This module provides an interdisciplinary perspective on sex, sexuality and gender in London from 1880 to the present. Taking approaches from history, sociology, law, politics and literature, it covers topics such as Victorian sex scandals, the gendering of public space; masculinities and femininities; the impact of the law; Queer London; ‘Women’s Work’; the Swinging Sixties’ and ‘sexual liberation’; the making of cultures of sexuality in Soho and policing sexuality in Central London.
Introduction to history, politics, culture, and scientific study of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgendered, and queer people; examination of sexuality and gender as categories for investigation; interdisciplinary theories and research on minority sexualities and genders.
In the relationship between people and physical environments, not all people experience or impact environments in the same way or suffer the same degree. This course investigates how people in different places modify, know about, and are affected by environmental change in various ways according to gender. The theories and case studies covered are selected to encourage an understanding of how gender relations shape and are shaped by the rest of nature. Such an understanding provides the basis for gender-sensitive methodologies that can be crucial to addressing environmental problems.
Recent advances in feminist and LGBT+ liberation movements have had a visible and global impact on culture, literature, politics and commerce. This module examines gender and sexuality in a Scottish context. As binary understandings of gender and sexuality are increasingly shown to be outdated and outmoded, developments in our understanding of gender and sexuality are making headlines and becoming a regular part of our daily discourse in both our social and working lives. This course enables students to apply their knowledge of identity politics to a dynamic range of relevant texts.
The texts in this module examine the decline of traditional, industrialist, ‘hard man’ masculinities in Scotland. Through an exploration of dynamic, contemporary and highly acclaimed texts, this course examines broken masculinities, resistant femininities, and resurgent Scottish LGBT+ fictions. A select range of relevant secondary sources will accompany this exploration of primary literature, introducing students to iconic theorists, as well as relevant contemporary critics examining Scottish literature from a gendered perspective.
The focus of this course is to give an expansive outline of gender, sexuality and society with a specific spotlight on contemporary Japanese society. Class content exposes material from sociologists, historians, journalists, and literary scholars to analyse how gender and sexuality have been socially developed and experienced in post war Japan.