Not available in 2024/25
IR476      Half Unit
Gender, Sexuality, Race and the Politics of Violence

This information is for the 2024/25 session.

Teacher responsible

Dr Katharine Millar CBG.8.13

Availability

This course is available on the MSc in International Relations, MSc in International Relations (LSE and Sciences Po) and MSc in International Relations (Research). 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.

Course content

This course foregrounds gender, race, sexuality – as embodied, as social, and as forms of intersectional hierarchy/ies – to examine the interrelation of seemingly-disparate practices of violence and manifestations of conflict. It moves away from the concept of “security” to highlight assemblages of threats and vulnerabilities that connect and challenge traditional international relations concepts of both scale (e.g. local, national, international etc.) as well as the legitimately “political”. The course encourages students to consider not only the ways different practices of violence are gendered, racialised, and sexualised, but also how these violences are implicated in social power relations, and the production of order/normality. The course examines both practices of violence and resistances violence. Particular thematic emphasis is placed on the questions of what constitute violence, and how this key conceptualisation relates to our ways of analysing, interpreting, and making sense, both academically and experientially, of the phenomenon.

Teaching

20 hours of seminars in the AT.

Formative coursework

Students will submit a 2-page (max) bullet-point (no prose!) outline in Week Seven Autumn term that specifies their proposed research question, evidence, and essay structure for the summative assignment.

Indicative reading

  • M Zalweski, Feminist International Relations: Exquisite Corpse (2013)
  • C Sylvester, War as Experience (2012)
  • M Erikson Baaz and M Stern, Sexual Violence as a Weapon of war? (2013)
  • V Hudson, Sex and World Peace (2012)
  • C Nordstrum, Shadows of War (2004)
  • M Jackman, 'Violence in Social Life', ARS (Vol.28, 2002)
  • T N Coates, Between the World and Me (2015)

Assessment

Essay (75%) in the WT.
Presentation (15%) and class participation (10%) in the AT.

Key facts

Department: International Relations

Total students 2023/24: Unavailable

Average class size 2023/24: Unavailable

Controlled access 2023/24: No

Value: Half Unit

Guidelines for interpreting course guide information

Course selection videos

Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.

Personal development skills

  • Leadership
  • Self-management
  • Problem solving
  • Application of information skills
  • Communication