The MA Women, Gender and Society at UCD may be taken on a one-year full-time or two-year part-time basis. This course explores the principal theoretical concepts and frameworks of feminist thought, politics, and practice. Its focus is on how gender is a fundamental structure in all societies. What other disciplines use as assumptions about women and men, Women's Studies poses as questions. Key concepts and discourses in feminist thought will be explored in the context of women’s experiences across social dividing lines such as class, ethnicity, sexuality, (dis) ability and age. Students will be encouraged to explore different theoretical and political perspectives and to think critically and self-reflexively. We also provide a Graduate Diploma Women, Gender and Society on a full-time or part-time basis and have established a progression route for students from the Graduate Diploma onto the MA.
Detailed information on course requirements, assignments, modules and contact information is available through UCD Programme Information.
Our courses are structured around core and option modules covering a wide range of areas: feminist theory and politics; gender and globalisation; sexualities and masculinities; gender inequality and public policy; women’s history and literature; human rights. Details for 2012-2013 are outlined below.
Funding:
International Students from the United States can enquire about funding here
Irish Aid Fellowships information is available for applicants from designated countries
Students from Zambia, Zimbabwe or Malawai may enquire for funding from The Beit Trust for 2013
Women Gender and Society Provisional Programme Structure 2012 – 2013
There may be minor changes to this information until teaching and timetabling are finalised for 2012-2013
MA (Masters) in Women, Gender and Society is 90 credit award. All MA students take five core courses amounting to a total of 40 credits.
Mode A :Students take five option courses at ten credits each i.e. 50 credits.Total of 90 credits
Mode B :Students take two option courses at ten credits each i.e. 20 credits and aminor dissertation i.e. 30 credits.Total of 90 credits.
Graduate Diploma in Women, Gender and Society is 60 credit award.All GD students take three core courses at ten credits each i.e. 30 credits. All GD students take three option courses at ten credits each i.e. 30 creditsTotal of 60 credits
Core Modules
First Semester:
Gender and globalisation (10 credits) Ursula Barry
Feminist and gender theory (10 credits) Dr. Katherine O’ Donnell
Critical writing and thinking Dr Marie Moran
Second Semester:
Feminist and Egalitarian research (10 credits) Ursula Barry
History of feminist politics (10 credits) Dr Katherine O’ Donnell
Option Modules (10 credits each)
Sexuality: identities and stigma Dr Katherine O’ Donnell
Gender, inequality and public policy Ursula Barry
Masculinities and equality Dr Ernesto Vasquez del Aguila
Gender and writing biography Dr Mary McAuliffe
Space, Place and gender Dr Aideen Quilty
Additional options available at School and College levels (10 credits each)
Education and Equality Prof Kathleen Lynch
Discrimination Law Judy Walsh
International Human Rights Law Tanya Ward
Additional options available at College and University levels (10 credits each)\
Liberation Psychology Dr Ger Moane
Gender Equality and Diversity Jackie Sinclair
Debates on Citizenship Dr Iseult Honahan
Levels 5 Options
WS Research Seminar Series Dr Katherine O’ Donnell
This course is run on alternate weeks across both semesters.
Undergraduates can take: – Structured Social Justice Elective based on 15 credits in the UCD Horizon Elective Option Modules – each course is a 5 credit option :
Feminism today
Childhood Inequalities
Gender, Power and politics
The gendered economy
Sexuality: identity and stigma
Men, masculinities and equality Gender and writing biography
Documenting early feminisms
Global justice
Gender and development
Inequality in Irish society
Social justice movements
Global health inequalities
Women’s Studies Staff Profiles and Module Summaries
Ursula Barry
MA (Trinity College Dublin). Grad Dipl in Planning and Development Economics (DIT).
Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head of School of Social Justice.
Head of Subject: Women's Studies.
Responsible for taught Postgraduate Courses MA and Graduate Diploma on Women, Gender and Society. Lecturer and researcher specialising in social economics with a particular focus on women, equality and public policy in Ireland. Researcher for government departments, statutory agencies, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO's) and European Union (EU).
Irish representative since 1989 on the EU Expert Network on Gender Equaity and Employment (EGGE) established under the Equal Opportunities Office of the European Commission. Senior Expert on the EU Network of Socio-Economic Experts on Non-Discrimination established in 2009 - reappointed in 2010.
Author of a wide range of research reports, articles and books on economic and social policy, gender and equality issues in Ireland and EU. Member of a range of policy development, advisory committees and organisations in the public, community and voluntary sectors. Political and community analyst and activist on issues of equality and social justice, women's rights, human rights, lesbian and gay issues and rights of people with disabilities. Founder member of Women's Human Rights Network in Ireland. Member of Research and Policy Advisory Group of the Immigrant Council of Ireland.
