Module ARAM225 for 2019/0
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Postgraduate Module Descriptor
ARAM225: Gender and Politics in the Middle East
This module descriptor refers to the 2019/0 academic year.
Module Aims
This module aims to enable you to analyse ‘the politics of gender’ across diverse contexts in the Middle East and North Africa. You will learn to analyse the relationship between gender and politics on multiple levels, from individual subjects, to communities and societies, to states and governance, to transnational trends and processes; the course will additionally equip you to identify how these levels are necessarily connected. The course aims to promote politically active learning through engagement with topical events and project-based assessment
On successfully completing the programme you will be able to: | |
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Module-Specific Skills | 1. Discern the various ways in which gender roles, relations and norms are constructed, reproduced and challenged in the Middle East. 2. Identify and critically assess the changing social, political, cultural and economic contexts that shape gender in the Middle East. 3. Evaluate critically different theoretical and methodological approaches employed in the study of gender and sexuality in the Middle East. |
Discipline-Specific Skills | 4. Analyse and assess academic texts and prevailing cultural notions critically. 5. Distinguish between a range of methodological approaches as well as variety of genres, i.e. anthropological and sociological texts, (auto)biographical writings and fiction. 6. Demonstrate an awareness of, and be sensitised to, the various processes by which gender (i.e. femaleness and maleness) is socially and culturally constructed in different contexts. |
Personal and Key Skills | 7. Digest, select and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument, developed through the mode of assessment. 8. Critically examine and review existing literature. 9. Engage in 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:
- Studying gender, from the everyday to the geopolitical – and back again
- Questions of status: Women’s representation(s) and realities
- Men in Crisis? Dynamic masculinities, masculinity dynamics
- Sexuality and power: From “honour crimes” to queer politics
- Everyday life: Intimacy, family and sociality
- From nations to states: Nationalism, modernisation and citizenship
- Violence, war and militarisation
- Displacement and migration
- Social movements and feminist activism
- Globalisation, new media and public spheres
- Protest, transition and transformation: [Case study] The MENA uprisings
- Imagination and cultural productions
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 | 278 | 0 |
...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:
Category | Hours of study time | Description |
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Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activity | 22 | 11 x 2 hour seminars |
Guided Independent Study | 77 | Weekly reading (7 hours per week) |
Guided Independent Study | 22 | Class participation (2 hours preparation per week) |
Guided Independent Study | 30 | Blog posts (2 hours researching & 4 hours writing per week, 5 submitted in total) |
Guided Independent Study | 59 | Project (40 hours researching/coordinating, 19 hours writing/preparing presentation and materials). |
Guided Independent Study | 90 | Essay (60 hours reading and 30 hours writing) |
Online Resources
This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).
Other Learning Resources
Videos/films, TV programmes, online materials (news sites, blogs, social media), images, podcasts, play scripts, music, memoirs.