Women’s & Gender Studies

This course examines the relationships between sexuality and cultural issues in contemporary society. Apart from different sexual orientations and gender issues, it looks into ethical, and social conflicts with sexuality; for example, how sexuality is portrayed in creative social media which, in turn, shapes our perception of sexuality; the root causes of the stigmatization and discrimination of the commercial sex industry and sexually transmitted infections; the significance of sex education and family planning; and, how our legal system in the global community has been changing across time on non-mainstream sexuality and sexual violence.

This course provides an introduction to critical analysis of the history of western thought by examining classical questions and debates in philosophy and gender studies. It explores philosophy through the perspective of gender.

This course provides an introduction to gender and sexuality issues in Singapore from a historical perspective. It examines how our everyday understandings of gender have been formed in a long, complex process of negotiation over the twentieth century. In five themes 1) religion and marriage, 2) non-binary histories, 3) state morality, 4) queer stories and 5) gender troubles, it traces how state and religious authorities have shaped sexual behaviors and gender identities, with varying degrees of conformity and contestation from groups and individuals. Throughout history, gender remained fluid despite multiple attempts at restraining sexuality.

This is a special studies course with projects arranged between the student and faculty member. The specific topics of study vary each term and are described on a special study project form for each student. The number of units varies with the student’s project, contact hours, and method of assessment, as defined on the student’s special study project form.

In this course, students learn from a theoretic and empirical point of view, how economists study gender and ethnicity in the economy. This includes considerations of the education system, the labor market, and the role of the state. The course uses applications of microeconomic theory and modern empirical methods to establish the facts about the effects of gender and ethnicity differences in the economy and to evaluate policies designed to address these effects. This course uses a flipped learning method. 

Islamic feminism is a field of study that has been marginalized in both contemporary Islamic and feminist discourses. This course counters this marginalization by exploring the diverse theoretical frameworks and methodologies used in Islamic feminist scholarship. It takes an intersectional perspective to examine the different strategies that Islamic feminists have developed to challenge multiple constellations of power, such as sexism, patriarchy, and (feminist) neo-Orientalism. The course aims for the decolonization of knowledge on Islam, gender, and feminism. This is achieved by the inclusion of life experiences and knowledge production from different regions in and outside the "Muslim World."

This course exposes students to public and scientific debates pertaining to colonial past, and the gender studies, research methods, and writing of contemporary history. It explores these concepts through several lenses over three parts of the course: historical approaches to the colonial past, the use of gender studies, and the new history of colonial wars. Each theme includes an introduction to the field of research, discussions and presentations based on readings, and scientific articles and archives.

Employing recent theories from gender and postcolonial studies, as well as media studies, this course analyses a wide range of case studies from contemporary visual culture, across a broad scope of genres and technologies. The course requires participants to critically think about concepts such as visuality, visual culture, representation, and technology. A novel approach to art, culture, and technology by challenging the primacy of vision and by mobilizing an intersectional perspective is provided. Visual methodologies and analytic tools from the fields of semiotics and psychoanalysis to be able to critically assess how social and cultural norms are disseminated in visual ways are learned. The course provides a toolkit for thinking through the growing and often overwhelming array of images we are confronted with daily in our media-saturated culture.

This general sociology course systematically integrates gender studies to revisit the important questions of this discipline. The course examines themes of family, school, work, politics, health, and sexuality through the lens of gender while integrating a certain number of fundamental theories. It discusses gender sociology texts based on concepts examined during the lectures, considers the relationship between public policies and contemporary debates, and develops axes on which to read the social world through the prism of gender: paying attention to gender inequalities in their different constructions and how gender is integrated into different categories of thought.

This course considers the following questions: to what extent do processes such as the transnationalization of production, world trade, or migration processes impact gender inequalities? What are the emancipatory effects of these processes? In order to be able to answer these questions, the seminar first discusses the theoretical foundations for a gender analysis in globalization research. Different theoretical approaches of gender research –from liberal, Marxist, social constructivist to postcolonial and intersectional approaches –are presented and critically reflected. Along the theoretical discussion, the various approaches to gender as an analysis category are worked out, discussed with regard to their methodological consequences, and tested on the basis of selected topics. Finally, various feminist strategies and approaches to the gender-equitable organization of globalization are presented and examined with regard to their gender implications.