MA in Gender Sexuality and Culture: Course Structure
In close consultation with the course directors, students will opt for a range of MA modules drawn from offerings in several Schools within the Faculty of Humanities. This approach allows greater flexibility and the opportunity to pursue research in new areas. Students of all backgrounds are welcome to apply.
The MA is comprised of:
- one year-long, team-taught course called "Gender, Sexuality, and Culture"
- a number of course options, designed independently in consultation with the course directors (see below)
- research training
- a dissertation (up to 15,000 words)
In past years students have been able to take some of the following options (note: these are subject to staff availability):
Required Core Module
EN6970 GENDER, SEXUALITY AND CULTURE (30 credits)
In 12 seminars over the course of two semesters, we examine a range of theoretical work around the concepts of gender and sexuality, as constructed in both the past and present. The course traces certain developments in the study of gender and sexuality to highlight differences in approach. (Wednesdays as indicated below, 10-12pm)
Semester One
- SEXOLOGY
- THE BODY
- HISTORICIZING SEXUALITY
- SEX SCANDALS
- HIV / AIDS REPRESENTATION
- IDENTITY
Semester Two
- EUGENICS AND BIO-FUTURES
- 'GATTACA' & NOMADS
- TRANS DEBATES
- SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
- BOYISH AESTHETICS: Contemporary Transgendered Visualities
- SEMINAR PRESENTATIONS
MA OPTIONS
The MA-level modules listed below may be available . Students are advised to contact individual subject areas for timetabling information.
School of Arts, Histories and Cultures
Archaeology
AY6012 GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN ARCHAEOLOGY
This course will introduce a variety of theoretical approaches used to explore gender and sexuality in the archaeological record. By juxtaposing classic studies with recent reinterpretations, we will analyse emerging feminist epistemologies within archaeology. International case studies will be drawn from both prehistoric and historic periods will be used to consider the role of material culture in the construction and maintenance of sexual subjectivities.
Art History and Visual Studies
HA6782 THE BODY AND/IN REPRESENTATION
HA6972 DADA & SURREALIST FILMS AND THEIR LEGACIES
HA 6402 THE SURREALIST IMAGE
CIDRA
IR - THE STRANGER IN MODERN SOCIETY
The course will consider both social constructions and literary representations of 'the stranger' in western culture, focussing particularly in the past century and up to the present. We will look at mid-twentieth-century conceptions of the existential stranger (Camus, Sartre, Wilson), and at sociological and cultural theories about the contemporary condition of 'strangeness' (Simmel, Schutz, Bauman). Related concepts of socially detached figures — the flneur, the exile — will also be considered. Questions of gender and sexuality will be relevant to our discussions, especially in relation to the issue of the female stranger, as will colonial and post-colonial constructions of the Other. We will also look at psychoanalytic approaches to the ways in which groups of individuals are rendered 'strange' or 'other' (Freud, Kristeva).
IR6002 - SEXUALITY, GENDER AND URBAN CULTURE
This course will critically examine some of the major themes and recent historical scholarship on the relation between sexualities, gender identities and the culture and social geography of the modern city. The course will explore these inter-related research issues via a detailed examination of London as a metropolitan centre since the nineteenth century, but work on other comparative urban locations will also be introduced and encouraged, for example on the classic European and north American metropoles and on post-colonial urban environments.
Empirical case studies will be used to focus a number of broad historiographical and
theoretical questions about the construction, regulation and experience of modern sexual and gender identities and their formation within metropolitan and urban cultures. The course will also raise a range of adjacent cultural issues which are located in their urban settings, including: the relationship between high and low cultures, the role of commerce and consumer society, planning and civic culture and the emergence of liberal or "permissive" morality. Students will be encouraged to critically assess a variety of methodological approaches, including the new cultural history and recent work in cultural and historical
geography.
English and American Studies
EN6141 - WRITING GENDER 1600-1700
EN7591 - ENGLAND IDENTITY AND WRITING
EN7031 - KEY ISSUES IN 20th CENTURY CULTURAL CRITICISM
EN6591 - COLONIAL DISCOURSE AND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY
EN6011 - POST-GAY CULTURE
EN6612 - THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY NOVEL: MASCULINITY, FEMININITY AND ANXIETY
AM6022 - THE AMERICAN BODY: RACE AND SEXUALITY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
History
HI4061 - History and Postmodernism
In the last two decades the so-called 'postmodern turn' in contemporary social and cultural theory has provided a radical challenge to the practices, approaches and epistemology of the discipline of History. While some have vociferously sought to dismiss these developments, others have begun to outline new types of histories which critically engage with 'postmodernism' broadly conceived. In seeking to take stock of these debates, this course aims to introduce you to a range of theoretical and historiographical questions which can then be explored at greater length both in your optional courses and your own research.
