Dr Jin Haritaworn, COL. B514.

This course is available to any suitably qualified Masters students within the School. It is likely to be of interest to students taking the following degree programmes: MSc Gender, MSc Gender (Research), MSc Gender, Media and Culture, MSc Gender, Policy and Inequalities, MSc Gender, Development and Globalisation, MSc Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies, MSc Culture and Society, MSc Social and Cultural Psychology, MSc Sociology, MSc Media, Communication and Development, MSc Media and Communications and MSc Media and Communications (Research).

There are no formal pre requisites for this course, but students should approach the course convenor to discuss whether it would be appropriate for them to take this option.

This course brings together material from sociology, cultural and media studies, gender studies, critical race and postcolonial studies, queer and transgender theory, history, philosophy and critical legal studies to examine contemporary constructions of the body. Students will be presented with key concepts such as performativity, transgression, body projects, affect and bio/necropolitics. However, the course is not primarily designed to equip students with theoretical knowledge at a high level of abstraction, but rather to allow them to engage with concrete issues and contemporary debates around embodiment.

Topics likely to be addressed include: Theories of the body; Bodies, affect and space; Body modification; Constructing age; Disability; Transgendered bodies and representation; 'Mixed race' phenomenology; Feminism and the wounded body; War, state racism and the precarious body; Beauty and the black body.

This course will be taught by means of a weekly lecture followed by a seminar in the MT.

Alexander, C. and Knowles, C. (2005), Making Race Matter: Bodies, Space and Identity, Basingstoke: Palgrave; Bordo, S. (1993), Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body, Berkeley: University of California Press; Butler, J. (1993), Bodies that Matter, London: Routledge; Gullette, M. (2004), Aged by Culture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Foucault, M. (1991), Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison, London: Penguin; Fraser, M. and Greco, M. (eds.) (2005), The body: A reader, London: Routledge; Gilman, S. (1985), Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of sexuality, race and madness, Ithaca, New York: Cornell UP; Ifekwunigwe, J. (ed.) (2004), 'Mixed Race' Studies: A Reader, London: Routledge; Lancaster, R. and di Leonardo, M. (eds.) (1997), The gender/sexuality reader: Culture, history, political economy, London: Routledge; Corker, M. & Shakespeare, T. (2002), Disability/Post-modernism: Embodying Disability Theory, London & New York: Continuum books; Stryker, S. and Whittle, S. (2006) (eds.), The Transgender Studies Reader, London: Routledge; Tate, S. (2009), Black Beauty: Aesthetics, Stylization, Politics, Aldershot: Ashgate.

One assessed essay of 3,000 words (50%) to be handed in on the first day of Lent Term 2010 and one two-hour examination (50%) in June.