Gender, Sexuality, Power: Key Theories

This subject offers an in-depth look at feminist and queer theories of power. Exploring gender, sex, and sexuality as key sites for the cultural production of difference and inequality, we will consider how a range of thinkers in Gender Studies have theorised gender relations as power relations. Drawing on recent histories of feminist, queer, affect, and critical race theory, this course considers how understandings of power have changed, from structural understandings of inequality to poststructuralist theories that see power as diffuse. We will interrogate gender as context-specific and shaped in relation with race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, and location. Through a range of case studies from popular culture, social media, film, and recent social movements and political debates, we will evaluate how gender, sex, and sexuality are important sites of identity formation, inequality, and resistance. Key themes include: intersectional feminism, heteronormativity, bodies, labour, queer kinship, gendered violence, and abolition.

• 1Demonstrate a sound understanding of the main developments in feminist theorising about sex, gender and identity and of the issues involved in debates about feminist knowledges
• 2Apply critical thinking skills to analyse contemporary issues and cultural representations related to gender and power
• 3Show a developing capacity to critically evaluate the operation of power in relation to contemporary debates about gender relations.