Courses

Winter

Academic Writing This course is designed to help students develop the academic research and writing skills they will need to complete the thesis and other requirements for the MA degree. The fall semester focuses on technical writing skills including organization of arguments, critical reading, quoting sources and avoiding plagiarism. The second half of the course, which extends into the winter semester, includes a workshop on writing literature reviews and is otherwise dedicated to helping students develop a thesis topic and prepare for the final stage of thesis research and writing.	Elissa Helms
Body, Gender and Commercialization of the Human Body The human body, its organs, tissues and cells are increasingly used in various new contexts. In biomedical research, in stem cell research and in assisted reproduction the human body is to fulfill various scientific and commercial purposes ranging from essential life-saving treatments to aesthetic enhancement. Reflecting on this complex phenomenon, this course will analyze complex issues, such as the commodification and commercialization of the human body by applying both the human rights and the gender approach. Analysis of academic texts and judicial cases about biobanks, tissue- and organ donation, biotechnological inventions, organ and egg trade, organ trafficking, tourism, and	Judit Sandor
Foundations of Gender Studies II. This course will focus on the multiple and sometimes conflicting ways feminist theory produced scholarship since 1980 which sought to deploy the concept of difference in order to release some political and epistemological potential in undermining a homogenous, universal(izing) concept of gender. The curriculum includes a selection of key texts and texts representing key arguments in order to trace this development of difference in feminist scholarship. The course is designed to provide an opportunity to read and discuss in detail these texts and the turns they inaugurated or represent. Themes will include essentialism, postcolonial feminist theory, intersectionality, deconstructive	Eszter Timár
Foundations of Gender Studies II. The first part of this course uses gender as an analytical lens through which to examine the continuities and discontinuities between earlier forms of liberal, Marxist and psychoanalytic thought – and later intellectual traditions emerging in the twentieth century such as postmodernism, poststructuralism, transnational feminism, feminist epistemology, and the New Materialism currently dominating many science and gender issues. Gender is retained as a critical tool with which to explore dissent and debate within these traditions. The second part of the course focuses on specific topics chosen by the students and presented as part of organized group work, drawing on the readings and
From Biopolitics to Necropolitics: Theorizing Life and Death in the 20th and 21st Centuries This course will take students through theories of biopolitics, beginning with the impact of Michel Foucault in the 1970s when he coined this term in order to describe a particular kind of modern state formation motivated solely by the need to preserve certain kinds of life (over others). The course then examines theories that have been developed in the wake of Foucault’s intervention (such as Giorgio Agamben’s political philosophy on sovereign power and bare life). It traces a genealogy of ideas and concepts informing the contemporary field of biopolitics that goes back to earlier thinkers (pre-Foucault), whose work is being continually revitalized today through a biopolitical lens (e.g
Gender and Genre: Feminist Interventions The course investigates the role of gender in the recent history of several genres in literature and popular culture. Those are the genres that were profoundly transformed by the influence of feminist theory and more generally the second wave feminism, and which on the other hand became the strong vehicle of promoting gender consciousness themselves. After looking more generally into the theory of genres, the course will investigate critically gender/genre intersection in consciousness raising narratives, autobiography, science fiction, feminist romance, graphic novels, lesbian soap opera and feminist films.	Jasmina Lukic
Gender, Nation, State: Anthropological Perspectives This course reviews some of the major theories and case studies on the ways in which the discourses and practices of states and nations are gendered. In keeping with anthropological approaches to the study of state and national processes, we concentrate on the effects of state power and national(ist) discourses on 1) culturally specific conceptual frameworks and 2) the everyday lives of women, men, and other socially defined groups. We consider both men and women, masculinities and femininities, as well as sexuality as they intersect with issues of state and nation. Particular areas of focus include reproduction, kinship, ethnicity, violence, and notions of modernity.	Elissa Helms
Gendered Memories of War and Political Violence 20th century has been “a century of wars, global and local, hot and cold” (Catherine Lutz). The course explores the different ways in which war and political violence are remembered through a gender lens. Central questions include: what are the gendered effects of war, political violence, and militarization? How have wars, genocide and other forms of political violence been narrated and represented? How do women remember and narrate gendered violence in war? How are post-conflict processes and transitional justice gendered? What is the relationship between testimony, storytelling, and healing? How is the relationship between the “personal” and the “public/national” reconstructed in	Andrea Peto
Qualitative Methods in Social Science Research: Oral History This interdisciplinary course is to help students with the methodology section of their thesis. It will familiarise students with some of the main methods of qualitative social science research and equip them with the skills they will need to formulate research questions, carry out the qualitative research and analyse their data. The course finishes with a discussion of the ethical dimensions of research and writing. Given that oral history is a technique and a way of constructing histories the course tries to offer an overview of different ways of how to construct the information and how to analyse it in a wider theoretical context. The course consists of two parts: lectures are	Andrea Peto
Queer Theory, Queer Politics This course will look at the political stakes in the division between heterosexuality and other forms of sexuality in particular and interrogates the category of “normal” in general. It is organized around some key concepts fuelling both the thinking of sexuality and the directions of LGBT movements since 1969 putting a particular emphasis on the politics manifested in the activism precipitated by the AIDS crisis in the US. These key concepts include: the concept of queer, homosexuality as identity, coming out and the closet, citizenship, perversion and rights. The objective of the course is to give an introduction to the poststructuralist body of queer theory, its past and present	Eszter Timár
Re-imagining Social Movements: Activism, Resistance, and Cultural Change Social movements and social activism are critical to political engagement and social transformation. Traditional social science approaches to social movements and social change have seen forms of collective resistance and protest primarily as either irrational, spontaneous reactions to oppression, or as strictly rational expressions of reasoned dissent. In this course, we will challenge such views, employing an anthropological perspective which takes cultural practice as analytically central in order to see social movements instead as cultural struggles over meaning. We will first critically review the dominant theoretical frameworks which have shaped interpretations of social activism	Hadley Z. Renkin
The Gender / Sexuality Intersection The course is designed to advance a dialogue about the implications of the various theorizations of the categories of sex, gender, and sexuality in the past three decades, assuming as its basic premise that these categories come to mean different things in different disciplines. Based on the critical readings of both classic and recent texts, we shall explore the insights and subversive potential we can gain from ‘gender’, the key concept of Feminism/s (as of the 1970s) and that of ‘sexuality’ developed by (the 1990s generation of) Queer Theory. Our ultimate aim is to destabilize the non-productive dichotomy between feminist vs. queer theorizations of women’s everyday life. Instead, the	Erzsébet Barát