Gender Studies: History and Socio-Legal Studies pathway

Core Modules

• Gender Theory

  This module is designed to provide an intersectional understanding of gender theory, attending to inequalities between women as well as between women and men, and the structures, ideas, and practices that (re)produce them. Students will gain an understanding from a variety of different disciplinary perspectives, across the humanities, arts, social sciences, and sciences and will engage with how genders and sexualities matter in everyday contexts; how gender is lived and experienced; the conceptual and practical interdependence of genders and other key social and political concepts; the dimensions of gender-based and sexual violence; women’s agency; and the social construction of masculinities and femininities.

• Methods and Methodologies for Gender Studies

  This interdisciplinary module will introduce students to gender studies research and discuss the diverse methodological approaches undertaken by gender studies scholars. It examines the ontological and epistemological commitments that underpin feminist approaches to methodology as well as provides an introduction to research design and quantitative and qualitative methods and feminist critiques thereof. The module is structured around knowing and researching gender, designing a research project in gender studies, which kind of questions to ask, ethical gender research including general ethics principles and feminist ethics, and sex and gender as a variable, discourse, narrative and a social construct.

• Practices of Gender/Gendered Research

  The module will address the practices of gender research, gender activism and the practices of living gender and gendering across a wide variety of professional situations. Teaching will include the unique ways in which gender perspectives, feminist theory and queer theory combine theory and methodology into practice. Students will be provided with the opportunity to individually and collectively perform several practices of gender theories and gender research that are discussed in the classroom.

• Gender Studies Dissertation

  This module is designed for you to carry out a piece of independent research supervised by a member of the gender studies academic staff. The 10,000 – 12,000 words dissertation should engage in-depth with a topic or question in gender studies from a theoretical, empirical or practice-based point of view. You will submit a short research outline in the spring term, which is used to assign a supervisor with relevant expertise. Workshops will be arranged during the academic year to discuss requirements and how to manage a dissertation project and best-practice for writing. The dissertation will be submitted at the end of August.

• Academic Integrity

  This module will describe the key principles of academic integrity, focusing on university assignments. Plagiarism, collusion and commissioning will be described as activities that undermine academic integrity, and the possible consequences of engaging in such activities will be described. Activities, with feedback, will provide you with opportunities to reflect and develop your understanding of academic integrity principles.

   

Optional Modules

Below is a taster of some of the exciting optional modules that students on the course could choose from during this academic year. Please be aware these do change over time, and optional modules may be withdrawn or new ones added.

You will choose one module from the three gender studies optional modules (any two will run in any one year):

• Body and Embodiment

  Drawing on a wide range of multidisciplinary debates, cutting-edge theories and approaches across the field of body studies, queer theory, feminist theory, cultural studies and sociology, this module aims to provide timely and novel ways of thinking about the significance of the body and embodied relations in our contemporary era. It does so critically examining the implications of embodied cultural patterns in the formation of social processes, communication processes, and the political and cultural creation and reinforcement of inequalities.

  Through a range of multimodal approaches that involve both visual and textual resources you will be encouraged to immerse yourself in debates and perspectives around marginalisation, spatial segregation, disobedience, transgression, desire, disability, inclusion, bodily manipulation, representation and misrepresentation, (self)identity, subjectivity, mental health, biomedics, affects and governance.

• Gender, Power and Protest

  Women and other non-dominant groups are often excluded from public spaces and political decision-making.  This module looks at the ways in which gender shapes social mobilisation and protest and how those areas influence political outcomes. It takes a gender and intersectional lens to analyse how women’s mobilisation and protest articulate strategies and policy demands and how social movements challenge and interface with the state.

  You will explore how gender and intersectionality shape political outcomes including regime transitions, conflict resolution, and policy change, and how movements come to define success or why social movements succeed, fail, or experience backlash and inspire the rise of counter movements. The module takes a comparative approach to familiarise you with different social mobilisations and protest movements around gender and social and political change, and how diverse women’s participation in these movements influences domestic and international politics.

• Gender and Technologies

• Breaking Waves: Histories of Feminism in Britain

  This module explores the history of feminism in Britain from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The module explores the varied formation, configuration and contestation of feminist politics and activism, encouraging students to look beyond well-worn narratives of ‘waves’ of feminism. The module illuminates the development of feminist political thought, as well as diverse histories of activism and campaigning. Core themes include: feminism and the state; body politics and sexualities; women’s work; family life; and feminist political thought. Students are encouraged to develop their critical understanding of feminism through engagement with diverse primary material (including political texts, social surveys, photographs, film and oral histories) and via wide-ranging historical and multi-disciplinary scholarship.

• Fairy Tales: Narrating Queer Gender and Sexuality in the Twentieth Century

  This module examines the role of narrative in queer identity and queer life in modern and contemporary history. The lives of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) people have historically been silenced and marginalised within and by traditional dismodules. Therefore, this module will examine the ways in which queer people have sought to represent and analyse their own experiences through the narrative-driven mediums of oral history, film, and fiction. By using these ‘unconventional’ historical primary sources we will uncover how queer people have worked both with and against the grain of narrative in order to tell stories that are meaningful to them. Using archetypes and common narrative tropes queer people have sought to situate their lives and their stories within wider cultural dismodules. Nonetheless, we will also explore the concept of queer temporality, considering the potential for queer narratives to disrupt and challenge mainstream dismodules, even problematising chronology in the process. We will also consider how the narrative of queerness is slowly being integrated into the historical record, and the implications of this shift.

• Women, the Crusades, and the Frontier Societies of Medieval Christendom, 1000 to 1300

  In this module you will develop an understanding of how the crusading movement arose at a time of significant change for women. You will look at the effects of the Gregorian Reform and contemporary societal change on women’s traditional roles. You will examine how medieval historians used gendered language and moral tales to express their disapproval of women who took the cross, and the role of women in supporting crusader battles, often becoming the casualties of warfare. You will consider the role of noble women in providing political stability through regency and marriage after the First Crusade in the Latin society established in the East, including the dramatic reign of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem, and the effects of crusading on women who remained in the West.

• Gendering the Modern Islamic World

  In this module you will develop an understanding of the issue of gender in the early formative years of Islam and the emerging relationship between gender, the state and society. You will look at how the ‘normative role’ for Muslim women and men evolved before 1800 and the impact of both religious reform and of secular modernisation in the 19th and 20th centuries on the lives and experience of women and men living in a variety of Muslim societies. You will look at changes in individual states and regions, examining particular issues, such as the wearing of the veil, that have aroused significant debate among Muslims and non-Muslims alike. You will also consider the changing way in which gender issues in general, and those connected with Muslim women in particular, have been viewed by outsiders – comparing and contrasting, for example, the writings of 19th Century European travellers with more contemporary analyses provided by late 20th Century western anthropologists and journalists.

• New Imperial Histories

  This option explores recent approaches (particularly those of the last decade) to British imperial and colonial history, placing particular emphasis on those which advocate a transnational or comparative approach. It allows students to develop an appreciation of the influence of postcolonial studies, geography, anthropology, and sociology on history writing in this context. Seminar topics can include settler colonialism, colonial violence, the material culture of empire, the relationship between metropole and colony, sex and gender, race and racism, imperial networks and trajectories, law and empire, and attempts to reconnect cultural and economic interpretations of empire.

• Gender, Justice and Emotion in Georgian Britain

• Gender, Sexuality and Crime
• Interpersonal violence and harm
• Contemporary Debates and Sex Work
• Gender, Equality and Human Rights Law