Sex, Race and Death in Global Politics (L7091A)

30 credits, Level 6

Autumn teaching

This module explores connections between gender and violence in contemporary international politics in historical and theoretical perspective. It centres interdisciplinary literature and learning materials from feminist perspectives that foreground the 'intersectionality' of different power relations, including approaches such as:

postcolonial
decolonial
Critical Indigenous
transnational
Black studies
critical disability
queer approaches.

The first few sessions focus on core concepts/debates for studying ‘sex’ (different analytics of ‘gender’) and ‘death’ (including ‘militarisation’/‘martial politics’, ‘biopolitics’/‘necropolitics’).

Themes include:

erotics of conquest and slavery
military masculinities/military femininities
drones and ‘posthuman warfare’
women and queers as agents of violence
orientalism and war on terror
‘humanitarian’ warfare and liberal interventionism.

Teaching

100%: Seminar

Assessment

30%: Coursework (Essay, Group submission (written))
70%: Written assessment (Essay)

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 300 hours of work. This breaks down into about 30 hours of contact time and about 270 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2023/24. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to COVID-19, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum. We’ll make sure to let our applicants know of material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.

Courses

This module is offered on the following courses: