ASTK18421U Gender and International Relations

This course analyzes the place of gender in world politics. It introduces students to theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of gender in International Relations, and reviews different fields of research, focusing on security studies, with cutting-edge literature. We examine how both the practice of international politics, and the academic discipline are gendered.

The course takes its starting point by reflecting on International Relations theory to understand why the mainstream of International Relations has traditionally had difficulties in engaging with feminist critiques. We will look at the early feminist debates and turn to themes of International Relations such as war, conflict, militarism and security through a gender perspective.

We analyze the role of bodies in International Relations and their complex intersecting identities to understand how gender is intertwined with categories such as race, class and sexuality. The question of how these complex identities give subjects possibility for agency runs throughout the modules. The course emphasizes how gender, security and politics are discursively constructed through both language and images. To shed light on these discursive constructions we conduct several case studies.

Students will learn why and how gender matters in the conduct and study of world politics. They will leave the course with a better understanding of how the underlying power structures of gender and intersecting factors sit at the very core of International Relations.

Students will acquire the relevant methods to become feminist researchers. They will be particularly well equipped to apply discourse analysis to the field of security studies and its interactions with the larger fields of International Relations and Political Science.