Katherine O’ Donnell
BA (NUI); Dip in Journalism (DCU); MA (Boston College); PhD (NUI)
Senior Lecturer
Director of the Women's Studies Centre
Katherine O'Donnell graduated from University College Cork with a first in Double Honours English and then studied journalism. She joined RTÉ in 1987 but two years later was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and went to study for a Masters in English at Boston College where she was awarded a distinction. She went back to UCC to write a Ph.D. dissertation on the influence of Gaelic culture on the speeches and politics of Edmund Burke (1729-1797). In 1995 she won a scholarship to study at the English Department of the University of California at Berkeley. She spent two academic years there and wrote the bulk of my dissertation while at CAL. In 1997 she joined the Women's Studies Centre at University College Dublin and has been responsible for co-ordinating and developing the humanities profile of our interdisciplinary programmes since then.
She was a co-founding member of the Irish Lesbian and Gay Archive: the IQA, now safely deposited as a living archive with the National Library of Ireland and she currently works on the advisory committee of Justice for Magdalenes. She is directing the compilation of oral histories of women who were in the Magdalene Laundry system, the religious sisters who worked there and also visitors to these institutions.
Ernesto Vasquez Del Aguila
PhD, M Phil, MA, BA
Post-doctoral Fellow Level 2
My background is in anthropology, and I earned my PhD in Medical Anthropology from Columbia University, New York City. I have worked as a researcher in a diverse range of institutions in Latin American and in the USA on projects related to migration, health, gender and sexuality.
I have published on male prison inmates; sexual and reproductive rights; the health of sexual minorities; non-discrimination; transnational migration; and masculinity and sexuality. In 2009 I received the Award for Excellence in Global Health, from the School of Public Health, Columbia University. Over the last years, I have been working on issues related to non-discrimination in Ireland for the European Commission.
I am currently teaching courses in University College Dublin:
Masculinities and Equality (EQUL40310 and SSJ30080)
Global Health Inequalities (SSJ20070)
My passions are research and teaching and my goal as an academic, is to contribute by providing tools for the elimination of inequalities among vulnerable populations.
Mary McAuliffe
BA (TCD) PhD, School of History and Humanities, TCD.
Mary lectures on Irish Women’s History and Feminist History on the Women's Studies Masters and Undergraduate Programme, School of Social Justice, UCD. Her research interests include Irish women and power, female representations and identities in Irish History, feminist and gender historiography and Irish feminist histories and biographies, oral histories, and she has published widely in these areas. Her most recent co-edited book is the Palgrave Advances in Irish History (2010) and she has published a biography on Senator Kathleen Browne 1876-1943. She is on the Advisory Committee of Justice for Magdalenes (http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/about.htm). She has been President of the Women's History Association of Ireland (www.whai.ie) since May, 2011.
Module Outlines
MA/ Grad Dipl Core : Dr Katherine O’ Donnell WS40260 History of Feminist Politics
This module is a chronological survey of feminist political issues, activist movements and debates from the late eighteenth century to the current day. There will be a strong focus on Ireland to illustrate how Irish feminists were influenced and interactive with feminists in other regions. We will examine feminists' alliance and debates with other movements such as socialism, anarchism, the labour and agrarian movements, nationalisms, pacifism, environmentalism, abolitionists and anti-racists, civil rights movements and minority identity politics.
MA/ Grad Dipl Core : Dr Katherine O’ Donnell WS 40240 Feminist and Gender Theory
The purpose of this module is to survey key feminist thinkers and their engagement with philosophical bodies of thought from the late Eighteenth Century to the early 21st Century. We will focus on feminist modes of critique and production of knowledge, key concepts and debates among feminists. The module covers a range of differing feminist bodies of thought including egalitarianism and liberalism, early utopian Socialist feminism and post-Marxist materialist feminism; psychoanalytic feminism; feminist ethics of care; second-wave feminist theoretical debates; post-colonial and critical race feminism, the post-modern turn and gender theory.
Option: Dr Katherine O’ Donnell WS40190/ SSJ30120 Sexualities, Identity and Stigmas
Sexuality might be defined as the personal experience of bodily desire for intimacy and connection, yet expressions of sexuality frequently come under the surveillance of state, religion, and society at large. The regulation of sex and gender is at the core of many power systems in state and society. Judgements on appropriate sexuality, including prescribed norms for gender are at the nexus of many of the most contentious contemporary debates and social power struggles.
The course offers an overview of key theorists and influential concepts in understanding sexuality, focusing on some important areas of contention, debate and power struggles and examining the most recent work and future approaches to the study of sexuality. Themes and topics addressed include: Reproductive Justice, Queer Theory, Clerical abuse of children, Prostitution in Ireland and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans (LGBT) issues.
