UCL GENDER, SOCIETY AND REPRESENTATION

(BENVGPU4) – 30 credit units

Tutors: Dr Caren Levy and Julian Walker (Development Planning Unit)

This module examines gender relations in the socio-economic, political and environmental processes in the development of human settlements. In doing so, it highlights the intersection of gender with other social relations, examining diversity and difference in human settlements. In assessing the challenge this poses for urban development planning, the institutionalisation of gender equality in policy, planning and management of human settlements are explored. Gender relations in a range of development sectors are assessed and the conditions for gender mainstreaming in these sectors discussed.

The objectives of the course are twofold:
(i) to examine the different experience of women and men (girls and boys) at household, community and societal levels; and
(ii) to assess the extent to which current policy and planning take gender into account and the way they impact on the lives of women, men, girls and boys.

Assessment: one essay (40%), two pieces of course work (30% + 30%))

Contact: Caren Levy (c.levy@ucl.ac.uk) and Mr Julian Walker (julian.walker@ucl.ac.uk), Development Planning Unit

(LAWSGO27)  –  45 credit units

Tutor: Prof. Alison Diduck  (Laws)

This module offers both theoretical and practical engagements with the law to assess the contribution a feminist perspective can offer to understanding legal and social relations. We will look, for example, at law’s theoretical underpinnings and its assumptions about the nature of the state and the individual. We will explore various areas of public and private law and examine law’s role in challenging, creating or reproducing gender relations. Sex-specific and sex-related legislation and policy will be analysed in the light of current debates within feminist theory.

Assessment: 3,000 word essay or 3-hour unseen written examination.

Contact: Alison Diduck (a.diduck@ucl.ac.uk)

Details: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/prospective/llm/courses/index.shtml?lawsg_027

(PUBLG068) – 15 credit units

Tutor: Dr Maki Kimura (Political Science)

This course provides an overview of some key topics in politics and gender. The first part of the course includes some introductory theory, looks at the impact of gender on citizenship and voting behaviour, whether it matters what the gender of our political representatives is, how we might ensure that political institutions are gender balanced and what the normative arguments are about the use of positive action measures.

The second part of the course has a more international flavour, considering women's rights and human rights, the importance of gender in international development, and the role of gender in armed conflict.

We will also look at gender 'policy machinery', such as specialist government departments and quangos concerned with women and equality, at both the national and international level.

Throughout the course we will seek to focus on 'gender' rather than on 'women', though in most cases women are the underrepresented sex. We will often therefore discuss women's equality, though we will also touch on the role of masculinity and men's movements.

Assessment: 1,000 word exercise (30%) + 2,000 word essay (70%)

Contact:  Maki Kimura, Department of Political Science (maki.kimura@ucl.ac.uk)

 (HEBRG039) – 15 credit units

Tutor: Dr Tsila Ratner (Department of Hebrew and Jewish)

A survey of feminist thinking in Hebrew literature. The course will study the development of feminist concepts and their manifestations in women’s writing in Israel since the 70s. It will compare these expressions with feminist writing in English and American literature. The Hebrew texts will be followed by their translations into English.

Assessment:  2 essays [(3,500 words each) (100%)] + oral presentation

Contact:  Tsila Ratner (t.ratner@ucl.ac.uk)

(EUROGGO3) – 30  credit units

Tutor: Professor Susanne Kord (Departmnet of German)

The course investigates, on the basis of some film and gender theory, the portrayal of masculinity in literature and Hollywood movie adaptations.

Consideration of male ‘types’ with a long literary and cinematic history, such as male monsters, creators, truth-seekers (detectives), rebels, victims, self-mythologizing men (e.g. cowboys) and ‘man’s men’, will enable a comparative investigation of traditions of representation and established clichés surrounding masculinity (the ruggedness of individualism, the justifiability of violence, the naturalness of compulsory heterosexuality; narcissistic and masochistic identification; mythologization and self-mythologization).

The course seeks to investigate the following related questions:


1. to what extent do ethnicity, homosexuality and other kinds of ‘difference’ figure in historical and recent portrayals of masculinity?


