MA Gender Studies and Law

Dissertations are wide-ranging in terms of disciplines and topics, including the fields of gender & development, feminist legal theory, area studies, cultural studies, queer studies, literature, film and media studies, politics, anthropology, history, theory as well as diaspora and migration studies.

The module introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of gender studies, the politics of knowledge production and the institutional requirements for the submission of a dissertation in gender studies. The first part of the module is organised around a series of introductory seminars followed by, in the second part, student presentations to assist the development of a proposal for the dissertation. A dissertation proposal is to be submitted at the end of the module. The module is attentive to the skills and knowledge required to write within gender studies, gender and sexuality and/or gender studies and law. The module includes an introduction to qualitative methods and feminist research methods.

The purpose of this module is to provide students wishing to study law at postgraduate level in the University of London with an introduction to law, legal method and associated skills and techniques. It is designed primarily for those who do not already possess a law degree but may also be of interest to those who feel they want to get used to studying law in a UK institution.

The objective of this module is to enable students to become well versed in the field of feminist, queer and trans legal theory, and the study of gender and sexuality in relation to law, with a particular focus on Global Southern experiences and methodological directions. Critical approaches to colonialism, imperialism and capitalism, and their entanglements with law and the state, are particularly emphasised. However, no prior knowledge of law is required to attend the module. You will be taught by diverse experts in the field and gain an interdisciplinary, critical introduction to this ever-evolving field.

The purpose of this module is to familiarise students with the main debates in gender and development and to introduce new ways of conceptualising the field, critiquing the concept of gender as generally applied in development, and also development itself. We will study issues relevant to gender and development not usually included within the development paradigm, like the coloniality of gender. We will also discuss how the gender binaries came to be so pervasive globally. Gender here is viewed as a set of normative behavioural prescriptions that apply to men as much as to women and men and masculinities will be treated as an integral part of the field alongside women and femininities. Gender is also understood not simply as an issue of individual male-female relationships but as inherently political.

This interdisciplinary module approaches gender and sexual dynamics in the modern Middle East through the lens of political unrest, protest, and revolution. Through a study of critical moments in Middle Eastern history characterised by rupture, flux, and upheaval, students will explore how norms of gender and sexuality in the region emerge, develop, sediment, evolve, and get disrupted.

Migration and diaspora are - like gender – not descriptive, objective categories, but analytical tools to name positions of power. In this course we discuss what gendering, diaspora and migration can imply as analytical (not descriptive) categories and how they are constructed interdependently by power relations. We will engage with a range of approaches to gender, migrations and diasporas and will address the social and political dimensions of migration and diasporas as well as politics related to constructions of non/belonging, cultural productions and imaginations.

This module offers an introduction to law on armed conflict, including collective security, the use of force, international humanitarian law and counter-terrorism. These are studied alongside legal reforms in response to contemporary understandings of the relationship between war and gender.

This course is intended to provide both an introduction to queer theory, as well as to engage with the question of its relevance in contemporary Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. This course will use struggles for sexual self-determination as a prism through which to consider broader questions about the constitution of modernity, the proliferation of identities, rights and claims for justice, the consolidation and deconstruction of postcolonial national identities, the aspirations and anxieties of postcolonial elites, etc. These questions will be studied contextually, with topics in many weeks focusing on a single area case study, or a comparison of two or more country-contexts.

This module bridges theory and practice in the fields of migration, diaspora and humanitarian practice. It is born from the belief that knowledge and practice produced by grassroots organisations, activists, practitioners and artists should be intertwined with academic knowledge and validated as part of a real decolonising effort. This course at SOAS is uniquely positioned to bridge theory and practice and offers students a fantastic opportunity to not only learn in London but engaging with one of the most diverse and vibrant cities in the world. “SOAS in London, London in SOAS” is the core idea behind this course.

This module provides a continuation of interdisciplinary critical explorations relative to the field of feminist, queer and trans legal theories and methodologies, as they pertain to law, initiated in our Term 1 module Gender, Sexuality and Law: Theories and Methodologies (which you need to take in order to be able to attend this module). We introduce a series of in-depth studies on a range of topics relative to gender, sexuality and law, which will provide you with an opportunity to study various specialised issues and apply the knowledge of theories and methodologies covered by the above-mentioned Term 1 module.

The module will examine key issues pertaining to the representation of genders and sexualities in a selection of films made by South East Asian filmmakers.