class and gender into bodies and embodied practices. Finally, we reflect on a range of discussions and debates concerning the relations between body, language, violence, pain, and fear.

Feminism, Law and Society

30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

The module considers different feminist theories and understandings of the role of gender in society. You reflect upon the consequences of that role on the rules, principles and policies of that society. The ambition of the module is to explore the extent to which sex and gender inform the rules of law so as to foster or undermine inequalities in society. In exploring the contours of law as they are informed by gender considerations the module will also explore the relationship between law and society in the construction of gender and sexual identities. The module uses traditional legal sources - cases, statutes, legal treatises on the subject - in addition to academic commentary and analysis from sociology, law, politics, philosophy and cultural studies. It will also be informed by developments in the politics of gender and by changes instigated by feminist, critical race, and queer theory.

Gender Politics and Social Research

30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

This module approaches feminist theory and methodology at advanced levels, critically exploring feminist research on a number of different issues and engaging with the politics of the research process itself. As a core module on the MA in Gender Studies, it is intended to prepare you to conduct independent research and to produce your dissertation.

The first half of the module introduces different methodologies and methods, encouraging you to reflect critically on their strengths and weaknesses, and how feminists have used them in the service of political projects. In the second half of the module, you will design research projects on two case-study issues and attempt to operationalise key feminist theories.

Gender, Sexuality and Family Law

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

The module examines the role of gender and sexuality in setting the parameters of family life in society and, as a consequence, in the rules of family law. You explore the extent to which gender and sexuality inform the rules of family law so as to foster or undermine gender and sexuality inequalities in society. In exploring the contours of family law as they are informed by gender and sexuality considerations the module will also explore the relationship between law and society in the construction of gendered and sexualised identities. Although the module will focus on traditional legal sources - cases, statutes, legal treaties on the subject - it will also be informed by developments in the politics of gender and sexuality and by changes in feminist and queer theory.

Queering Popular Culture

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module offers you the chance to explore lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer contributions to, and perspectives on, the key fields of popular culture, including film, television, the press, popular music, fashion and style. Topics for detailed study will include lesbian representation in mainstream television genres; cinematic homosexualities and their historical context; lesbian and gay 'community television'; contemporary lesbian and gay magazines and newspapers; queer pop from David Bowie to the Pet Shop Boys and beyond; sexuality and style politics; and the pleasures and problematics of camp.

You will investigate issues of representation, consumption and interpretation; unravel debates over stereotyping, subcultures and sensibilities; and ask whether a specifically 'queered' critique of the existing academic discourses used in the study of popular culture is conceptually feasible and/or politically desirable. You can expect to sharpen and deepen your skills in interdisciplinary cultural analysis, and there will be a particular emphasis on a self-reflexive examination of (y)our own popular cultural tastes and practices, exploring the connections and contradictions between theoretical accounts of popular images and forms and our experiential investments in them as consumers located in (or interested in) sexual minorities.

The approach on this module is unrepentantly interdisciplinary - there is no overarching theoretical model to which you will be obliged to subscribe. Students with or without backgrounds in cultural studies will be made equally welcome.

Sex and Death in Global Politics

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

Sex and Death in Global Politics  explores the multiple connections between gender and violence in contemporary international politics in historical and theoretical perspective. War and other forms of collective violence seem to be everywhere in world affairs, but it has often been commented that the many manifestations of gender are less visible. At times aspects of gender violence (such as war rape) seem to enter into the realm of academic International
Relations, whilst other questions (such as the inclusion of homosexuals in the military) have relevance for public policy and national culture. But many other issues (such as media representations of gender violence, the continuum between 'peace' and 'war' violence, or the connection between armies and prostitution) are more commonly discussed within sociology, political theory and history. This module will examine a broad range of such questions from an inter-disciplinary angle, with a particular stress on theoretical perspectives and academicpolitical controversies.

Topics will include:

gender in war and society; the intersection of race, class, and gender in collective violence; military masculinity; women at war and the question of the 'feminine' in the perpetration of violence; wartime sexual violence; genocide and 'gendercide'; sex industries and violence; homosexuality and military culture (including queer theory perspectives and recent debates about 'pink-washing' and 'homonationalism'); feminism, anti-feminism and gender studies in the academy; gender and the ethics of war; and gender violence in popular culture.

The Body: current controversies and debates

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

The body has recently become a key focus for sociological theorising and research. Much of this work has focused on defining the body as a socially constructed phenomenon, and exploring how it is produced through various social and cultural practices and discourses, and categories such as gender, class, race and sexual orientation. However, the body is also highly politically charged; a key site at which oppression is meted out, and is a focus of regulation and governance at individual, group, national and international levels. Bodies, and particularly women's bodies, are also at the nexus of some of the most controversial debates of our time.  

This module looks at the politics of the body from a sociological point of view, exploring themes of embodiment and power through a variety of controversial issues such as HIV/AIDS, sexual violence, sex work, abortion, cosmetic surgery and eugenics. You will think through various debates in relation to a broad canon of theories from feminism and sociology, around notions such as rights, bodily autonomy and integrity, structures and discourses, and the formation and regulation of identities. Gender will be a central thread throughout, and attention will be paid to how it intersects with other social categories such as class, 'race', sexual orientation, age, and (dis)ability.
 
 

The Cinematic Body

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module examines the interplay between body and cinema. This includes not only the representation of the body in films but also how the body of the spectator and cultural formations of the body influence and shape cinema itself. You will draw on a wide range of theoretical frames (including film studies, psychoanalysis, gender studies, philosophy, feminism and cultural theory) to consider a variety of themes including: the body as resistance and force; notions of beauty and the sublime; the hysterical body; discipline and punishment; the body as desire. The module will also consider recent developments in film, including the idea of cyber-cinema and its impact on the body.

Women and Human Rights

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module is divided into two halves. The first half consists of core topics providing a theoretical framework for the study of women's human rights. You will draw on feminist legal theory, human rights theory, anthropological and historical materials and international and national rights instruments and documentation. The second half focuses on the conception, implementation, adherence and breach of a specific right or related rights.