IR476 Half Unit
Gender, Sexuality, Race and the Politics of Violence
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Availability
This course is available on the MSc in International Relations, MSc in International Relations (LSE and Sciences Po) and MSc in International Relations (Research). This course is not available as an outside option to students on other programmes. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
All International Relations (IR4) optional courses at LSE are Controlled Access and require an application via LfY. Students must include a statement in their LfY application of no more than 200 words explaining their interest in the course and its relevance to their academic and career goals.
Application deadline: 12:00 noon, Friday 26 September 2025.
Notification of outcome: by 12:00 noon, Monday 29 September 2025.
After this date, students should consult the MSc Course Availability Spreadsheet for remaining spaces on IR4-level courses.
For further details, see the LSE Selecting Courses webpage in the first instance or contact IR.Programmes@lse.ac.uk only if necessary.
All students are required to obtain permission of the Teacher Responsible by completing the online application linked to LSE for You. Admission to the course is not guaranteed.
Course content
This course foregrounds gender, race, sexuality – as embodied, as social, and as forms of intersectional hierarchy/ies – to examine the interrelation of seemingly-disparate practices of violence and manifestations of conflict. It moves away from the concept of “security” to highlight assemblages of threats and vulnerabilities that connect and challenge traditional international relations concepts of both scale (e.g. local, national, international etc.) as well as the legitimately “political”. The course encourages students to consider not only the ways different practices of violence are gendered, racialised, and sexualised, but also how these violences are implicated in social power relations, and the production of order/normality. The course examines both practices of violence and resistances violence. Particular thematic emphasis is placed on the questions of what constitute violence, and how this key conceptualisation relates to our ways of analysing, interpreting, and making sense, both academically and experientially, of the phenomenon.
Teaching
20 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.
Formative assessment
Students will submit a 2-page (max) bullet-point (no prose!) outline in Week Seven Winter term that specifies their proposed research question, evidence, and essay structure for the summative assignment
Indicative reading
- M Zalweski, Feminist International Relations: Exquisite Corpse (2013)
- C Sylvester, War as Experience (2012)
- M Erikson Baaz and M Stern, Sexual Violence as a Weapon of war? (2013)
- V Hudson, Sex and World Peace (2012)
- C Nordstrum, Shadows of War (2004)
- M Jackman, 'Violence in Social Life', ARS (Vol.28, 2002)
- T N Coates, Between the World and Me (2015)
Assessment
Course participation (10%)
Essay (75%, 4000 words)
Blog post (15%, 500 words)
Key facts
Department: International Relations
Course Study Period: Winter Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: Unavailable
Average class size 2024/25: Unavailable
Controlled access 2024/25: NoCourse 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
- Problem solving
- Application of information skills
- Communication