2. is there a ‘crisis’ of masculinity, and if so, how is it addressed particularly in Hollywood films?


3. which historical developments can be noted in the portrayal of masculinities?


4. how does the genre switch from text to screen affect the representation of masculinities?

5. What roles have been assigned to masculinity in literary and particularly film theory?

Assessment: 1 x 5,000 word essay

Details: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/german/aboutus/staff/susanne-kord/kordmasculinities.pdf

Contact: Susanne  Kord (susanne.kord@ucl.ac.uk) 

(HISTG077) – 30 credits unit 

Tutor: Dr Helga Satzinger (Department of History)

The course will focus on the role of science, technology and other forms of knowledge in creating, stabilising and destabilising gender orders in history. How did various forms of knowledge contribute process of identifying maleness and femaleness, how did the social gender orders influence and determine what we know, how we know and who was included into and excluded form the knowing “we?”.

The course is divided into two parts, which can be taken independently. The first part offers a more general approach to the topic, including various “ways of knowing” and its relationship to gender orders, whereas the second part deals in a more specific way with gender concepts developed by science and technology and with the gendered nature of scientific knowledge and technology and its production.

The two parts of this module may be taken separately, for 20 credits each. Codes to be confirmed.

Assessment:  Two essays of 4,000 words each.

For further details:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/history/prospective_students/prospec_master/course_descriptions/histg076/

Contact:  Helga Satzinger (h.satzinger@ucl.ac.uk)

(FRENGO33) - 30 credit units

Tutor: Dr Azzedine Haddour (Departmnet of French)

In this option, we shall examine the representation of women in Orientalist paintings
by Gérôme and Delacroix, in the ‘erotic’ post cards compiled by Malek Alloula in Le
Harem colonial, in literary texts by André Gide, Albert Camus and Assia Djebar, in
the filmic narrative of Pontecorvo, as well as in the theoretical and critical works of
Frantz Fanon, Pierre Bourdieu and Tahar Ben Jelloun. By focusing on these visual
and textual narratives the aim of this option is to probe and problematise the
intersections of gender, race and sexuality.

Assessment: two assessed 3 000 word essays.

Contact: Dr Azzedine Haddour: (a.haddour@ucl.ac.uk)

(ANTHGS18) – 15 credit units

Tutor: Dr Alex Argenti-Pillen (Anthropology)

This course explores the cultural concepts and models through which sexual difference is produced and considers a number of different theoretical approaches to the relationship between the biological/physical body and its social and political meaning and interpretation.

Discussion begins with historical and ethnographic accounts of embodiment, notions of masculinity and femininity, conceptions of nature and the constitution of sexual categories through scientific medical and popular discourse.

These boundaries are examined further in recent analyses of sexuality, sexual orientation and subjectivity stimulated by the work of de Beauvoir, Foucault and others. The last part of the course looks at gender politics and considers the relevance of gender analysis for anthropological theory and practice.

The literature dealing with anthropological approaches to gender relations and sexuality is now very extensive, ranging from more economic/political to more symbolic/cognitive perspectives.

The course concentrates on a set of linked issues and approaches within this broad area. Familiarity with the development of theory in feminist anthropology and the anthropology of gender over the last twenty years, and the ability to evaluate the contrasting paradigms that have emerged are indispensable for situating contemporary work, and will be indicated at a number of points throughout the course.

Anthropology's comparative approach gives insight into ways of conceiving bodily identity that may differ markedly from "western" constructs; selected ethnographies will be used to build up a detailed picture of particular regions and to examine the relationship between class, ethnic and gender identities, and their transformations.

A major contribution of feminist writing has been its critical analysis of 'ways of knowing', and its deconstruction of conventional categories, and we will also draw on this historical and philosophical literature to develop an understanding of questions of representation and epistemology.