MA/ Grad Dipl Core MA : Ursula Barry WS 40050 Gender and Globalisation
This module will examine gender patterns of economic and social activity and the complex shapes it takes in contemporary societies. Different feminist perspectives on the changing sexual divisions of labour in global, regional and local economies will be analysed and the position and role of women within globalised economic systems explored. Concepts and definitions of work and value and the ways in which patriarchal and capitalist structures shape and constrain women's paid and unpaid working lives will be examined. Perspectives and experiences of change in the spheres of production and reproduction of contemporary society will be examined. Feminist debates on domestic and care labour, reproduction and reproductive technologies, prostitution and the sex industry, globalisation and commodification will be considered. Issues for women and both inside and outside paid employment will be examined with a view to identifying strategies for greater economic independence, social solidarity, enhanced equality and social justice. We encourage you to search for other School of Social Justice modules in Women's Studies and Equality Studies.
MA/ Grad Dipl Core : Ursula Barry SSJ 40010 Feminist and Egalitarian Research (co-ordinator and contributor)
Research perspectives and principles within feminist, participative and egalitarian theory and practice will be the focus of this course. An opportunity to explore debates concerning different research methodologies and perspectives will be provided. Early sessions will focus on the principles of egalitarian and feminist research and debates on epistemological perspectives and methodologies within social, historical and cultural approaches to research will be explored. The uses of quantitative methods in egalitarian and feminist social research will be examined through looking at selected examples from contemporary Irish and international research. Later sessions will explore important developments in qualitative methodologies with particular emphasis on feminist standpoint theory, different approaches to narrative analysis and developments in voice-related analysis. Issues of ethics and access to data in the research process will be examined and the relationship between the researcher and the researched will be discussed. We encourage you to search for other School of Social Justice modules in Women's Studies and Equality Studies.
Option MA : Ursula Barry WS 40150 Gender, Inequality and Public Policy
Social and economic policy in Ireland and the European Union will be explored in this course focusing on policies towards employment, poverty, welfare, the provision of care, gender pay gap, occupational segregation, migration and human rights. Theories and models of social protection and social welfare will be examined from a gender perspective and the Irish system will be analysed an EU context. Feminist theory and debate on social policy, on concepts of care, exclusion and citizenship will be explored. This course will provide an opportunity to look closely at the huge changes which have taken place over the last twenty years in the economic and social situation of Irish women, the institutional framework within which those changes have occurred and the impact of the current economic crisis. In particular, policies and practices towards equality and social justice will be examined, and the way in which those policies impact on the lives and situations of different sectors of women and men in contemporary Ireland. We encourage you to search for other School of Social Justice modules in Women's Studies and Equality Studies.
Horizon Undergraduate: Ursula Barry SSJ 20040 The gendered economy (with Sara Cantillon)
This course will explore feminist perspectives on economic theory and policy with a particular focus on the household and labour markets. Feminist analyses of the different economic roles of women and men, and the different impacts of economic policies on women and men, will be examined. Theoretical debates on the nature of labour, definitions of work, the creation of value and unpaid labour will be explored from a gender perspective. Feminist economists' argument that traditional analyses of economic systems fail to take into account the value of the unpaid and care work performed mainly by women in a domestic or community environment will be considered. Structural inequalities reflected in gendered patterns of poverty and inequality in a global and Irish context will be analysed and new inequalities between different sectors of women and men will be examined with a view to identifying strategies for greater social solidarity, economic independence and enhanced equality. Measures of economic progress based on an understanding of human well-being and which encompass the value of unpaid care work, subsistence and community activity when evaluating economic systems will be explored. Finally, the development of alternative indicators of economic progress, such as the Human Development Index, the Gender Equality Index and gender budgeting will be evaluated. We encourage you to search for other School of Social Justice modules in Women's Studies and Equality Studies.
Option : Dr Aideen Quilty WS40300 Space, Place and Gender
Space and place are increasingly acknowledged as important in how we perceive, negotiate, experience and order the world. This module will explore the ways in which the concepts space and place can be understood in terms of social relations. We will interrogate the interconnection between space, place and the construction of gender relations across a range of spatial scales from the local to the global. The ways in which inequalities and identities are distributed across space and place will be explored. We will examine how different social groups engage with places in very different ways, so that places can be experienced differently according to person's gender, social class, ethnicity, and so on. Situating power relations at the centre of our enquiry we will interrogate social difference through geographical manifestations of spatial in/exclusions and spatial paradoxes. The course is divided into two parts: the first part offers an overview of key theorists and influential concepts in understanding and imagining feminist geographies; the second part will be topic-based where we will locate our inquiry in such spatial contexts as the academy, community, home, public and body. The approach to teaching this course will be dialogical and will combine whole class teaching and lectures with small group work to maximise student participation and engagement.
