
MA Humanitarianism and Conflict Response / Course details
Year of entry: 2025
- View tabs
- View full page
Course unit details:
Gender, Race andSecurity
Unit code | HCRI62221 |
---|---|
Credit rating | 15 |
Unit level | FHEQ level 7 – master's degree or fourth year of an integrated master's degree |
Teaching period(s) | Semester 2 |
Available as a free choice unit? | Yes |
Overview
This module explores the complex relationship between ideas of security and their gendered and racialized logics. Drawing on contemporary feminist, critical race and postcolonial approaches to studying the world, this module serves to give students a deeper understanding of how security is represented, enacted, legitimated and experienced. Through a critical engagement with the concepts of security, race and gender, the module encourages students to reflect on and question what is ‘known’ about security and to challenge common sense presentations of the practices. By positioning both gender and race as topics of study as well as analytical lenses, the module will show that they are foundational and constitutive of our ideas about security and our responses to insecurity.
Aims
- Demonstrate an advanced understanding of and capacity to critically engage with a range of feminist and postcolonial approaches to the study of security.
- Consider and show rigorous reflection on the ethical and methodological challenges of researching security from feminist, critical race and postcolonial perspectives.
- Critically interrogate the gendered and racialized logics through which contemporary security is narrated, legitimized and resisted.
- Show understanding of and sensitivity to the ‘everyday’ nature of security practices and their uneven effects on gendered and racialized bodies.
- Show appropriate understanding of and ability to contribute to debates on security, and its gender and race dynamics, through the development of analytical and presentation skills and independent learning and research skills.
Teaching and learning methods
The module will be delivered through 10 thematic teaching sessions, which will take the form of 45 minute lecture and a 1-hour seminar-style discussion of key texts, exercises to think through the implications of the topics under discussion. The classes will be supported by Blackboard with all lecture and reading materials shared via the platform.
Knowledge and understanding
Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:
- Debates about gender and race as socially constructed categories which underpin ideas of security.
- Issues shaping debates about security and our responses to insecurity.
- The role of narrative and diverse forms of representation in shaping discourse about security.
- The historical and spatial dimensions of discourses of insecurity and how these map onto particular gendered and racialized bodies.
Intellectual skills
- Identify and evaluate different conceptual and theoretical perspectives.
- Critically analyse debates about the meanings of and constructions of security, race and gender.
- Investigate and analyse the role that race and gender have played in contemporary security issues and responses.
- Develop reflective practice on the ethical implications of the study and practice of security.
- Show the ability to connect the ‘everyday’ experiences of security and insecurity to broader global discourses through the application of appropriate theoretical lenses
Practical skills
- Research skills, including planning, prioritisation of tasks, identification and location of primary and secondary sources, evaluation of findings.
- Essay-writing skills related to the analysis of a specific question, construction of arguments, assessment and deployment of evidence, writing style.
- Applied analytical skills, built through an understanding of both academic and operational questions gender, race and security.
- Participation in seminar discussion and presentations in order to aid the research, analysis and presentation skills.
Transferable skills and personal qualities
- Students will have the opportunity to develop interpretation and argumentation skills, both written and oral form, through assessed coursework and seminar presentations.
- Students will develop research and project management skills throughout the course.
- The course will foster an ability to move between different disciplinary approaches, promoting flexibility and adaptable working methods.
Employability skills
- Other
- In addition, students will develop a set of skills that are also relevant more broadly. At the end of the module, students will significantly advance their skills in: · Working independently to deadlines · Working with as part of a team with others · Analysing and evaluating evidence · Constructing coherent, substantiated arguments · Producing written work in a variety of formats and for different audiences · Communicating verbally and in written form
Assessment methods
Method | Weight |
---|---|
Other | 30% |
Written assignment (inc essay) | 70% |
Source analysis | Summative | 30% |
Essay | Summative | 70% |
Essay plan | Formative | N/A |
Feedback methods
Feedback method | Formative or Summative |
Written feedback on assignments | Summative |
Oral feedback in class | Formative |
Oral feedback one-to-one during office hours | Formative/summative |
Recommended reading
Bhatia, Michael V. ‘Fighting Words: Naming Terrorists, Bandits, Rebels and Other Violent Actors’, Third World Quarterly 26:1 (2005): 5-22.
Mutua, M. 2001. ‘Savages, Victims, and Saviours: The Metaphor of Human Rights’, Harvard International Law Journal 42(1): 201-245.
Mbembe, A. and L. Meintjes. 2003. Necropolitics. Public Culture. 15(1): 11-40
Stanski, K. 2009. ‘“So These Folks are Aggressive”: An Orientalist Reading of “Afghan Warlords”’, Security Dialogue 40(1): 73-94.
Enloe, Cynthia (2014), Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, 2ndedition, London: University of California Press
hooks, bell (2000), Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre, London: PLuto
Kronswell, Annica and Erica Svedberg (eds.) (2013), Making Gender, Making War: Violence, Military and Peacekeeping Practices, Abingdon: Routledge
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade (2003), Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, London: Duke University Press.
Parpart, Jane L., and Marysia Zalewski (eds.) (2008), Rethinking the Man Question: Sex, Gender and Violence in International Relations, London: Zed Books
Shepherd, Laura J. (2013), Gender, Violence and Popular Culture: Telling Stories, Abingdon: Routledge
Sylvester, Christine (2013), War as Experience: Contributions from International Relations and Feminist Analysis, Abingdon and New York: Routledge
Khalili, L. 2011. ‘Gendered Practices of Counterinsurgency’, Review of International Studies 37(4): 1471-1491.
Welland, J. 2015. ‘Liberal Warriors and the Violent Colonial Logics of “Partnering and Advising”, International Feminist Journal of Politics 17(2): 289-307.
Medie, P. A. 2013. Fighting Gender-based Violence: The Women’s Movement and the Enforcement of Rape Law in Liberia. African Affairs. 112 (448): 377-397
Razack, Sherene. Dark Threats and White Knights¿: the Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping, and the New Imperialism . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
Study hours
Scheduled activity hours | |
---|---|
Seminars | 20 |
Independent study hours | |
---|---|
Independent study | 130 |
Teaching staff
Staff member | Role |
---|---|
Roisin Read | Unit coordinator |