MA Gender Studies

This social science module explores the ways in which knowledge is created, communicated, consumed and debated in the social and political sciences. It aims to expose students to key issues of methodological choice, issue framing, research ethics and author subject-position through interrogation of contemporary and classical texts of relevance to the social and political sciences and the disciplinary concerns of the MA programmes on which it appears. The module seeks to develop students’ skills in critical reading and in both oral and written academic debate.

This module introduces key issues and concepts in gender history, with particular reference to early modern masculinity. An introduction to key ideas and scholars is provided, focussing particularly on the ways in which scholars of the history of masculinity use a variety of texts – from journals and letters to visual material and published works – in order to elucidate the ideals and experiences of both early modern men and women.

The module offers students the opportunity to engage in sustained analysis of developments in scholarship relating to masculinity in the period c.1500-1750. This is designed to enable them to demonstrate their understanding and ability to structure their own research, utilising primary and secondary sources, including works from cognate disciplines such as gender theory and other theoretically-informed approaches.

This module explores feminist theories of gender, applying feminist perspectives to contemporary issues. As there is no single ‘feminist’ perspective, the module will introduce students to different strands of feminist thought including liberal, radical, black, postcolonial and postmodern feminisms. Feminist debates around the nature of gender/sex, the causes of gender inequality, the intersection of gender with other important social and political identities (such as race, class and sexuality) and disagreements over strategies for how best to address continuing gender inequalities will all be addressed. In addition, we will examine the extent to which a postfeminist perspective which takes feminism for granted but at the same time dismisses its continuing relevance is currently dominant in society. We will also engage with questions around the relevance of feminism to men and masculinity. Finally, we will consider what light feminist theoretical perspectives can shed on a range of gendered issues. Sample topics might include: the family, pornography, popular culture, the workplace, the family, everyday sexism and objectification. Students will be encouraged to develop their own critical and informed answers to key questions such as how far gender is a performance (as opposed to biologically determined), which feminist perspectives offer the most promising tools for challenging the contemporary gender order and how we can apply feminist thought to re-imagining gender relations. In accordance with a feminist pedagogical ethos, students will also be required to demonstrate a reflexive approach to the theory, analysing the links and disjunctures between their own experiences and feminist theoretical debates. Overall, the module will aim to ‘make the familiar strange’ and enable students to question their own assumptions, as well as popular and common sense notions of gender.

This module considers the ways in which gender, gendered identities and gendered experiences were constituted, modified and enforced through and by material culture in modern Britain from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.

It draws on current research which examines a wide range of objects, buildings and materials in order to investigate how changes in global trade and the economic organisation of society intersected with developing ideas of gender and gendered impulses towards self-expression.

The module will take a broadly chronological approach but will also take a thematic approach, examining different categories of object such as fashion and clothing, and domestic objects. Students will also have the chance to gain experience and confidence in using material culture in historical research and will survey the literature on this subject.

This module examines the multi-directional and variable relationship between gender, media and culture. We will interrogate the category of gender as a tool of cultural analyses and its relation to media and popular culture. Gender will be presented as central to media and cultural formations; while media, mediation and culture will be presented as central to gender formations. Key concepts to be examined in relation to gender will include body, class, power, sexual difference, masculinity/femininity race/ethnicity, identity/non-identity, subjectivity. These concepts will be introduced and examined in relation to case studies, media practices and texts from a variety of historical and geo-political contexts.

This module deconstructs the interrelationships between gender, crime, deviance and society. It will explore gender through a criminological lens and aims to introduce students to ‘gendered’ explanations of crime and deviance. The significance of gender in the various agencies of the criminal justice system will also be explored, as will its presence a range of discourses around victimhood and offending. The ways in which ‘justice’ can be gendered will be identified and critiqued. The module will also aim to critically engage with notions of harm, dangerousness and risk, and unpick the arguments found within feminist criminologies.

This module aims to provide the opportunity to develop an in-depth understanding of some central concepts and theoretical debates on gender and sexuality including feminist theory and masculinities. These can be examined in greater depth in the context of key issues relating to power and economy in contemporary global politics.
These theories can then be applied to a range of case studies/issues. These case studies may change to reflect contemporary issues and academic developments but sample topics include decision-making processes in national and international political systems, the construction of gender and sexual identities in a globalised world and militarised masculinities.

