Module manager: Dr Eric Prenowitz
Email: E.Prenowitz@leeds.ac.uk
Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable
Year running 2024/25
This module is not approved as an Elective
The module begins with Freud, who inaugurated the serious study of sexuality and gender. It then explores some mostly ‘second wave’ feminist thinkers attentive to psychoanalysis and poststructuralism. The questions raised are urgently political (a massive feminist critique of the whole structure and history of civilisation, basically), and deeply philosophical, but the pedal point is ‘reading’, as if the question of interpretation were a privileged one for any interrogation of sexual difference.
The module offers an in-depth introduction to a complex and influential intellectual tradition within more than a century of intense work on the question of sexuality in the broadest sense: the heterogeneous tradition of critical thinkers concerned with questions of sexual difference in a context informed by psychoanalysis and poststructuralist insights. To achieve this aim, you will read classic texts by thinkers such as Freud, Butler, Cixous, Derrida, Irigaray, Lacan, Rubin, and explore questions of difference and identity, nature and nurture, history, historicity and social change, signification and the body, sex, gender and performativity, as well as rational or philosophical discourse itself. The module will cover some of the theoretical prehistory of all the various approaches to thinking sex, sexuality and gender today, while arguing for the (theoretical, political) radicality of an intellectual tradition that isn’t simply superseded by more recent work. You will develop your skills and originality in close critical analysis.
On successful completion of the module you will:
1. Identify key critical concepts and strategies developed since the end of the 19th century to explain sexuality in the broadest sense.
2. Appraise the major theoretical interventions in this field by such thinkers as Freud, Cixous, Rubin, Butler and Irigaray.
3. Analyse the effects of sexual difference within literary texts and other cultural artefacts and forms of creative expression.
Skills learning outcomes
On successful completion of the module students will have demonstrated the following skills:
4. The ability to recognise and express knowledge and understanding and how it relates to personal experience and to demonstrate learning and growth from the experience.
5. The ability to weigh up different arguments and perspectives, using supporting evidence to form opinions, arguments, theories and ideas.
Details of the syllabus will be provided on the Minerva organisation (or equivalent) for the module
| Delivery type | Number | Length hours | Student hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lecture | 10 | 2 | 20 |
| Seminar | 10 | 1 | 10 |
| Private study hours | 270 | ||
| Total Contact hours | 30 | ||
| Total hours (100hr per 10 credits) | 300 | ||
Students receive written feedback on both essays. Discussion sessions in the third hour will also contribute to formative feedback, as will meetings during office hours or essay prep sessions.
| Assessment type | Notes | % of formal assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Coursework | Written | 70 |
| Coursework | Written | 30 |
| Total percentage (Assessment Coursework) | 100 | |
Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated
There is no reading list for this module
Last updated: 8/29/2024
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