Postgraduate Module Descriptor

ARAM225: Gender and Politics in the Middle East

This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 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

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 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
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.