Women’s & Gender Studies

This course engages with the politics of policy making from queer and feminist perspectives, rooting the discussion in cultural discourse of contemporary society. Students discover how policies shape – and are shaped by – the lived experiences of individuals and communities. Students explore the importance of gender and sexuality for various forms of policymaking across local, national, and international levels. Using various innovative approaches and perspectives in gender and sexuality studies, the course investigates how sexual and gender inequalities, in connection with other power structures like race, ethnicity, and class, are embedded and activated in the policymaking process.

This course analyzes how the issues related to LGBT+ populations give rise to power relations in and for space, between different actors and at different scales, from the local to the global. On the one hand, the course emphasizes the spatial dimension of the minority experience of LGBT+ people. On the other hand, it shows that the issues relating to this group are invested with multiple meanings by different actors, leading to an accentuation of the processes of opposition between “us” and “them”, between “here” and “there”. To this end, the course draws on several social science disciplines. In addition to providing knowledge about gender and sexuality, this course allows students to look at contemporary issues (urban spaces, migration, globalization, international relations, etc.) in a new light. It also introduces students to the research process in the social sciences. 

This course examines how sex, gender and sexuality are entangled with science and technology. How are our understandings of sex and sexuality informed by a history of scientific investigation? How do gender and location shape the production of scientific knowledge? How is science mobilized in claims that binary sex and gender have a natural and biological basis? And how can we use science and technology in the pursuit of feminist and queer goals? The course examines these questions from the perspective of feminist, queer and decolonial theories of science and technology. Key topics include: feminist objectivity; the false binary of nature vs nurture; the construction of biological sex; postcolonial science studies; reproductive technologies; and feminist and queer interfaces with biomedicalization.

How does gender organize lives, bodies, sexualities and desires? How does gender relate to sex and sexuality? Are there really only two genders? How and why is gender such an integral part of how we identify ourselves and others? This course introduces students to foundational concepts in the study of gender and critically engages with questions of identity, sexuality, family, the body, cultural practices and gender norms in light of contemporary gender theories.

This course offers students unfamiliar with life in Britain an opportunity to explore key aspects of literature, art, and culture in Contemporary Britain (20-21st century) as revealed in plays, novels, poems, films, and scholarly texts. The course is topic-based, with a range of related topics covered under the themes of feminism and multi-culturalism. Each topic is introduced through formal lectures and the use of audio and visual materials. The course facilitates the development of intercultural competence within a diverse cohort in terms of nationality, and students consider frameworks for discussing intercultural competence. The course also includes an external trip related to the themes of the course, for example to a play or exhibition. 

This course will guide students toward an understanding of the intellectual challenges and debates of gender in the discipline of philosophy. It will seek to explore how the assumptions of gender have shaped philosophical discourse, and how feminist thought has destabilised and reconfigured the parameters of debates in epistemology, ethics, and social and political philosophy.

This course explores the meaning of gender both in different academic disciplines and in contemporary culture. It provides an introduction to the history of the concept of gender and examines how different understandings of gender shaped history; that is, how they formed our present understandings of past historical phenomena. The course traces how gender and sex shaped individuals and society and how both reflect gendered ideas. It looks at deeply connected issues to gender and sexuality, such as the body, the state, and the mundane life of the past; but also reflects on ideas of resistance, non-conformity, and intersectional issues. Particular emphasis is placed on visual practices and global connections.

Based on the theory of gender research, this course introduces the physiological basis and causes of differences between the sexes, analyzes the social pressures faced by men and women in real society and the disharmony caused by differences in life, and helps us understand the history of the development of gender status, the differences between the sexes in physiology, psychology, behavior, etc., and the theories and skills of getting along between the sexes.

The course focuses on the ways in which gender, power, and sexuality shape and are shaped by our lived experiences, social interactions, institutional structures, and cultural norms. Students engage with diverse theoretical frameworks to critically analyze a wide array of relevant topics, including reproduction, sex work, and intimate relationships, among others. Through contemporary case studies, the course explores how gender and sexuality intersect with power, race, class, ethnicity, age and ability, and how it operates within wider institutional, political, and socio-cultural frameworks.

In order to approach the Feminine/Masculine dichotomy or its complementarity, it is worth taking a diachronic approach that embraces different literary genres and philosophical arguments. From the earliest texts of Antiquity to contemporary novels, it's important to note the clichés and canons of the two genres in order to better reopen representations of binarity. Starting with Plato's myth of the androgyne, which proposes the invention of the sexes, the course works on the definitions of masculine and feminine, as well as their relationships. It then studies extracts from medieval literature to analyze the implementation of a codified image of masculine behavior and feminine posture. This highlights works less frequently found in school anthologies, and discovers original voices that sing of the links between men and women. The Renaissance period is explored through a painting by a man depicting a woman: starting from this banal subject, it sees the stakes, both poetic and aesthetic, in the figuration of the symbols chosen. Crossing the Grand siècle, with its coquettes, inconstants and honest men, the course moves on to the Age of Enlightenment, where the question of gender becomes pressing, with the proposals of Poulain de la Barre, for example. The poetics of uncertain or metamorphosed genders is explored using texts from the 19th and 20th centuries: the castrato, the hermaphrodite, and transvestites are studied. The course looks at new ways of referring to these figures as they find their representation in literature. Intersexuality will thus be examined in the light of works chosen for their literary interest and the philosophical reflection they generate. Finally, it takes a closer look at representations of male and female bodies in contemporary literature, focusing on the poetics of weakness, injury and ageing, with particular reference to the motif of the gaze of a third party and that of the mirror to which one speaks of one's own body.