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 Content

Syllabus Plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some of the following topics or readings:

Why Gender and Sexuality? Epistemic Violence and the Middle East
Pre-modern/Islamicate Sexualities: History as Empowering?
Gendering the Nation-State: Modernity and the “Woman Question” (Egypt)
Rethinking the Private/Public Divide: Personal Status Laws (Lebanon / Tunisia/ UAE)
Queering the Middle East: Queer Theory vs. LGBT analysis (Queer IR)
Islamic/Queer Feminisms: An Oxymoron? (Iran)
Gender and Conflict in the Middle East: The Case of Kurdish Militant Women
Sexuality and Conflict in the Middle East: The Case of Pinkwashing (Israel/Palestine)
Masculinity and its Paradoxes I: “Live and Die like a Man”
Masculinity and its Paradoxes II: Gendering the Arab Spring
Popular Culture as Counter-Narratives? Emerging Scholarship and Future Research

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	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 2hr seminars
Guided independent study	128	Private study students are expected to read suggested texts and make notes prior to seminar sessions. They are also expected to read widely to complete their coursework assignments. More specifically, students are expected to devote at least: 66 (6 hours per topic/week) hours to directed reading; 6 hours to completing the formative research outline; 42 hours (3 hours/day over two weeks) for completing the essay; 10 hours (2 hours/day over 5 days) for completing opinion pieces. The 4 remaining hours serve as a margin to be adjusted depending on the student in question

Online Resources

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).

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