Contact: Alex Argenti-Pillen, Anthropology Department (a.argenti-pillen@ucl.ac.uk)

(ANTHGS16) – 15 credit units

Tutor: Dr Ruth Mandel (Anthropology)

This course focuses on theories and practices of ethnicity, race and nationalism. The reading material is divided between theoretical work on these issues and ethnographic examples. The readings primarily are from what sometimes are called the ‘1st and 2nd worlds’. Though most of the readings are contemporary, historical sources will be used as well.

Assessment: 2 essays

Contact: Ruth Mandel (r.mandel@ucl.ac.uk)

(GEOGG038 and GEOG48)

GEOGG038 is 15 credit units;

GEOGG048 is 30 credit units

Tutor: Professor Ann Varley (Department of Geography)

This module explores the idea that modern geographies are divided into public and private spaces and how such a division might be gendered.  It examines the place of the public/private dualism in modern western thought and its significance for women’s and men’s lives, at home and at work, in the west and elsewhere.

The distinction between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ has been described as central to theories of modernity and to the definition of gender identities in western thought.  This module asks why this is so, and with what consequences.  It aims to introduce students to some key ideas about the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ in the work of historians, philosophers, political theorists and sociologists as well as geographers. It emphasises feminist and post-modernist critiques of the public/private binary and related dualisms but questions the assumption that by not talking about binaries we can make them ‘go away’.

To illustrate some of these themes, the module includes two visits to London museums/galleries, which will focus on ideas about the private and the development of domesticity in Western Europe culture.

Assessment: GEOGG038 is assessed by an essay of 3,000 words on one of a list of questions available from the convenor. GEOGG048 is assessed by two essays of 3,000 words

Contact: Prof. Ann Varley: (a.varley@geog.ucl.ac.uk)

(SPANGO13) – 30 credit units

Tutor: Dr Alexander Samson (Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies)

This course will introduce topics in the history of sexuality and analyse the emergence of subjectivity in the early modern period through a range of literary, historical and dramatic texts, as well as painting. Within a theoretical framework drawing on Lacqueur, Bahktin, Greenblatt, Foucault and Barker we will examine areas from prostitution, gender, witchcraft, exorcism, and madness to issues concerned with the representation of the self and body in love, sickness and death.

Assessment: two 5 000 word essays.

Tutor: Dr Alexander Samson: (a.samson@ucl.ac.uk)

 (SPANG001) – 30 credit units 

Tutor: Dr Jo Evans (Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies)

Spanish film and film makers, with the exception of the country’s most infamous exile Luis Buñuel, were generally ignored until Pedro Almodóvar seduced the international market with his idiosyncratic brand of post-Regime licence.

The success of his films and his production company, El deseo, attracted the attention of Hollywood stars and producers and sparked an interest in all things ‘made in Spain’ (particularly Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz and, more recently, Javier Bardem).

This course examines the stereotypes and traces the development of this late-twentieth-century phenomenon. The films screened for close analysis will be available with English subtitles and there will be in an introductory session with reference to those that are not to introduce the origins of the stereotypes, the topics and the motifs that recur: Surrealism and the Spanish esperpento, the ‘Black Legend’ and the myth of the ‘Two Spains’, the Spanish Honour Code and sacrificial femininity, the mythologies of the Franco Regime (military crusade, censorship and the españolada) and the metaphors of opposition film.

Major political changes and their effects on the film industry will also be studied, concentrating on the period just prior to the death of Franco and beyond, looking at the end of the Dictatorship, the Transition to democracy and the increasing globalisation of the Spanish film industry.

Assessment: 4,000 word essay

Contact: Jo Evans (joanna.evans@ucl.ac.uk)

(GERMG048) – 30 credit units

Tutor: Dr Stephanie Bird (Department of German)

This course focuses on key films of the Weimar and Nazi era. Students will analyse major works from this crucial period of film, and by understanding the films in the context of the period, will also gain an insight into the debates of the time. These include the so-called Kinodebatte, /Benjamin's and Kracauer's reception of film, the art historical traditions manifest in the films, and changing views on gender. Furthermore, students will engage with current developments in film theory.

