Dr Katharine Millar CBG.8.13

This course is available on the MSc in International Relations, MSc in International Relations (Research) and MSc in International Relations Theory. This course is not available as an outside option.

All students are required to obtain permission of the Teacher Responsible by completing the online application linked to LSE for You.  Admission to the course is not guaranteed.

This course foregrounds gender - as noun, verb and structure - in understanding the practices/events studies as global politics and the discipline/study of international relations.  The course is grounded in feminist theory and provides students with an introduction to feminist epistemologies and methods.  It proceeds in two sections, moving from theoretical foundations to an examination of gender and the macro, transnational and historical processes of global politics.  Each 'macro' examination of the gendering of international politics is followed by a corresponding examination of several substantive areas of international politics, including security, development, NGOs and transnational social movements and international law/organisations.  These overarching topics are balanced with issue-specific case studies (eg sexual/sexualised violence in conflict; gendering of the informal economy), derived from current events, to b discussed in seminars.  Particular thematic attention will be paid to the on-going construction (and transmission) of global/transnational hierarchies that are gendered and gendering.

10 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the MT.

In line with departmental policy, students on the course will have a reading week in Week 6.

Students will be expected to produce 2 pieces of coursework in the MT.

B Ackerly, J True and M Stern (eds), Feminist Methodologies for International Relations (CUP: 2006)

C Enloe, Bananas, beaches and bases: making feminist sense of international relations, rev'd 2nd ed (University of California Press: 2014)

C Mohanty, Feminism without Borders: Decolonising Theory; Practicsing Solidarity (Duke Unversity Press: 2003)

L Sjobeg, Gender, War and Conflict (Polity: 2014)

C Weber, Queer International Relations: sovereignty, sexuality and the will to knowledge (OUP:2016)

Essay (90%, 4000 words) in the LT.
Coursework (10%) in the MT.

The coursework entails weekly short reaction pieces (300 words maximum) engaging with the week's topics/readings to be submitted in advance of the seminar.  These will prepare students to fully engage with the seminar discussions.  Most importantly, they will familiarise students with the feminist epistemological commitments to critique and self-reflection.