MA Human Rights - Political Science (Standard Route) / Course details

This course will:

• Historically situate the political and theoretical movements that have contributed to varying, key ways of thinking about sexed divisions, gender, and sexuality
• Review key developments in social, political, philosophical, and cultural theories of gender and sexuality, how they intersect and relate to one another, and their political implications through thematic empirical examples
• Provide students with a solid critical foundation to read media content and everyday situations through the sociological lens informed by academic theories of gender and sexuality
• Assess the ways in which knowledge and ideas are produced, accounting for the intrinsic link between power and language, and the methodological implications this has for social scientists
• Encourage students to collectively debate and critically engage with academic and real-world material through seminar group activities

to review several developments in social, political, philosophical, and cultural theories of gender and sexuality
➢ to evaluate the form and structure of theoretical arguments from different disciplinary perspectives
➢ to assess the ways in which ideas are produced and distributed through processes grounded in the material working practices of academia and publishing, including those of reading and writing
➢ to encourage graduate students to exchange ideas and critical responses to theories of gender as members of a seminar group.

On completion of this unit, successful students will be able to:
• Discuss and engage with key texts within recent theories on gender and sexuality.
• Place debates around gender and sexuality in their historical and theoretical contexts
In addition, the students will develop and build on:
• critical reading skills
• ability to discuss and engage with texts
• ability to develop coherent, structured arguments

10 x weekly 2 hr sessions which will be a mixture of lectures and seminars.

Assessment is by a 3,000 word assessed essay