MA Option : Dr Ernesto Vasquez Del Aguila EQUL 40310 Masculinities and Equality
This is an inter-disciplinary module that takes a critical look at the studies of men, masculinities and gender relations. It is aimed at men and women from a wide variety of disciplines who are interested in gender, masculinities and gender equality. This course offers a broad overview of the contemporary studies on men and masculinities. It draws upon the assumption that masculinity is an organizing principle of society, which shapes ideologies and practices, and intersects with factors such as race, ethnicity, social class and sexuality. There are multiple versions of masculinities and forms of “being a man” presented not only at different times and in different cultures, but also within the same society. These versions of masculinity coexist within power relations, hierarchical positions in society, and within negotiations and intersections between femininities and masculinities. This course introduces the field and current topics such as multiple masculinities; male friendship; “machismo”; racialised manhood; heterosexual, “metrosexual” and gay masculinities; violence and gender inequality; non-western masculinities; men working in “feminine” activities; male health and wellbeing; “new masculinities” and popular culture. Particular attention will be devoted to the study of men and masculinity in the context of globalization, social inequality and international migration. This module is coordinated by Dr. Ernesto Vasquez del Aguila, a medical anthropologist graduated from Columbia University.
Horizon undergraduate : Dr Ernesto Vasquez Del Aguila SSJ20070 Global Health Inequalities
This is an introductory course that takes a critical look at the studies of health inequalities from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will be exposed to a range of approaches and issues such as globalisation, social inequality and health; the social production of class and race; the organisation or risk and social exclusion; sexuality and global public health; migration and public health; stigma, discrimination and human rights. Students will also be introduced to key concepts in qualitative and quantitative methodology used in social research for health. The course will use case studies such as HIV and emerging infectious diseases to learn the tools of social science in the analysis of global health inequalities. The course has a lecture style, followed by group discussion and will be delivered by Dr. Ernesto Vasquez del Aguila, a medical anthropologist who graduated from Columbia University.
Option : WS40030 Dr Mary McAuliffe Gender and Writing Biography
This course explores feminist research methods in archival and historical research. We will focus on how feminist scholars challenge dominant theories of knowledge and the major methodologies employed in historical research. We would firstly engage with the traditional schools of historiography as well as feminist and gender historiography and history of sexualities. This critical historiography will address issues arising from archive based research, subjectivity and objectivity in research and writing, and above all the question of what is ‘history’ and who creates that ‘history’. Gender has become a fundamental analytical category for historians working not only in women’s history, but also in the histories of sexuality, class, and race, political, economic and cultural histories. Using gender as a category of analysis we will explore the social, cultural, and political meanings, the uses of gender constructs and challenge the traditional narratives about Irish men and women from the 18th century to the 20th century. Students are expected to participate actively in class discussions, attend archive workshops, and draft a history essay at the end of the module. This module is taught by Dr. Mary McAuliffe.
Horizon undergraduate: WS20110 Dr Mary McAuliffe Gender, Power and Politics
This module explores the ways in which power has been gendered ? where gender has served as a basis for power distribution and control, as well as the basis for political inclusion / exclusion. There is a focus on issues of identity politics, political activism, sexuality and citizenship, beginning with the proto-feminist works from the European 18th and 19th centuries and ending with the work of early twenty-first century feminist and gender theorists of globalisation. You will gain a thorough introduction to the intellectual traditions, concepts and political concerns which have shaped the evolution of of struggles around gender issues through consideration of key texts and debates. The module will also address the social construction of gender, the relation between feminist theory and activism, and how modern society has responded to issues of citizenship, power, race, class, gender and sexuality. This module is taught by Dr. Mary McAuliffe. We encourage you to search for other School of Social Justice modules in Women's Studies and Equality Studies.
Horizon undergraduate: WS20030 Dr Mary McAuliffe Feminism Today
This module provides an introduction to contemporary feminism and feminist theories. We will explore a wide range of theoretical perspectives which have been central to the thought and practice of modern feminisms. We will analyse the major strands of feminist thought: liberal, socialist/Marxist, radical, and cultural / women of colour feminism. We will then apply these feminist traditions to issues that are crucial to women's lives and experiences: sexuality, the body, motherhood, work, health/mental health, religion and education (academic, college life), race and class. We will then look at what we have learned of our own history and what this tells us about future, third-wave feminism. This module is taught by Dr. Mary McAuliffe. We encourage you to search for other School of Social Justice modules in Women's Studies and Equality Studies.
MA/H DiplOption : Rosemary Cullen Owens and Mary Montaut
WS40270/SSJ30130 Literature and History of Revolutionary Women
This module combines a historical and literary approach to understanding First Wave Feminism. The readings begin with the era of Mary Wollstonecraft at the end of the eighteenth century to 1922. The historical focus is specifically on Irish material, while the literary readings are more international, drawing on American and British texts to contextualise the ideologies that inspired the growth of feminism in this period.