Dr Jasmine Gani CBG (Room TBC)

This course is available on the BSc in International Relations, BSc in International Relations and Chinese, BSc in International Relations and History and BSc in Politics and International Relations. This course is not available as an outside option. This course is available with permission to General Course students.

This course has a limited number of places (it is capped).

The course examines race and gender as ordering principles in world politics that shape (and are shaped by) historical and contemporary colonial practices in international relations. Students will engage with the ideas, epistemologies, and methods of anti-colonial thinkers and movements, and learn why and how international politics is inextricable from race and gender through the following substantive themes: sovereignty and nationalism; militarism, war, and policing; political economy, environment, and development; migration; civil rights and global solidarity movements. Grounded in postcolonial, decolonial, and feminist political thought, the course will enable students to develop their skills in applying political theory to the most pressing issues in contemporary world politics.

Indicative topics to be covered:

Part 1: Political theory and history of ideas

1. Excavating race and gender in International Relations

2. The imperial university: political theory and knowledge production

3. Epistemic disobedience: postcolonial theories

4. Intersectionality: gender, class, and Black/Indigenous feminist thought

5. Decolonisation, the pluriverse, and liberation theology

Part 2: Issues and case studies in world politics

6. Retelling the story of the state: sovereignty and nationalism

7. Militarism, war, and policing

8. Political economy, environment, and development

9. Racialisation of migration

10. Resisting empire: world-making through global solidarity movements

15 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the WT.

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6, in line with departmental policy.

Mock Exam in the WT

Frantz Fanon, “The Wretched of the Earth”

Edward Said, “Orientalism”

Angela Davis et al., “Abolition. Feminism. Now”

Gloria Anzaldúa, “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza”

Kimberlé Crenshaw, “On Intersectionality: Essential Writings”

Charles W. Mills, “The Racial Contract”

Errol Henderson, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism in International Relations Theory.”

Class Participation (10%) in the WT

Essay (30%, 2000 words) in the ST

e-Exam (60%, 2-hours) in the ST