Assessment: one essay of 6,000 words

Contact: Stephanie Bird (stephanie.bird@ucl.ac.uk)

(ELCS4008B) – 30 credit units

Tutor: Professor Susanne Kord (Department of German)

This course focuses on three aspects of witches and the witch persecutions: historical: the "Burning Times" in early modern Europe and witch-hunting in Colonial America;  literary: the depiction of the witch in fairy tales (the Grimm-tradition) and in 'serious' literature, particularly literature that purports to rely on historical sources (from Hans Sachs to Arthur Miller); and scholarly: the explanations that scholars have sought for one of the most horrific instances of mass destruction in world history.

Details: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/german/aboutus/staff/susanne-kord/kordwitches.htm

Contact: Susanne Kord (susanne.kord@ucl.ac.uk) 

 (HARTGO73) – 40 credit units

Tutor: Dr Mechtild Fend (Department of History of Art)

The period between the 18th and the 19th century saw a fundamental shift in the understanding of the body and the relations between body on the one and soul or mind on the other side.

In the course of what has been described by Michel Foucault as the birth of the human sciences a range of disciplines began to focus their scholarly attention on the human being. The course will address this process of anthropologization by investigating various modes of registering the body and bodily expression.

It will consider visual material from both the arts and the sciences and will explore the interrelatedness and differences between these two fields of image production. One focus will be on the body as itself a side for the expression of a person's feelings or character and on related visual practices from Le Brun's classifying drawings of the expression of passions to Duchenne de Boulogne's electrically induced and photographically registered movements of the face muscles. The notion of "expression" as such implies a perception of the body as a medium on which informations are imprinted.

Such an understanding of the body as medium was particularly prominent in the late 18th and 19th century and the course will explore the relation between such a notion of the body and the development of various technologies of representation that are based on the principle of the trace and demand the presense of the body for the production of an image: the silhouette, casts or wax moulages, photography and finger prints.

Assessment: 2 essays of 8,000 words in total

Contact:  Dr Mechthild Fend (m.fend@ucl.ac.uk)

(HARTGO16) 40 credit units

Tutor: Dr Petra Lange-Berndt (Department of History of Art) 

This course discusses the architectures, poly-sensual environments and urban structures connected to artists' houses, communes and colonies. Wewill consider issues of countercultures, community-building, artistic authorship and self-staging: Since the nineteenth century a multitude of projects has been experimenting with forms of collective habitation as well as the subcultural lifestyles associated with hotels and farms, or the activism around squatted properties. By considering related theories of authorship in relation to collectivism, to models of the group, cooperative, network, sect, horde, pack, or swarm – ranging from anarchist, marxist or feminist to postmodern thought – we will criticise and revise romantic notions of artistdom and spaces of art production. We will also investigate in which ways communes and colonies as well as the desire to speak in a collective voice are relevant for artistic practices today.

Teaching: Both terms

Assessment: 2 essays of 4,000 words each

Contact: Petra Lange-Berndt (p.lange-berndt@ucl.ac.uk)

Optional Course with SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies)

Students might choose no more than SOAS 1 unit, from the following list of SOAS courses.

(SOAS 0.5 course unit = SOAS 20 credit units - SOAS 1 course unit = SOAS 40 credit units)

• Gender in the Middle East - 15PGNH001 (0.5 Unit)
• Gendering migration & diasporas - 15PGNH002 (0.5 Unit)
• Gender and development - 15PDSH010 (0.5 Unit)
• Issues in the Anthropology of Gender - 15PANH024 (0.5 Unit) - Not to be combined with 15PDSH010 Gender & Development.
• Feminist legal theory - 15PLAH027 (0.5 Unit)
• Gender, law and the family in the history of modern South Asia - 15PHIC068 (1 Unit)
• Gender, Post-Colonialism and the Study of Religions - 15PSRC037 (1 Unit)
• Migration, gender and the law in South East Asia and beyond - 15PLAH023 (0.5 Unit)
• Gender and Music (MMus) - 15PMUH009 (0.5 Unit)