The independent study module allows students to explore their own interests relevant to gender studies in accordance with the University’s Student as Producer policy. It provides students with an opportunity to undertake and produce an independent piece of in-depth research. Students will develop their research ideas in collaboration with teaching staff and will be supported to design and implement a coherent, robust research project and to write up their findings/analysis in the form of a dissertation. The format of the study will vary from primarily library-based or theoretical research to the production of empirical research through qualitative or quantitative fieldwork. Students will need to: examine an issue related to gender studies; demonstrate the ability to critically review the relevant academic literature; address a clear research question or hypothesis; address ethical issues in conducting social research ; and give a clear explanation and defence of the methods they have chosen as most appropriate to their study.

This module explores masculinities and the operation of power through masculinities in society. It aims to engage with key theoretical perspectives on gender and masculinity, taking an in-depth look at these concepts, along with related ideas such as ‘hegemonic masculinity,’ ‘heteronormativity’ and ‘intersectionality.’ Important contemporary debates in masculinities scholarship will be addressed, such as around hegemonic masculinity, whether this is a useful concept and how far it can explain (global) gendered power relations. Masculinities and masculinity will also be explored in different empirical settings.

This module is designed to introduce students to researching in social and political sciences. The aim of the module is to provide a crucial foundation for all students (regardless of disciplinary background) to understand debates around research methods/methodologies in social science; to enable familiarity with a variety of research methods and to equip students to be able to critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of applying specific methodologies/methods to different research projects in social and political sciences. Overall, the module will aim to prepare students for independent studies later in their degree and equip them with transferable research skills.

This module explores the medicalisation of sexuality from the nineteenth century to the present. Although what was considered healthy sexual behaviour had long occupied Western medical thought, in the nineteenth century physicians grouped together a series of sexual issues and made them the object of intense specialised analysis unparalleled in previous medical study. Students can explore how medical knowledge has shaped understandings of sex differences, gender, sexual behaviour and sexuality over time, and how, in turn, political and cultural problems have influenced science.

This module examines the way in which women have uncovered and used their own history for varying ends from the late Medieval period up to the present. Rather than present a narrative of women’s history, it will ask students to engage in critical thought on the uses of feminist scholarship within the discipline of history. It explores the variety of ways in which women’s history has been put to use over a 600 year period in ways which have been conditioned by the historical conditions prevailing at the time for both men and women. It utilises a variety of texts, from mass market biography to writings aimed more specifically at policy makers, other historians, and campaign groups. It will end with a consideration of the ways in which contemporary feminist women’s historians envisage the future of women’s history.

This course focuses on the history of gender and sexuality and introduces some of the key concepts and thinkers in the field, from feminists to queer theories. It examines some of the historical debates about notions of gender and sexuality, and the complex structures binding them together.

It looks at the intersections of gender and sexuality with class, race, ethnicity and other modes of social belonging, and covers different geographical areas. It also introduces students to the main methodologies with which to approach the historical documents relevant to the history of gender and sexuality, from the early modern period to the present.

This module also aims to widen students’ understanding of the themes and issues in the history of gender and sexuality, provide students with the conceptual and practical skills of an historian of gender and sexuality, and strengthen students’ critical thinking in the field.

This module aims to explore some of the extraordinarily exciting, diverse and abundant range of short stories, novels, life writing, drama, performance and poetry produced by women in the 21st Century.

The module begins firstly with the consideration of the contemporary revival of feminist theory and politics and attempt to think through the variety of ways in which feminism is meaningful in a post-millennial context. Secondly, the module will attempt to trace and examine ways in which women writers engage with and represent the 21st Century, and specifically their negotiation of personal identity, motherhood, ageing, sex and sexuality, as well as local/ global politics, war, race, class, religion, region and nation. Thirdly, you can study ways in which contemporary women’s writing utilises, negotiates and challenges traditions of literary and dramatic form to find new and radical ways of writing the 21st Century.

You will also be invited to consider the validity of approaching women’s writing as a distinct category and can explore the relationship between women’s writing and feminist theory and politics.

This module explores from a sociological perspective a range of women’s embodiment issues in relation to a range of sporting physical culture(s). The module commences by considering some of the key theoretical perspectives on women’s lived experience of sport and physical cultures, such as feminist theories, symbolic interactionism and phenomenological approaches. The module aims, overall, to challenge students’ thinking and raise questions about tacit, taken-for-granted assumptions and presuppositions regarding women in sporting and physical cultural contexts, via a range of learning and teaching approaches.