The course is divided into several sections. The first few weeks serve as a broad introduction to 'postmodernism', its consequences for the discourse of historical knowledge, and its reception by historians. The rest of the course considers some of the ways in which the 'postmodem turn' has influenced contemporary historical practice in the rethinking of social history, in gender history, in postcolonial history, and in science studies. From week 5 until week 11 the course alternates case studies confronting theoretical approaches and the empirical studies they inspired or contradicted. The emphasis here is firmly on the practice of history. The final session reviewing the course brings together the themes developed in the
previous weeks.
Religions and Theology
TH9222 -- GENDER AND GLOBALISATION
School of Social Sciences
Cultural Theory Institute
CU3621 - CULTURAL THEORY
To introduce students to key approaches and perspectives within cultural theory (from modernist to postmodernist), to provide students with the tools to critically assess these appraoches and the tools to mobilize the resources of cultural theory in the analysis of contemporary social, cultural and economic formations.
METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES (feminist philosophy; post-colonial theory; art as critique)
Politics
GV9672 : Feminism and Political Theory
The course will introduce students to some of the major debates and controversies in contemporary feminist thought. It explores key philosophical and methodological issues, including the construction of gender in social and political theory; questions of political agency and citizenship; gender equality versus gender difference; postmodern challenges.
These theoretical perspectives are then applied to specific issues of particular political salience, such as reproduction, pornography, masculinity, and homosexuality.
GV9811 : Gender & International Politics
Traditional International Relations (IR), with its focus on security, sovereignty and survival has been described as one of the most masculinist of disciplines. This module aims to challenge that characterisation of IR by considering what it means to bring gender into the study of IR. The module will look at how feminist theories have contributed to understandings of how we think and theorize about IR. A gender perspective exposes the male-biases implicit within core IR concepts such as the rational-action and sovereignty, and also requires us to bring in issues of political economy and identity (as well as difference) in understanding how and why hegemonic notions of masculinity dominate IR thinking. The module will not only focus on the theoretical implications of taking a gender perspective in IR, but will also look to some of the more practical issues in IR that can be recognised as "gendered" (such as security, nationalism, international production and structures of global governance).
Sociology
SY6492 - A CENTURY OF WOMEN: BRITISH & AMERICAN WOMEN FROM 1900 TO THE PRESENT
This module will trace how British and American women have lived through the twentieth century. It will look at culture, politics, work, daily life and sexuality. It will show the varied experiences of women in both societies, bringing out diversity and conflicting ideas as well as what has been shared. It will cover not only women's rights and wrongs but the impact of economic changes in work, the consequences of booms and depressions, migration and immigration, the growth of mass consumption and the media. Looking at the history of the twentieth century through the eyes of women, does not in fact mean viewing women in isolation. However. by integrating women's experiences our whole perspective starts to shift.
SY6382 - GENDER, TIME AND CHANGE
The module introduces students to sociological perspectives on time and change addressing theoretical and methodological issues. Students will address time and change in a number of inter-related and intersecting contexts including: the every-day organisation and understanding of time and change; age, the life course, biography and generation; historical time, social change and periodization; science and social theory. Students will participate in an oral history interview workshop.
NEW APPROACHES TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF FAMILY LIFE
The course will start with an introduction to new sociological approaches to personal life and intimacy which will involve looking at ideas derived from social anthropology, discursive psychology, narrative and autobiography as well as contemporary sociological theories. We will critically (but briefly) examine the works which cluster under the rubric of 'individualisation theories' and will then turn to substantive areas to explore how the 'cultural turn' in the study of personal life can be applied to different fields. Of particular significance will be issues of memory (and the idea that families were better in the past), whether kinship is given or negotiated, whether commitment is in decline, and why there is such contemporary interest in discovering family roots and ancestors. Finally the course will consider whether new forms of kinship are being created either through such means as creating families of choice, or through reproductive technologies and new legal means of establishing such things as paternity (e.g. through paternity and genetic testing). We will explore some recent key legal cases which have made groundbreaking changes to the definition of who a father is and whether legal relationships or blood relationships are more important.
THEORISING INTIMACIES
This module begins by outlining key concepts and definitions that social and cultural theorists have employed to discuss the nature and social significance of intimacies as they relate to gender and sexualities. Theoretical constructions of 'natural' relationships are then examined by exploring biologism and essentialism in influential nineteenth and twentieth century psychoanalytic, sexological and relational theories. Following this, structural analyses of intimacies are outlined and considered, by focussing on feminist and materialist theories of sexuality and relating. Theories of 'regulated' and 'resisting' intimacies, are explored in the context of post-structural and queer theoretical analyses of gender and sexualities. Analyses of 'reinvented' or reconfigured contemporary intimacies are considered by focussing on debates about gender and sexualities in late modernist 'reflexivity' theories. Analyses that imply the 'end' of intimacy are explored through theoretical debates on the personal and relational implications of radical contingency and cultures of narcissism.
School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures
See individual subject areas for specific offerings.
- French Studies
- German Studies
- Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies