Thesis: Gender & Postcolonial Studies

Course goals

The BA academic thesis Gender and Postcolonial Studies focuses on the following academic skills for conducting gender studies research: 
- determining and formulating a good problem definition with logical sub-questions; 
- developing a thorough research design; 
- setting up a well-structured paper; 
- academic writing; 
- critically analyzing and reflecting on texts; 
- correcting and improving one's own work and that of others. 
 
After completing the course, the student has: 
- learned to position oneself in critical feminist and / or postcolonial and / or decolonial and / or queer studies debates about knowledge production; 
- developed an ability to deploy and justify the chosen theoretical framework and methodological approach; 
- developed an ability to reflect on choices made and limitations. 
 
 

Content

BA thesis Gender and Postcolonial Studies has all the characteristics of a regular course with mandatory weekly plenary meetings and / or individual appointments, interim assignments and hard deadlines - with one big difference: the student is required to be more independent. The course seeks to actively draw connections with previously acquired knowledge and research skills. 
Students chooses their own theoretical framework, phenomenon and case for their thesis. In Ba thesis Gender and Postcolonial Studies, the different steps of the research cycle in interdisciplinary gender and postcolonial studies are explored and further developed. 
 
Central is the role of theories and methods in humanities research and interdisciplinary gender studies research in particular. Students are expected to link a gender and / or postcolonial and / or decolonial and / or queer studies perspective to phenomena of their choice such as language, culture, history, philosophy, communication, information, media & culture. 
 
Students sharpen the research proposal they have written in Research Seminar: Gender and Postcolonial Studies VR3V16001 and conduct individual research. Students report this research in the form of a BA thesis. For students the Research Seminar: Gender and Postcolonial Studies VR3V16001 course is the entry requirement for the BA Thesis. For pre-master students, this entry requirement only applies if the course is included in their pre-master trajectory. Students are advised not to register for courses that (partly) overlap with this course.

Additional information

Concerning the course in block 4: 
the time slot shown here is not yet final, and may still be modified until the third Wednesday in September