Not available in 2018/19
GI411      Half Unit
Gender, Postcoloniality, Development: Critical Perspectives and New Directions

This information is for the 2018/19 session.

Teacher responsible

Dr Sumi Madhok Pankurst House, 11.01N.

Availability

This course is available on the MPhil/PhD in Gender, MSc in African Development, MSc in Development Management, MSc in Development Studies, MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation, MSc in Gender, MSc in Gender (Research), MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation, MSc in Gender, Policy and Inequalities and MSc in Women, Peace and Security. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Pre-requisites

While there are no specific requirements, it is preferred that students have a background in social science or the humanities.

Course content

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the growing body of scholarship that critically interrogates gender and developmentalism at various postcolonial sites.  It provides an opportunity for students to encounter and engage with canonical works within postcolonial theory alongside those of gender and feminist theory in order to examine the historical and contemporary policy and practices in relation to gender and development.  As such, the course combines a study of the historical/textual/cultural/political and philosophical in relation to and alongside the political-economic  in order to explore  questions of developmentalism, subalternity, orientalism, representation, agency, neoliberalism, globalisation, human rights and humanitarianism. Finally, the course also introduces students to new directions in contemporary theoretical thinking that are either explicit critiques of postcolonial scholarship, i.e. texts such as ‘Empire’ and ‘Ethics’ or are critical engagements and even critical extensions of postcolonial thinking into new directions  e.g. Transnationalism.

Teaching

15 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the MT.

In line with departmental policy, there is a reading week in week 6.

Formative coursework

Essay (1500 words) to be presented in a workshop.

Indicative reading

  • Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. (2003) Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practising Solidarity, Duke University Press, Durham
  • Bhabha, Homi, Location of Culture (1994) Routledge, London: New York
  • Escobar, Arturo, (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton, N.J, Princeton University Press
  • Kapoor, Ilan, (2008) The Postcolonial Politics of Development, Routledge, London: New York; Mignolo, Walter, (2000), Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J;
  • Said, Edward. (1985, 1995) 'Orientalism', Penguin, Harmondsworth;;
  • Spivak, Gayatri. Chakravorty (1999) A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, Harvard University Press.
  • Grewal, Inderpal  and Caren Kaplan ( 1994) Scattered Hegemonies
  • Mbembe, Achille ‘Postcolony’, University of California Press, Berkeley.
  • Comaroff, Jean and John L. Comaroff ( 2012)  Theory From the South’, Paradigm, Boulder, London.
  • Butler, Judith and Athena Athanasiou ( 2013) Dispossession: The Performative in the Political, Polity.
  • Lughod, Lila Abu. Do Muslim Women Need Saving ( 2013) Harvard University Press.

Assessment

Essay (100%, 4000 words) in the LT.

Student performance results

(2014/15, 2016/17 combined)

Classification % of students
Distinction 38
Merit 56
Pass 6
Fail 0

Teachers' comment


Key facts

Department: Gender Studies

Total students 2017/18: 47

Average class size 2017/18: 16

Controlled access 2017/18: No

Value: Half Unit

Guidelines for interpreting course guide information

Personal development skills

  • Leadership
  • Self-management
  • Team working
  • Problem solving
  • Application of information skills
  • Communication
  • Specialist skills