• 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 2019/0 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. You 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.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

This module's assessment will evaluate your achievement of the ILOs listed here - you will see reference to these ILO numbers in the details of the assessment for this module.

On successfully completing the programme you will be able to:
Module-Specific Skills1. Discern the various ways in which gender roles, codes, norms and relations shape – and are shaped by – political violence in Palestine/Israel.
2. Develop an in-depth understanding of the relationship between gender, sexuality and settler colonialism in Palestine/Israel.
3. Evaluate how gender and sexuality intersect with diverse modes of resistance in Palestine/Israel.
Discipline-Specific Skills4. Analyse and assess academic texts and prevailing discursive frames (i.e., ‘conflict’ or ‘occupation’) 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 awareness of, and be sensitised to, the various processes by which gender (i.e., femaleness and maleness) is socially constructed and impacts politics.
Personal and Key Skills7. Engage in independent study and group work, including the presentation of material for group discussion
8. Digest, select and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument, developed through the mode of assessment.
9. Critically examine and review existing literature.

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 ActivitiesGuided independent studyPlacement / study abroad
221280

...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:

CategoryHours of study timeDescription
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activity2211 x 2-hour seminars
Guided Independent Study55Weekly reading (5 hours per week)
Guided Independent Study11Class/seminar prep (1 hour per week)
Guided Independent Study30Project (20 hours researching/coordinating, 10 hours writing/preparing presentation)
Guided Independent Study32Essay (20 hours reading, 12 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.

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 assessmentSize of the assessment (eg length / duration)ILOs assessedFeedback method
Student presentations (individual)5 minute individual presentation on a weekly topic, twice during the course1-6Verbal feedback
Project proposal1000 words1-6, 8Written & 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.

CourseworkWritten examsPractical exams
50050

...and this table provides further details on the summative assessments for this module.

Form of assessment% of creditSize of the assessment (eg length / duration)ILOs assessedFeedback method
Essay503,000 words1-9Written feedback
Summative Project (group or individual). Submissions may take the form of short reflective essays (for example a film or exhibition review); video or photo essays; podcasts; play scripts; short stories; poetry or spoken word; and/or original artwork with details of your creative process. This list is not exhaustive. Submission format and pathway will be agreed individually with the convenor after review of proposals (mid-term).50Written submission of 2000 words OR 15 minute in-class presentation. 1-9Written feedback; verbal feedback (if required)
0

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 assessmentForm of re-assessmentILOs re-assessedTimescale for re-assessment
EssayEssay (3000 words)1-9August/September reassessment period
ProjectProject materials, including reflective essay of 2000 words; in-class presentations are not possible. 1-9August/September reassessment period

Re-assessment notes

Where you have been referred/deferred for the project presentation, you will complete a short essay (2000 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.