Gender and Politics

Catalog description

This class critically explores a variety of political, social, and economic processes through a gendered perspective. It perceives gender as an analytical category that continues to be shaped and reshaped as part of our everyday realities. Thus, this course is not about women's participation in formal political mechanisms. It considers femininities and masculinities together and conceptualizes politics outside of formal political procedures. The course is divided into three parts. During the first few weeks we begin by reviewing some of the processes through which gender has been constructed and how it can be used today as an analytical category. We specifically investigate complex notions such as gender, sex, femininity, masculinity, intersectionality and apply them to our understanding of politics, political economy and power. In the second and third parts of the course we use this foundation to explore various intersectional inequalities that govern everyday lives. We revisit various issues of everyday politics and political economy from the perspective of often invisibilized experiences. We analyze a number of contemporary institutions, discourses and practices through themes of nations and states, ideologies of citizenship, labor practices and processes, development, economic globalization and international governance. By the end of this class, you will have the following competencies: (1) a working knowledge of main concepts of gender studies; (2) a mastery of main principles of feminist epistemology and methodology; (3) ability to apply these concepts and principles to political science problems; and (4) capability to analyze our everyday lives and problematize the multi-layered gender inequality problems around us. This course will begin online. The format will be updated with respect to public and university administration decisions. Lecture videos will not…