Dr Marsha Henry

This course is compulsory on the MPhil/PhD in Gender, MSc in Gender and MSc in Gender (Research). This course is available on the MSc in Culture and Society, MSc in Gender (Sexuality), MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation, MSc in Gender, Media and Culture, MSc in Gender, Peace and Security, MSc in Gender, Policy and Inequalities and MSc in Social Research Methods. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Please note the course may be limited to those taking GI402 as a core course depending on numbers.

This course introduces students to critical epistemological and methodological scholarship relevant for embarking on gender research at graduate and postgraduate level and beyond. The course provides a critique of ‘mainstream knowledge’ through an exploration of Black, queer, postcolonial and other intersectional feminist theories. In addition, the course offers an engagement with some of the practical, ethical and methodological challenges of conducting gender research and producing feminist knowledge through drawing on a variety of ‘disciplinary’ experiences and reflections.  Finally, the course engages with decolonising and decentring intiatives and questions the place of Gender Studies as an interdisciplinary field.  The course asks: what are the implications of producing research within, beyond and without the epistemic centres of global north feminism?

This course runs in Michaelmas term. It contains both asynchronous and interactive teaching and learning elements.

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6, in line with departmental policy.

Proposal Essay (1500 words) in the MT.

Patricia Hill Collins (2000) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.

Sara Ahmed (2016) Living a feminist life.  Duke University Press.

Uma Narayan and Sandra Harding, eds (2000) Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial and Feminist World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Project (100%, 3000 words) in the LT.

The project includes one part research proposal and one part reflective essay.