MA in Gender, Culture and Society

Core Modules

WS6031 Theoretical Approaches to Gender, Culture and Society I
This course will review and critically examine the main theoretical approaches to gender, sexuality and the position of women and men in society, starting in the late eighteenth century, but concentrating on the period from the 1970s onwards. The module will analyse theories about the social and cultural construction of gendered identities, their origin, maintenance and representation. It will pay attention to intersectionality, the connection between gender and other identity markers like age, ethnicity, race, ability, sexuality, class etc. Of central importance is the practical application of different theoretical positions to specific topics like gender and employment, gender and childhood, gender and the body, gender and nationalism, gender and the media, gender and the family.

WS6042 Theoretical Approaches to Gender, Culture and Society II
This course will build on the knowledge of feminist, gender and queer theory students will have acquired in the module ‘Theoretical Approaches to Gender, Culture and Society I’. Specifically, it will be shown how different scholars have used these theoretical concepts and methods to study topics like family, work, technological change, mass and consumer culture and globalization. The module will also analyse theories about the social and cultural construction of gendered identities, their origin, maintenance and representation. It will pay attention to intersectionality, the connection between gender and other identity markers like age, ethnicity, race, ability, sexuality, class etc.

WS6051 Feminist Approaches to Research
This 3 credit module will enable students to bring feminist critiques of knowledge and methodology to their research and writing up the dissertation. Students will address questions such as: What have feminist theorists to say about objectivity and truth/ the distinction between knower and known/ self and other/ mind and body/ subject and object? How might we understand culture and society differently if we incorporate reproduction, bodily work, and intimate relations in our research? What might be the limits of ‘feminist standpoint’, the idea that women, as a subordinated group, are in a better position to arrive at an adequate representation of social reality than men? What kinds of questions guide feminist research? How do feminist researchers approach the objects of their research? What is the relationship between the object of research and the feminist researcher?

AW6002: Thesis Writing
This 3- credit module on thesis-writing focuses on structural, rhetorical, and strategic issues. The thesis as the point of order is examined, as is the question of how order in sections and subsections either interrupt or serve to unify the overall text. Academic rigor and stylistic appropriacy is examined in terms of the social and rhetorical contexts. Individuals’ writing strategies are examined and evaluated to determine their effectiveness. New strategies are explored.

HI5021: The History of Women, Medieval to Modern: Sources, Methods and Approaches
The origins of women’s history; introduction to the sources for the study of women’s history; methodological approaches; historiographical approaches; primary source documents relating to religion, politics, work, education, sexuality, rights, the role of individual women will be identified and interrogated in individual sessions along with the key debates and, interpretations.

SO5051: Researching Social Exclusion
The concept of exclusion; its social, cultural, political and ideological underpinnings; the dynamics and the processes involved; the implications of exclusion; the structural, cultural and ideological issues underlying this phenomenon and its reproduction.

CU6031 Comparative Literature: Cultural Constructions of the Past
This module will explore developments and trends in comparative literature and exemplify these by focussing on the comparative analysis of the inter-relationship between history and cultural memory in the light of postmodern ideology. It will pay special attention to the exploration of subaltern collective memory and the role of textual and filmic re-writings of history.

WS6032: Feminism(s), Diaspora, Multiculturalism
This module addresses the emergence of culture as a significant area of political debate in contexts of global diasporas and multiculturalisms and why the most divisive struggles over cultural difference take place in relation women’s lives and bodies. It also examines the connections and disconnections between multicultural politics of identity and difference and feminist politics of gender justice and equality. Finally, it provides students with a theoretical framework for understanding how social and ethical questions of gender rights and justice are linked to forms of social and political membership in contexts of diaspora and multiculture.

WS6023: Feminist Literary Theory: Perspectives on Women and Literature
Analysing feminist literary theories and testing their practical applications in relation to a diverse range of women’s writing; examining the relationship between gender and writing and the notion of writing as revision; examining the cultural locations of women’s writing, in terms of class, ethnicity and sexuality, as well as themes of nation, region and cultural affiliations; examining women writers’ use of various ‘high’ and ‘low’ genres, including speculative fiction, myth, autobiography, and poetry.

SO5061 Researching Social Change
Defining social change; the concept of progress and social engineering; contingency reflexivity, risk society and postmodernism; periodisation of change; world trends; socio-economic theory and structural change; changing aspects of Irish society; institutional change in Western Europe; identity formation and cultural change; problematising the concept of class in theories of change; citizenship in a changing world; power and contestation.

PS5121 Feminist Perspectives on Conflict and Development Issues
Major feminist schools of thought, and how their ideas interrelate; empirical feminist studies of conflict and the causes of conflict; feminist approaches to development, both from the first world and from the third world; challenges to feminist thought on conflict and development. The module will be taught via a one three hour seminar per week. Assessment will be mainly based on a major essay, in-class evaluations and a review of the literature.

CU6012: Utopian Theory and Texts
This module will explore theories of utopianism as a fundamental component of cultural, political, and social life. Projecting ways of living that are better than the status quo, utopian visions can be dynamic, sometimes dangerous, elements in the processes of socio-political change. The outline of our investigation is as follows: the concept of utopia; ideology and utopia; the ubiquity of utopia: the reality of utopia: the politics of utopia. We will end with work on case studies of utopianism.

EH6021: Gender and Sexuality in Irish Writing
Taking Irish literature over the past century as its main focus of enquiry, this course aims to: Interrogate the ways in which gender and sexuality have been produced or constructed within the Irish literary tradition; Explore the engagement of these texts with contemporary historical, social and political contexts; Consider changing definitions of gender and sexuality in Irish culture over the past thirty years in particular; Evaluate connections and divergences between the writing of sexuality and gender North and South during the period; Evaluate a range of theoretical approaches which have been, or might be, applied to this literature.

WS6013 Dissertation
Students write a dissertation of ca. 15,000 words in a relevant area – which reflects the conceptual, theoretical and methodological skills acquired through the Masters programme and which displays the ability to use these convincingly. The dissertation topic will be decided through consultation with the course director and other relevant faculty. Students will work individually on the topic under the guidance of an assigned research supervisor.

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