Women’s & Gender Studies

This course starts with a critical assessment of development as a particular, historically grounded and morally colored enterprise. The course assesses how changing ideas about gender roles and relations prevalent in the Global North affected efforts to develop societies in the Global South. Students not only scrutinize how certain populations came to be imagined and targeted as objects of development, but also reflect on how women and men in the Global South have understood and expressed their own ideas about social change and their place in the world. To this end, students reflect on different ideological, instrumental, and critical approaches to development and ask what is at stake when gender is constructed as a development concern around discourses of equality, empowerment, and social justice. In the next part of the course, students closely assess the changes and continuities in gender structures during precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial eras. In this light, the course broadens the scope from Western-initiated development efforts to social change more generally and discusses the diverse impacts of globalization on gendered realities in different parts of the world. Key themes that are addressed: poverty, sexual and reproductive health and rights, education and empowerment, environmental politics, rural and urban change, as well as work and gender relations inside and outside the home. Whereas for long (Western-trained) academics, policy makers and development professionals equated gender with women's issues, it is now widely recognized that masculinity is as much a social construct as femininity and deserves critical attention too. Therefore, this course gives ample attention to men's issues too.

This course examines key concepts of gender, sexuality, and gender presentation, and the social aspects of gender. It covers how gendered identities are shaped by society; how identities are formed by but also resistant to cultural norms of masculinity and femininity; how gender is related to sexual difference; and how gender relations intersect with race, class and sexuality.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. Students selecting the Italian subject area must select the course readings in Italian. The course examines gender studies (theories and methodologies) in diverse cultural contexts with specific reference to the analyses of the notions of identity and otherness, difference, and diversity. The course favors the capability to deconstruct these notions in diverse texts (theoretical, literary, and visual). The course presents case studies in which texts (literary and visual) are in dialogue with theories and methodologies of gender and postcolonial studies. The texts elaborate on the issue of gender, identity, difference, race, and politics of the body in the representations, transmissions, and elaborations of traumatic events in literary and visual texts (with specific reference to utopian and dystopian fictions). Lessons make reference to memory and trauma studies, dystopia, and science fiction within a gender and postgender perspective. The course elaborates on debates on the intersectionality of gender(s) and race in theories, and visual and literary texts, and to analyze issues related to utopia/dystopia/science fiction within a postcolonial and posthuman perspective. The main theoretical issues discussed by the course include critical theories and methodologies of gender and women's studies and queer studies; re-reading of the notion of identity, difference, and diversity; gender as a social construction; women’s and postcolonial re-visions of the symbolic and social order; the construction of sexual difference as a deconstructive strategy; re-writings of the body; French Feminism(s) and African American and Postcolonial responses; postcolonial and African American critical debates on the representation and deconstruction of the notion of gender and race. New politics of identity and difference; intersectionality of race and gender(s); and the interconnection of gender, ethnicity, and race in trauma and memory studies.

This course examines how our place in the world is defined by gender. It introduces students to questions of gender in the culture and literature of Spanish America. The topic is studied through a number of cultural expressions, including prose, poetry, theatre and film, from a variety of countries and across various historical periods.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program in semiotics. The course is intended for advanced levels students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course introduces the theoretical and methodological foundations of the interdisciplinary field of gender studies. The course maps the genealogy and main contemporary debates in feminist, LGBT, and queer studies, with particular attention to the study of queer sexual cultures. The course analyzes some of the major topics within the transnational fields of gender and queer studies, from an intersectional perspective. The first lectures focus on the historical, social, and cultural construction of the sex/gender system in Modern Western culture, placing it within the processes of nation building, colonization, and racialization. The second part of the course is devoted to the history of feminisms, with a special focus on black, postcolonial, and decolonial feminisms. LGBTQIA+ knowledges and politics are also discussed along with queer theories and their pivotal role in reconfiguring the very categories of gender and sexualities. An analysis of queer and feminist posthuman perspectives concludes the course.

This course examines the roles of women in politics from the nineteenth century to the present from an interdisciplinary perspective. Topics include the historical evolution of relative problems, the political behavior of women and their absence in politics, women's place in the workforce, and education. The course also explores French and American feminism, women's suffrage in France, homosexual theories and practices, sexism and homophobia, and the debate over parity, universalism, and communism.

This course examines the latest theories, discussions, and relevant issues around gender that have emerged in the second half of the 20th century. Key concepts include: sex and gender; patriarchy; feminism; intersectionality; decolonial turn; post-secularism.

This course is part of the LM degree program. The course is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. The course aims at training students to apply gender studies’ key concepts and theoretical approaches to the analysis of a series of contemporary social challenges and transformations in the fields of culture, sexuality, work, technologies, and politics, amongst others. After completing the course, students can recognize gender as one of the basic principles organizing human society and culture, mobilize the gender studies’ concepts to produce critical knowledge, and apply a gender-sensitive perspective in imagining emancipatory strategies and policies. The course introduces students to the main analytical perspectives of gender studies by analyzing a series of key-concepts developed by literature in women's studies, men's studies, and queer studies. Lectures focus on key-concepts including gender order, intersectionality, heteronormativity, (positive) marginality, care, androcentrism, subjectivity, and performativity. These concepts are analyzed theoretically and, later, applied to the analysis of concrete social phenomena and contemporary social transformation. The course includes lectures, seminars, group readings/discussions, and movie screenings. Students who successfully complete the course, are better prepared to participate in and contribute effectively to the larger public conversation regarding the role of gender in society and are able to apply the critical tools of gender studies in their academic, personal, and work environment.

This course provides a study of the central issues and discussions regarding gender and sexuality as a specific field of inquiry. The course is organized around modules that cover the most relevant aspects of traditional feminist studies as well as recent theoretical contributions.

This course provides basic knowledge about gender, social change, and modernity in Sweden and Scandinavia, covering the period from the late 1800s up to the 1950s. It presents the development of some theoretical debates within this field. The course explores Scandinavian political, social, feminist, and literary texts about gender, ethnicity, and sexuality, and the development of women's rights in a historically changing society. Research regarding women's rights, Scandinavian cultural expressions, and the mechanisms of intolerance and xenophobia from the late 1800s to the 1950s are presented. Central issues about gender, ethnicity, sexuality, social change, and modernity in Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia are compared with international development. The course is mainly intended for international students who wish to acquire knowledge of the Swedish and Scandinavian societies from a gender perspective but is also open to all other students at Lund University.