Overview
ESSAY:
Essays must relate theoretical perspectives and arguments to empirical cases/ examples. The third assignment can be on any topic other than the topic covered in the second assessment.
ESSAY Q: How have feminists approached violence? And what lessons are still relevant today? Discuss, using at least ONE example to support and elaborate your argument.
Use at least three readings from the course (core/additional/supplementary). You should also demonstrate you have done independent research and are encouraged to incorporate other sources into your essay (you can also use the additional/supplementary reading list, if relevant).
READINGS TO USE + PLUS YOUR OWN SOURCES:
Cynthia Enloe (2004) “All the Men Are in the Militias, All the Women Are Victims. The Politics of Masculinity and Femininity in Nationalist Wars,” in The curious feminist: Searching for women in a new age of empire. Berkley and London: University of California Press, pp. 99-118.
Bülent Diken and Carsten Bagge Laustsen (2005) Becoming abject: Rape as a weapon of war. Body & Society 11(1), pp. 111-128.
Sikata Banerjee (2006) Armed masculinity, Hindu nationalism and female political participation in India: Heroic mothers, chaste wives and celibate warriors. International Feminist Journal of Politics 8(1), pp. 62-83.
Laura Sjoberg and Caron Gentry (2007) “Dying for Sex and Love in the Middle East,” Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women's Violence in Global Politics. London: Zed Books, pp. pp 112-140.
Laleh Khalili (2011) Gendered Practices of Counterinsurgency. Review of International Studies 37, pp. 1471–1491.
Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review 43(6), pp. 1241-1299.
- Joanna Bourke (2022) “Shame,” in Disgrace: Global Reflections on Sexual Violence. London: Reaktion Books, pp. 22-39.
Audre Lorde (1981) The Uses of Anger. Women's Studies Quarterly 9(3), pp. 7-10.
Important writing instructions:
Citations should be in-text (using Harvard style) and a bibliography included at the end. Remember to include the SPIR UG coversheet and follow notes on coursework submission.
- You've been asked to use one example, but make sure you connect the module material to the example. You can obviously rely on what has already been written on the chosen case (if there are academic sources available), but you can also provide an original analysis.
You can disagree with and challenge the material covered, but your arguments must always be supported by evidence or through the literature.
Make sure your writing and research is academic in style and presentation. In this module, you are welcome to write in the first person and link your argument to your own lived experiences/positionality.
- Now, what I am about to say is extremely important: make sure you have a clear argument/thesis statement/claim. State this in the introduction and use the essay to develop your argument and draw conclusions. The questions are very broad, so this is going to be important to narrow the focus and engage critically with the topic/material.