Gender Studies: Politics 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 modules is structured themes 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

There are a number of optional course modules available during your degree studies. The following is a selection of optional course modules that are likely to be available. Please note that although the College will keep changes to a minimum, new modules may be offered or existing modules may be withdrawn, for example, in response to a change in staff. Applicants will be informed if any significant changes need to be made.

You will choose 15 credits/one module from the three optional Gender Studies modules (two will be run each year)

• Body and Embodiment

  Drawing on a wide range of multidisciplinary of 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

and 60 credits from International Relations themed optional modules offered by the Department of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy (PIRP).

Indicative modules offered by PIRP include:

• Identity, Power and Radical Political Theory

  This module aims to introduce students to new conceptualizations of identity, difference, power, and politics that are associated most notably with what has been termed “Post-Marxist” or “New Left” politics and political philosophy.  Its premise is that recent changes in both political theory and practice – some of which are associated with changes linked to globalization and the emergence of new social movements – are compelling a paradigm shift in the way politics is understood.  It will focus on four concepts – identity, power, resistance, and otherness – that have become salient in contemporary political philosophy and international relations theory and on four theorists – Althusser, Gramsci, Laclau & Mouffe, and Foucault – whose thought on these issues has underpinned a great deal of “New Left” political theory and practice.  It will also look at how these issues and theories have become prominent in the theory and politics around feminism and lesbian politics and at new problematics for thinking about political thought and practice, with particular focus on what has been called the “micropolitical” realm.

• Political Concepts

  The module aims to give an advanced grounding in the central ideas and concepts in contemporary Anglo-American political theory, enabling you to engage in its ongoing debates, and to acquire a sense of the state of the discipline as a whole.  Attention will be paid to some of the main ideas and concepts of contemporary political theory, including political obligation, punishment, egalitarianism, meritocracy, human rights, and global justice.  Throughout, we will explore how different thinkers have offered different theoretical articulations of these ideas, as well as their practical implications. The module aims to enable you to offer critiques and commentary of various positions in contemporary political theory, and to develop your own ideas.

• Gender and Global Politics
• Media, Power and Public Affairs

  This module examines the relationship between media, power and public affairs in contemporary political life. You will look at a number of important themes, including theories of media effects, the construction of political news, election campaigning, government communications and spin, media regulation, the globalisation of media, agenda setting, and propaganda and the role of media in foreign policy and military intervention.

• Advanced Quantitative Methods

  This module will introduce you to advanced quantitative methods that address common problems such as non-linearity of data, multicollinearity in time-series data, causality and experiments. Through the seminar exercises and the assignments, you will gain not only a theoretical but also a practical understanding of quantitative methods and how these can be used in research. In this way, the module is envisaged to set you up for success in your MSc dissertation.

• Advanced Qualitative Methods

  This module expands on the qualitative methods taught in the first term. It explores the ways in which scholars in politics and International Relations engage in qualitative research. Each week we will explore one type of object for analysis and several methods of analysing it. We will explore grounded research, discourse and narrative analysis, case studies, visuals, emotions and archives and we will ask questions about knowledge and power, decolonisation and critical explication.