Broadly interdisciplinary in nature, this course is intended to provide an inclusive forum for discussion on a range of topics from genealogies of gender to its (de)/(post)colonial articulation to how cultural imperialism and the globalization of media industries shape global politics of gender diversity and anti-gender backlashes.

Seminar: two hours per week, for 10 weeks

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The summative assessment includes two pieces of writing assignments. First is a think-piece worth 30% of the grade. Word limit for the think-piece assignment is 1000 words including references. A second summative assessment is an essay. It is worth 70% of the overall course mark. The word limit is 3000 words (including the reference list).

The course provides a critical introduction to gender diversity and the increasing prominence with which gender identities and rights have come to occupy our social imagination today. It provides participants with a framework for thinking pragmatically and critically about how societies organize their thinking about sex, gender, and sexuality. Combining insights from postcolonial, queer, transgender, masculinities and feminist studies, special attention will be focused on epistemological and representational effacements, inequalities, and erasures in the wider networks of material and symbolic relations within and through which the category of gender and gendering are configured and experienced in particular locales. The idea is to demonstrate the value and relevance of gender diversity to social science inquiries while being critical of Western colonial modernity and its universalizing proclivity that continues to shape representations of gender diversity across transregional and wider temporal and spatial connections.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

a) Demonstrate how thinking about gender diversity can illuminate sociological debates about social structure, social change, culture, and identity politics.

b) Examine and critique the dominant Euro-American paradigms in gender diversity studies and the challenges in applying those models to global southern contexts.

c) Critically assess the relationship between global and local forces in understanding the politics of gender diversity.

d) Explain the value of interdisciplinary approaches and debates in gender diversity and related fields to social science inquiries.

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.