Undergraduate Module Descriptor

POC3127: Gendered Politics of the Middle East

This module descriptor refers to the 2020/1 academic year.

Please note that this module is only delivered on the Penryn Campus.

Module Aims

The module offers an overview of the main debates that inform and are informed by the study of gender and sexuality in the Middle East. It is a highly inter-disciplinary module that combines different theoretical and methodological approaches. The module emphasises the tight links between theory and activism whilst stressing the limits of binary analysis.

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. Identify some of the key social, economic and political contexts that inform and are informed by gender in the Middle East.
2. Demonstrate an understanding of gender in the Middle East beyond representational politics, notably the “woman question” or the practice of “veiling”
Discipline-Specific Skills3. Evaluate critically the role of the state, religious authorities, donors and further political actors in the construction of discourses on/of gender and sexuality in the Middle East
4. Evaluate different theoretical and methodological approaches employed in the study of gender and sexuality in the Middle East
Personal and Key Skills5. Write analytically for an academic and non-academic public
6. Demonstrate good research and indexing praxis (online and in the library)
7. Communicate arguments effectively through written submissions and verbal presentations

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.

Edward Said, Orientalism

Meyda Yegenoglu, Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism

Deniz Kandiyoti, Gendering the Middle East

Suad Joseph, Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East

Sofian Merabet, Queer Beirut

Jasbir Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times

Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern Gender and Public Piety in Shi'i Lebanon

Farha Ghannam, Live and Die like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt

Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East

Dina Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of  Cairo 

Nadje Al-Ali, Iraqi Women: Untold Stories From 1948 to the Present

Ruba Salih, Gender in Transnationalism. Home, Longing and Belonging Among Moroccan Migrant Women.

Lila Abu-Lughod, Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East

Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Moustaches, Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity

Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon

Dina Georgis, The Better Story: Queer Affects from the Middle East

Meem Collective, Bareed Mista3jil

Fatima Mernissi, Behind the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Muslim Society

Leila Ahmad, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate