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Module

SOC8053 : Gender, Violence and Social Change (Inactive)

  • Inactive for Year: 2024/25
  • Module Leader(s): Professor Alison Phipps
  • Owning School: Geography, Politics & Sociology
  • Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus
Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Semester 2 Credit Value: 10
ECTS Credits: 5.0
European Credit Transfer System

Aims

This module aims to give students an advanced grounding in the political sociology of gender and violence, exploring how sexual and gender-based violence operates within the intersecting systems of heteropatriarchy and colonial racial capitalism. It will culminate in students individually writing up the collaborative design of their own intervention, grounded in a clear theoretical framework and which can be at any scale they wish, which could truly move us towards a world without sexual violence.

Outline Of Syllabus

The module involves examining all the ways sexual and gender-based violence enters the world: how acts and threats of violence impose binary gender and extract free social reproduction; and how imputations and punishment of violence justify colonial expansion and military-industrial projects, border regimes and the prison-industrial complex. The module will also help students to understand how all these aspects of violence work together: how the acts and threats that make us docile subjects of capitalism also drive us into the arms of the carceral-colonial state and enable other kinds of violence in the service of capitalist accumulation. Finally, the module will engage students in critical conversations about how to intervene in this process and how initiatives to end sexual and gender-based violence can dismantle oppressive systems rather than strengthening them. The module will also incorporate a study skills component focused on critical reading and writing, and a reflective praxis element directed towards the assignment.

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities
Category Activity Number Length Student Hours Comment
Guided Independent StudyAssessment preparation and completion125:0025:00Collaborative design of intervention
Guided Independent StudyAssessment preparation and completion110:0010:00Writing up of assignment
Guided Independent StudyDirected research and reading140:0040:00Independent reading
Structured Guided LearningStructured research and reading activities61:006:00Circulation of pre-recorded content (nonsynchronous online)
Scheduled Learning And Teaching ActivitiesSmall group teaching31:003:00Reflective praxis workshop building towards assignment (online; synchronous timetabled)
Scheduled Learning And Teaching ActivitiesSmall group teaching82:0016:00PiP discussion seminars with study skills component (synchronous timetabled)
Total100:00
Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Teaching methods are designed to both give students theoretical input and support their independent learning. The module is heavily discussion based to enable students to develop their own ideas and to work towards their assignment from the beginning. Each week the discussion seminar will be focused on one key reading, supported by recommended readings and other forms of input (pre-recorded materials, podcasts for example) to be inclusive of a variety of different modes of learning. Students will also begin thinking about the assignment from the beginning and in reflective online workshops, allowing them to develop a strong theoretical grounding for their work and to receive plenty of formative feedback.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment
Description Semester When Set Percentage Comment
Report2M1002500-word report setting out an intervention plan (template provided)
Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The submitted report, written individually on a collaborative project, will enable students to show a clear understanding of theory and the political sociology of gender and violence. It will also require students to put theory into practice in the design of an intervention, which should be explained clearly and step-by-step according to a template they will be provided with. The report will include the theoretical grounding for the intervention together with its format and structure, and a reflective section where students will talk about their own experience of the module and designing the intervention. It will be fully referenced with academic literature.

Reading Lists

Timetable