GI424 Half Unit
Gender Theories: An Interdisciplinary Approach
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Dr Aiko Holvikivi
Availability
This course is compulsory on the MPhil/PhD in Gender, MSc in Gender, MSc in Gender (Research), MSc in Gender (Rights and Human Rights), MSc in Gender (Sexuality), MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation, MSc in Gender, Media and Culture, MSc in Gender, Peace and Security and MSc in Gender, Policy and Inequalities. This course is available on the MSc in Social Research Methods. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
All students in the Gender Studies Department (for whom the course is compulsory) will be given a place.
Outside students should apply by 10am UK time on Friday 26 September 2025. Please note the timing of your request within the first 24-hours will not impact chances of being accepted onto the course. Outside option requests will be allocated randomly after 10am on this date, if space remains.
Please do not email the Course Convenor with personal expressions of interest as these are not required and do not influence who is offered a place. Contact gender@lse.ac.uk with any queries.
Course content
The course aims to enable students to: become familiar with the fullest range of gender theories with particular attention to the intersections of gender, sexuality and race; develop a critical appreciation of these different theories of gender; use gender theories to inform their appreciation of existing work in their own disciplines and in an interdisciplinary context; use the analysis of gender as a basis for case study evaluation and research. It is a half unit course which runs for 10 weeks. It begins with a review of the formative influences on the development of gender theory, including the sex/gender distinction, race and intersectionality, production/reproduction. It enables students to consider the implications for analysis of a variety of sites and topics including coloniality, power and social and psychic structures of gender, representation, queer theory, nation, and rights. The course considers the impact of gender analysis on key areas of social science investigation, and develops these with particular attention to location, ethics and the importance of global and transnational dimensions. Our expectation is that this course provides a thorough grounding for work across all other courses and for the dissertation module.
Teaching
15 hours of seminars and 15 hours of lectures in the Autumn Term.
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.
Formative assessment
Short writing assignment in AT.
Indicative reading
- Ahmed, Sara. 2004 The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh University Press.
- Butler, Judith. 2004. Undoing Gender. Routledge.
- Crenshaw, Kimberlé W. (1989). ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Politics of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and AntiRacist Politics,’ University of Chicago Legal Forum, pp.139-167.
- Farris, Sara. 2017. In the Name of Women's Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism. Duke University Press.
- Fraser, Nancy. 2016. Contradictions of capital and care. New Left Review, 100: 99- 117.
- hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge.
- Liu, Lydia H. , Rebecca E. Karl & Dorothy Ko (eds). The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory. Columbia University Press.
- Tamale, Sylvia. 2020. Decolonization and Afro-feminism. Daraja Press.
Assessment
Exam (100%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period
Key facts
Department: Gender Studies
Course Study Period: Autumn Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: 152
Average class size 2024/25: 15
Controlled access 2024/25: YesCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.
Personal development skills
- Leadership
- Self-management
- Team working
- Problem solving
- Application of information skills
- Communication
- Specialist skills