Women’s & Gender Studies

This course examines concepts of trauma and memory as historically and culturally contingent, asking what counts as trauma, for whom and under what circumstances. The course will open by tracing history of the concept of trauma in psychoanalysis and medicine, followed by critical perspectives from feminist, queer, transgender, critical race, and body studies perspectives. It also looks at different sites, forms and representations of trauma in literature, films, art, oral narratives, memoirs, photographs, and social movements.

This course analyzes key practical and theoretical elements in the cinematographic representation of the LGBTQI+ collective, in its different manifestations throughout the history of cinema. It examines the ethical and aesthetic universe of so-called queer cinema in search of its own Latin American identity.

The course offers an alternative review of the history of Western concert music to know the most relevant ideas produced by the feminist perspective and to make visible the role that women have played as composers, performers, and patrons of music. It discusses gender inequality, both in the world of music and in Chilean society today.

This course mainly considers various gender relations of the contemporary Japanese society from sociological and cultural perspectives. Students are expected to understand and critically analyze the basic characteristics of gender relations in Japan through various readings and class discussion. Students are expected to have critical perspectives on “normal” everyday life upon completion of this course. 

This course introduces students to contemporary feminist ideas and key feminist debates, specifically feminist legal theory. The course illustrates the ideas by focusing on specific campaigns that relate to women and girls’ human rights and gender justice in both Irish national and global arenas. The course focuses on some important areas of contention, debate, and power struggles to see how feminist approaches to legal issues are deployed in important campaigns relating to: reproductive justice; prostitution/sex work; lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) issues; and redress and restorative justice for survivors of trauma and abuse relating to gender violence. Through case studies the course offers an introduction to feminist concepts and to international conventions relevant to gender justice such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), United Nations Conventions on Human Rights and relevant Security Council Resolutions as well the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Yogyarkarta Principles. The case studies are also used to introduce and illustrate key concepts of feminist legal theorists such as Martha Fineman, Catharine MacKinnon, Suan Moller Okin, Martha Nussbaum, and Janet Halley.

This course explores the relationship between Transcendentalism and women's rights, family relations, and perceptions of childhood and education. It draws almost exclusively on writings from the period.

This team-taught course on gender and culture offers a series of different forms of analysis through which one can "read" gender. It is particularly suited to students who wish to develop their critical and analytical skills by learning more about specific gender-related issues and developing gender-specific approaches to engaging with a variety of cultural works across disciplines, genres and literary periods. All texts will be in English or in English translation.

This course offers a critical analysis of masculinity. Topics include: links between masculinities, gender studies, and feminisms; masculinities and human rights; mapping the living conditions of men, women, and dissidents in Chile; body, sexualities, and masculinities; sexual diversities and non-hegemonic masculinities in the current social context; media, social networks, and representations of masculinities; contributions to changing gender relations in times of social transformations.

Philosophers, and non-philosophers alike, have fought over the meanings, values and consequences of love and sexual desire from philosophy’s very beginning. The seminar addresses some of these controversial issues, their aporias and paradoxes, and encourages students to find their own interpretations and answers. We will discuss questions such as: Are there different forms of love? What are the differences, if any, between e.g. love and friendship? Is sex or sexual desire essential for love? Do we lose or find ourselves in love relationships? How do we change when we fall in love? Are we free or unfree when we are in a love relationship? How do power and love relate? How much aggressivity, hate and mastery are entailed in love bonds? The seminar will address these (and further) questions by concentrating on four models of love: (1) Love as union or fusion; (2) Love as knowledge; (3) Love as work on oneself; (4) Love as struggle. As conceptual basis for these models, two texts in particular will be read, analysed and discussed, an ancient one, Plato’s Symposium, and a modern one, which however draws upon ancient myths, Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea. The two texts will be studied in light of modern and contemporary insights and issues, as for example those raised by Hegel (and especially his master/slave figure), psychoanalysis, feminism, polyamory theory, and others. There will be space for students to (partially) participate in the articulation of the programme, and for practicing philosophy in some more ‘creative’ ways than usual (by for example staging philosophical theatrical scenes).

This course considers some of the most important debates and trends in feminist theory over the last five decades. It considers the intersections of academic and popular, intellectual, and activist dimensions of feminist literary theory. In particular, it focuses on French Feminism and its influence in the United States, the rise of the Wages for Housework Movement in Italy, and in the relations of race and gender theory forged in the United States. The last weeks of the course explore some of the new debates in Queer and Trans theory and investigates how they build on the feminist history previously explored. In each case, the course foregrounds this specialty as ENGEROM scholars able to think in detail about how feminist ideas have travelled back and forth between Europe and the United States, both through literal and cultural translation. The course explores whether feminism is truly a transatlantic phenomenon; what happens to some of these key texts as they move from one language to another; the debates about individual differences and rights; and the impact of race, specific to US, French, Italian, and German contexts; and where the archives of feminism are held in these different national settings.