MA Gender Studies (Research) – (M.A.)

Contents

MA Gender Studies is available on a 12-month full-time basis. The course has six modules: five compulsory, one elective.

Compulsory modules

Researching Gender provides you with the opportunity to focus on researching gender with a particular emphasis on feminist research practices. In exploring a range of disciplinary perspectives, you will focus on epistemological, methodological and ethical considerations. In particular, the course looks at these considerations with relation to research design and methods.

Theorising Gender engages with contemporary theoretical approaches within gender studies. Exploring the social and individual processes involved in the enactment of gender relations, the module investigates alternative, complementary and conflicting explanations for the source and operation of gender.

Quantitative Research Methods introduces you to the skills required for the generation, analysis and management of quantitative data. Using concrete research problems, the module investigates a wide range of quantitative research issues and gives you the opportunity to develop a critical understanding of the discipline.

Practicalities covered include survey design, computer-based 'hands-on' workshops with SPSS for Windows, using data from one or more large scale data sets, creative data analysis linked to theory development, data modelling using regression techniques, effective use of secondary data sets and ways of linking data, including the scope for linking quantitative and qualitative data.

Qualitative Research Methods examines qualitative research design, practice and analysis and features a series of practical workshops on qualitative data analysis, using software packages such as QSR NUD*IST or NVivo.

The module will also develop your skills for generating qualitative research data, such as interview technique, biographical and narrative approaches, focus group approaches, ethnography and observation, non-verbal and visual methods, and give you a critical appreciation of the appropriateness of particular methods to different research scenarios. The module also explores the relationship between qualitative and quantitative research, and between qualitative research and policy.

Research Project allows you to explore an aspect of gender relations in society, either contemporary or historical, through the production of a piece of empirical research.

Elective modules

In addition to the compulsory modules, you also choose a module from the following list.

* Feminist Cultural Theory
* Revisioning Histories of Modernism (Femininity, Modernity, Representation)
* Feminist Criticism and Practice in the Contemporary Visual Arts
* Culture and Identity in the Later Fourteenth Century
* Stage Lighting Design: theory and practice
* Language and politics
* Writing about Death in Nineteenth-Century America
* Global Genders
* Que(e)rying Sexualities
* Gender, Race and Culture
* Contested Bodies
* Gender, Communications and Popular Culture
* Gender and Health
* Race, Gender and Nation in the 20th Century
* Childbirth in Seventeenth Century England
* Representing Women in Medieval Literature
* Critical Musicology
* Gender, Globalisation and Development
* Race, Gender and Migration