Theory and Critical Research I

Course goals

Content

This course is for students in the RMA Gender Studies and GEMMA. The entrance requirements for Exchange Students will be checked by International Office and the Programme coordinator. You do not have to contact the Programme coordinator in advance.

This core seminar is designed for Research MA students in Gender Studies. This course explores seminal strands of feminist theorizing, with specific focus on a cartographic approach to the genre of 'feminist theories' (used here as umbrella term for the fields of feminist, queer, trans, critical race, de- and postcolonial studies perspectives). It provides intimate encounters with exemplary authors and texts from the living canon of feminist critical scholarship. The course opens with a situating of the ideas that helped to shape the project of Gender Studies by questioning what counts as theory and what possibilities critical research may hold. The seminar then investigates into the multiple domains in which race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class and ability shape our daily experience and how they can be accounted for in research work. Central topics to be explored, among others, are: deconstruction of binary oppositions structuring (western) thought; interrogation of eurocentrism; debates around essentialism vs. (social) constructionism; decolonization of knowledges; trans, queer, and posthuman(ist) challenges in Gender Studies.

Additional information

Priority rules
This course has priority rules and a waiting list. Your enrolment is guaranteed if you
- are a student in the RMA Gender Studies 
- are a student in the GEMMA programme
In all other situations, you will be placed on a waiting list if you enrol in this course. For any remaining slots in the course, lots are drawn among the students on the waiting list.


Career orientation:
This course trains the students in foundational knowledge in the field of Gender Studies and emphasizes their socio-political embedding and relevance. It thereby teaches the students in foundational manners to contribute to a societally relevant understanding of higher education in the humanities.