WOMEN'S STUDIES

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

To be advised

Pre-requisites

None

Overview

Why did women have to wait till 1928 to get the vote on the same terms as men? Where does the ‘double standard’ come from? Why were women – and their children – seen as the property of men for so long? And who said ‘a women’s place is in the home’? This course attempts to answer such questions by looking at women’s lives in and around the nineteenth century, when institutions like the church, education, law and parliament established controls which not only shaped women’s lives, their education and their work, but the very meaning of the word ‘woman’. The course therefore provides a historical context for the study of women’s position in society today. The course encourages independent and flexible learning through the use of Information Technology.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures, 1 one-hour tutorial and 1 hour of directed resource-based study per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (50%) and continuous assessment: essay (30%), tutorial assessment mark (10%), group project (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr M Jowett

Pre-requisites

None

Overview

This course involves study of how ideas about the feminine and the masculine are evolved and communicated in our society, and of key aspects of the roles which women adopt in their domestic lives, and the implications of these roles for other aspects of women’s experience.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (60%) and continuous assessment: 2 essays (30%) and tutorial assessment (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr J King

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 2 or above.

Overview

This inter-disciplinary course will challenge assumptions and myths surrounding men’s and women’s reaction to violence as spectacle, the reporting of sexual violence and women’s participation in violence. The course will begin with a cross-cultural overview, followed by an introduction to the range of methodologies that will be used to approach the course material. The course will also discuss the experience of researching and studying violence.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures, 1 hour of resource-based study and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (50%) and continuous assessment: essay (30%), group presentation (10%), tutorial assessment (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr J King

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 or above.

Overview

This course examines the role female icons have played in imposing images of femininity on women and/or offering empowering images of women. These icons will include historical figures such as Joan of Arc and Elizabeth I, and twentieth-century figures such as Marilyn Monroe and Madonna. They will be studied in their historical and cultural contexts, and analysed from a number of perspectives, including those of art history, history, religious studies, sociology and film studies. The course will, therefore, introduce students to key feminist theories, as well as giving them the opportunity to study a range of important female images. As part of the course, students will be taught how to access information from the World Wide Web, and how to present it on their own Website.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (40%), continuous assessment: essay (40%), project (20%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr M Jowett

Pre-requisites

Available only to Senior Honours students.

Overview

The course will address research practices within Gender Studies, both in terms of the generation of data and the construction of theory. It will explore the processes of undertaking empirical research such as focus groups and interviews, and will also think through the ways in which visual culture and gender history might be researched. The course will consider how gender can be studied alongside class, sexuality and 'race', and it will also address the question of whether there can or should be a specifically feminist or gender-conscious approach within social and political research.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

Examination (60%) and coursework (40%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

To be advised

Pre-requisites

Available only to Senior Honours taking a Combined Honours programme in Women’s studies students.

Overview

A dissertation of 10,000 words on a subject to be decided in consultation with the course co-ordinator, to be researched and written (under supervision by a member of the Women’s Studies Group) during Senior Honours.

Structure

Individual supervision over 12 weeks.

Assessment

Dissertation (100%).