Description
This module introduces students to key debates in decolonial approaches to gender and sexuality studies. It explores how complex and plural interpretations of gender, sexuality, and feminist concerns are inextricably linked to race, ethnicity, colonisation, and nationality.
The module provides an academic foundation of the topic in two ways. First, it contextualises the intellectual landscape through which decolonial approaches emerge in gender and sexuality studies. It introduces students to earlier tensions surrounding gender, feminisms, and sexuality by approaching canonical texts in the field that have challenged and influenced research methods in different and sometimes conflicting ways. Through these readings, students will gain knowledge of the intimate connection between decolonial ways of thinking and issues of postcoloniality, globalisation, transnationalism, and intersectionality, amongst other terms. In the second part, students will learn about particular interdisciplinary discussions in gender and sexuality studies in tension with decolonial approaches. Discussions include theorising the “queer”, feminist archives, reproductive justice, the university curriculum, politics of temporality, decolonising decolonisation, amongst others. Students will learn about a range of contemporary events whilst familiarising themselves with new and upcoming decolonial literature and visions.
A fundamental aim of this module is to cultivate a critical view of multiple forms of cultural and political representation, where issues concerning race, ethnicity, and coloniality are not understood as additional frames of analysis but fundamental to understanding gender, sexuality and feminisms. Therefore, the module will encourage students to critically reflect on their standpoint when researching gender, sexuality, and feminisms.
Readings for the module include:
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Ahmed, S. (2016) ‘How Not to Do Things with Words’.
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Cusicanqui, S. R. (2018) A Ch’ixi World is Possible: Essays from a Present in Crisis.
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Gonzalez, L. (1988) ‘For an Afro-Latin American Feminism’.
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Isasi-Díaz, M. and Mendieta, E. (2012) Decolonizing Epistemologies: Latina/o Theology and Philosophy.
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Lugones, M. (2007) ‘Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System’.
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Lugones, M. (2010) ‘Toward a Decolonial Feminism’.
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Mignolo, W. (2018) ‘The Invention of the Human and the Three Pillars of the Colonial Matrix of Power: Racism, Sexism, and Nature’.
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Mohanty, C. (2003) Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity.
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Morgensen, S. L. (2010) ‘Settler Homonationalism: Theorizing Settler Colonialism within Queer Modernities’.
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Oyěwùmí, O. (1997) The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses
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Pierce, J. M. et al. (2021) ‘Cuir/Queer Américas: Translation, Decoloniality, and the Incommensurable’.
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Pitts, A. J., et al. (2019) Theories of the Flesh: Latinx and Latin American Feminisms, Transformation, and Resistance.
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Quijano, A. (2000) ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America’. .
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Rowe, A. C. (2017) ‘A Queer Indigenous Manifesto’.
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Tuck, E., and Yang, W. K. (2012) ‘Decolonisation is not a metaphor’.
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 19th August 2024.