Module ARAM230 for 2017/8
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Postgraduate Module Descriptor
ARAM230: Gender, Sexuality and Violence in Palestine/Israel
This module descriptor refers to the 2017/8 academic year.
Module Aims
This module aims to provide you with the skills of critical gender analysis, which will allow you to explore how settler colonialism and political violence are sustained and subverted in Palestine/Israel. You will learn to analyse how gender roles, relations, codes and norms become central to the production of violence, as well as how women and men experience, understand and resist this violence on individual and collective levels. Students are expected to take an active role in creating and leading our learning community. The module encourages politically active learning through discussion of topical events and project-based assessment.
| On successfully completing the programme you will be able to: | |
|---|---|
| Module-Specific Skills | 1. Discern the various ways in which gender roles, codes, norms and relations sustain political violence in Palestine/Israel. 2. Identify and critically assess how settler colonialism underwrites conflict in Palestine/Israel, in part through gendered and sexualised dynamics. 3. Evaluate how gender shapes diverse modes of resistance to political violence and settler colonialism in Palestine/Israel. |
| Discipline-Specific Skills | 3. Analyse and assess academic texts and prevailing discursive frames (i.e., conflict or occupation) critically. 4. Analyse and assess academic texts and prevailing discursive frames (i.e., conflict or occupation) critically. 5. Identify processes by which gender (i.e., femaleness and maleness) is socially constructed and becomes implicated in politics. |
| Personal and Key Skills | 6. Digest, select and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument. 7. Critically examine and review existing literature. 8. Carry out independent study and group work, including the presentation of material for group discussion. |
Module Content
Syllabus Plan
Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:
Gender, Sexuality & Settler Colonialism
Gendering Political Violence
Nationalism & the Construction of Collective Identities
Borders, Boundaries & the Politics of Space
Displacement & Diaspora
Embodiment: Experiences of Control & Carcerality
The Politics of Everyday Life: Normalcy &‘Getting By’
Feminist Praxis & Women’s Activism
Queer Politics: Pinkwashing & Homonationalism
Resistance: From Ordinary Actions to Popular Protest
Anti-colonial Politics & De-colonial Projects
Toward New Political Futures: Imagination and Cultural Production
Learning and Teaching
This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
|---|---|---|
| 22 | 128 |
...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activity | 22 | Classroom hours (11 x 2-hour seminars) |
| Guided Independent Study | 55 | Weekly reading (5 hours per week) |
| Guided Independent Study | 11 | Class/seminar prep (1 hour per week) |
| Guided Independent Study | 30 | Project (20 hours researching/coordinating, 10 hours writing/preparing presentation) |
| Guided Independent Study | 32 | Essay (20 hours reading, 12 hours writing) |
Online Resources
This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).
How this Module is Assessed
In the tables below, you will see reference to 'ILO's. An ILO is an Intended Learning Outcome - see Aims and Learning Outcomes for details of the ILOs for this module.
Formative Assessment
A formative assessment is designed to give you feedback on your understanding of the module content but it will not count towards your mark for the module.
| Form of assessment | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|
| Class discussions & student presentations | Weekly | 1-5 | Verbal feedback |
| Project proposal | 700-1000 words | 1-5, 8 | Written & verbal feedback |
Summative Assessment
A summative assessment counts towards your mark for the module. The table below tells you what percentage of your mark will come from which type of assessment.
| Coursework | Written exams | Practical exams |
|---|---|---|
| 50 | 0 | 50 |
...and this table provides further details on the summative assessments for this module.
| Form of assessment | % of credit | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essay | 50 | 3,000 words | 1-8 | Written feedback |
| Project (group or individual) | 50 | 10-15 minute class presentation; materials for submission (images/film/slides; annotated bibliography; or short essay TBD on individual basis with convenor) | 1-8 | Written & verbal feedback |
Re-assessment
Re-assessment takes place when the summative assessment has not been completed by the original deadline, and the student has been allowed to refer or defer it to a later date (this only happens following certain criteria and is always subject to exam board approval). For obvious reasons, re-assessments cannot be the same as the original assessment and so these alternatives are set. In cases where the form of assessment is the same, the content will nevertheless be different.
| Original form of assessment | Form of re-assessment | ILOs re-assessed | Timescale for re-assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essay | Essay | 1-8 | August/September re-assessment period |
| Project | Project, including short reflective essay (to replace class presentation) | 1-8 | August/September re-assessment period |
Re-assessment notes
Where you have been referred/deferred for the project presentation, you will complete a short essay (1,500 words) that reflects on the process and outcomes of your project.
Indicative Reading List
This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.
Abdo, Nahla, Women in Israel: Race, Gender and Citizenship, 2011.
Abdo, Nahla and Yuval-Davis, Nira, Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class, 1995.
Boyarin, Daniel, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man, 1997.
Gordon, Neve, Israel’s Occupation, 2008.
Kanaaneh, Rhoda Ann, Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel, 2002.
Kanaaneh, Rhoda Ann and Nusair, Isis (eds.), Displaced at Home: Ethnicity and Gender among Palestinians in Israel, 2010.
Kuntsman, Adi, Figurations of Violence and Belonging: Queerness, Migranthood and Nationalism in Cyberspace and Beyond, 2009.
Lentin, Ronit, Thinking Palestine, 2008.
McClintock, Anne, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest, 1995.
Natanel, Katherine, Sustaining Conflict: Apathy and Domination in Israel/Palestine, 2016.
Puar, Jasbir, Terrorist Assemblages: homonationalism in queer times, 2007.
Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nadera, Militarization and Violence against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: A Palestinian Case Study, 2009.
Sharoni, Simona, Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Politics of Women’s Resistance, 1995.
