SO248      Half Unit
Gender and Society

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

The course will explore the meaning of gender in contemporary society. It considers gendered relations of power and the articulation of gender with other kinds of social difference such as race, class and sexuality. A variety of theoretical perspectives will be applied to a number of substantive issues of contemporary concern.
Indicative topics are: gender and sexuality; masculinities; violence; gender and literature; representation; queer theory.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

This course is usually delivered through a combination of lectures and classes. There will be two hours or more of teaching each week in WT. There will also be a revision session in early ST.

Students will be expected to prepare one piece of formative assessment.

S Benhabib et al, Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange, Routledge, 1995

S Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2017

C Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Durham Duke University Press, 2003

A Clarke and D Haraway (Eds.), Making Kin not Population, Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2018

A Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003

J Halberstam, Trans: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2018

A Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013

C Thompson, Making Parents, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005

R Ray, J Carlson, A Andrews (Eds.), The Social Life of Gender, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2017

A more detailed reading list will be provided at the beginning of the course.

Presentation (20%)

This component of assessment includes an element of group work.

Essay (80%)

The group presentation to be completed in the WT. The essay assignment takes the form of a take home exam (from which two questions must be answered) in the spring exam period, to be completed within a specified five-day time period.

Attendance at all classes and submission of all set coursework is required.