UWA Handbook 2022

Major Overview

Description

Note: this major is only available to re-enrolling students. From 2020 newly commencing students in this major should refer to MJD-GNWST Gender Studies

The Gender Studies major traces the history and ideas about gender and its intersections with race, class and sexuality. It is based in the everyday practices and cultural texts of students' lives and serves as a reminder of the forms of dominant thinking and dissent on sexuality and identity in the past. Gender Studies also teaches generic life skills like collaboration, teamwork, leadership, group dynamics, and literacy, in screen, print and digital cultures. It is grounded in the ethics of equity, diversity and social justice.

Outcomes

Students are able to (1) demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of feminist thought, its key shifts, major theorists and philosophical movements including queer theory and masculinity studies as emergent branches; (2) articulate the complexities of gender as a socially constructed practice that is situated in time and place, and is mediated by other subject positions like race, class, religion, and sexuality; (3) contextualise the history of women's liberation as a social movement, its links to feminist activism as a form of social justice, and the continuing relevance of linking theory to practice; (4) draw on feminist methods of research, writing, and thinking about gender including reflexively creating, situating, and queering knowledge; and (5) utilise a discursive vocabulary that enables complex arguments to be clearly articulated around gender, sexuality, ideology, subjectivity, corporeality, and agency.

Broadening guidelines

All students studying towards a Bachelor's Degree at UWA are required to Broaden their studies by completing a minimum of four units (24 points) of study outside their degree specific major. Broadening is your opportunity to explore other areas of interest, investigate new disciplines and knowledge paradigms and to shape your degree to suit your own aspirations and interests. Many of you will be able to undertake more than this minimum amount of broadening study and we encourage you to do so if this suits your aspirations. Over the next few months you will find here some broadening suggestions related to your degree-specific major. While we know that many students value guidance of this sort, these are only suggestions and students should not lose sight of the opportunity to explore that is afforded by your Broadening Choices. Advice can also be sought from your Allocated Student Advising Office.

Courses

Gender Studies can be taken as a degree-specific major in the following degree courses:

• BP001 Bachelor of Arts
• BH005 Bachelor of Philosophy (Honours)

Units