Undergraduate Course: Global and Transnational Feminisms (PLIT10159)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This class will teach students about contemporary feminist protests and politics in global perspective. Focusing on specific sites of struggle including in India, Iran, Egypt, and China, we will learn about forms of anticolonial and anti-authoritarian protest. Attending to the forms of politics that unfold on the streets and online, we will examine how feminist protest challenges charts new directions in theorizing power, social movements, and intimate politics. |
| Course description |
This is a course that gives students the analytical vocabulary to make sense of feminist movements for sovereignty and justice across the world. Focusing on movements against sexual and gender-based violence and anti-authoritarianism in Iran, India, China, and Egypt, we understand the nature and form of anticolonial resistance, theorize non-Western social movements, and pay attention to new forms of politics that are mediatized, embodied, and intimate. Students will gain an understanding of the complex meanings of feminism in different regional contexts, and study the nature of anticolonial power struggles.
Part 1: Theories of anticolonial power (including readings by Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, Saba Mahmood, and Nivedita Menon)
Part 2: Feminist Movements (including readings by Dilar Dirik, Tahereh Aghdasifar, Poulomi Roychowdhury)
Part 3: Feminist Futures (including readings on transnational feminisms by Millie Thayer, Ashwini Tambe, Anna Storti)
Student Learning Experience via a weekly seminar.
At the end of the course, students can expect to: be conversant in different genealogies and lineages of non-Western feminisms; to learn about anticolonial epistemologies of power; to historicize current feminist movements against longer histories of Empire and authoritarianism; to write about current feminisms for public audiences via website entries on our collectively created public blog; to develop academic essay writing skills while working on a full-length final essay examining a feminist movement of the student's choice.
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have at least four Politics/IR courses at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this). Only university/college level courses will be considered. |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
45 %,
Practical Exam
55 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Seminar Participation: 15% This is based on student presence and contribution to the tutorial and conditional upon their submitting reading summaries and key questions for discussion per week based on their readings.
Mid term policy brief: 45% Students will write a report of 2000 words compiling a ¿case study¿ of a current feminist movement of their choice.
Final exam: 40%: Short answer, multiple choice hand written exam administered centrally. |
| Feedback |
Feedback for draft blog posts when desired during office hours; unmarked feedback on essay draft |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Understand how gender is deployed in global resistance movements
- Understand and contextualize contemporary feminist movements by locating them historically and within regional perspective
- Analyse demands for progressive change within current formations of authoritarian power in non-Western contexts
- Develop public writing and research skills by preparing policy briefs related to a feminist movement of their choice
- Learn to apply theoretical arguments to analysing and representing contemporary feminist movements
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Reading List
Mahmood, Saba. Politics of Piety: the Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject / by Saba Mahmood, with a New Preface by the Author. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.
Dilar Dirik. The Kurdish Women's Movement: History, Theory, Practice
Liu, Lydia He, Rebecca E Karl, and Dorothy Ko. The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
Babayan, Kathryn, and Afsaneh Najmabadi. Islamicate Sexualities: Translations Across Temporal Geographies of Desire / Edited by Kathryn Babayan and Afsaneh Najmabadi; with Contributions by Dina Al-Kassim [and Others]. Cambridge, Mass: Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University, 2008. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Hemangini Gupta
Tel:
Email: hemangini.gupta@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr Ian McClory
Tel: (0131 6)50 3932
Email: Ian.McClory@ed.ac.uk |
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