This course is available on the MSc in Culture and Society, MSc in Gender (Sexuality), MSc in Inequalities and Social Science, MSc in Political Sociology and MSc in Sociology. This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

This course has a limited number of places. For information on how to apply for a place on this course, please see Courses offered and related information.

The course introduces theoretical debates and contemporary issues in the study of identity, identification and subjectivity. Using a range of analytical approaches which draw on, but are not limited to, decolonial, psychoanalytic, feminist, queer and queer of colour theoretical interventions, the course will explore how social differences are produced, maintained and challenged within and through formations of identity. The course will consider the ways in which allegiances to particular identities can be a site for dismantling or entrenching social and political divisions, violences and inequalities within contemporary societies.  The course is transdisciplinary and will use a range of materials such as academic, fictional and visual texts. Indicative topics include femininities/masculinities; sexualities; post and anticoloniality, racialisation, performativity, affect, memory, melancholia, trauma, autobiography/autoethnography, alterity, positionality, politics, representation. NB while core themes will remain the same, topics may change slightly from year to year.

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

This course is usually delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars. There will be two hours or more of teaching each week in WT.

Presentation.

Students will be expected to complete one in class presentation with submission of slides in the WT.

Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that Matter. London and New York: Routledge

Hall, S. and du Gay, P (eds.) 1996. Questions of Cultural Identity. London and New York:  Sage

Lugones, M. 2007 ‘Heterosexualism and the Colonial / Modern Gender System’ in Hypatia 22 (1), Writing Against Heterosexism, pp. 186-209

Fanon, F. 1967. Black Skin/White Masks, New York: Grove Press

Tummala-Narra, P. 2022. ‘Can We Decolonize Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice?’, Psychoanalytic Dialogues 32 (3), 217-234

Ahmed, S. 2014. The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2nd Edition). University of Edinburgh Press

Bettie, J.  2003. Women without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity. University of California Press.

 ‘Queering Memory’ 2023. Special Issue: Memory Studies 16 (1)

Narayan, U and Harding, S 2000. Decentering the Centre: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial and Feminist World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2000.

Essay plan (10%, 1000 words) in March.

Essay (90%, 4000 words) in May.

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