Ways of (Feminist) Knowing - SOC00030M
- Department: Sociology
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: M
-
Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
- See module specification for other years: 2025-26
Module summary
This module critically engages with questions of knowledge and how we (as feminists) know: what counts as knowledge? How do we 'know'? Situating our critical inquiry against the backdrop of post-Enlightenment, disembodied approaches to knowledge that privilege the cognitive, the module explores ‘rational’, bodily, emotional/affective, experiential and post-human ways of knowing, and the political and ethical implications of multiple knowledges.
Module will run
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Semester 2 2024-25 |
Module aims
Against the backdrop of post-Enlightenment, disembodied approaches to knowledge that privilege the cognitive and the ‘logical’, this module critically engages with questions of knowledge and how we (as feminists) know. What counts as knowledge?; What is the hierarchy amongst different forms of knowledge?; And how might that be related to what have been constructed as gendered ways of knowing? In dialogue with feminist theoretical approaches to some of these questions, the module explores ‘rational’, bodily, emotional/affective, experiential and post-human ways of knowing.
Module learning outcomes
After successfully completing this module students will be able to:
• Interrogate and explain a range of theoretical approaches to ways of knowing, with an understanding of the ontological and epistemological foundations of these approaches.
• Demonstrate critical awareness of the hierarchies in different forms of knowledge, applying this awareness in one’s own reflexive research practice.
• Critically analyse the complex issues around meanings and constructions of ‘knowledge’, with a focus on feminist engagements with the politics of knowledge production.
• Apply feminist theorisations of knowledge to conduct research into the gendered dimensions of social, cultural and political lives.
Indicative assessment
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Indicative reassessment
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
Module feedback
Provisional feedback (subject to external examiners' approval) is given within University timelines.
Indicative reading
Adams, Carol, J. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. 20th Anniversary ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Alaimo, Stacy, and Susan Hekman (eds.). Material Feminisms. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008.
Cudworth, Erika. ‘Feminism’ in Carl Death, ed., Critical Environmental Politics. London: Routledge, 2013.
Davis, Kathy (ed.). Embodied practices: feminist perspectives on the body. London: Thousand Oaks, 1997.
Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham and London: Duke, 2016.
Haraway, Donna. ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, Feminist Studies, vol.14, no. 3, 1988, pp. 575-599.
Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve. Touching Feeling: Affect. Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003.
Piercy, Marge. He, She and It / Body of Glass. any edition, 1991.
Stanley, Liz. The auto/biographical I: the theory and practice of feminist auto/biograph. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992.