New Developments in Theories of Gender and Sexuality
SELECT ONE OF THE ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. How do materialist feminists understand women’s place in society? Critically assess the limitation of their position in relation to either intersectionality or postcolonial theory.
2. Critically assess the significance for feminist thought of a shift from ‘working on women’ to ‘theorising gender’?
3. Drawing on an empirical example (this could be a current event, a cultural text, or a particular public figure or group) critically assess the concept of ‘intersectionality’.
4. Critically assess the concept of hegemonic masculinity. Discuss with reference to empirical examples (this could be a public figure, cultural text or social structure or social phenomenon).
5. Is it possible to create a world feminist movement? Identify the challenges of such a project and the position of postcolonial feminists towards the issue.
6. Critically discuss the claim that ‘sex is a biological category’.
7. Sexuality is a social construct. What are the theoretical and political implications of this claim?
8. What is ‘queer’? Is it anything other than being ‘against the normative’?
9. Drawing on one or more empirical examples, critically assess the role of the media in reproducing and/or subverting gendered norms.
10. Are we living in postfeminist times? Critically discuss this using empirical examples (from the media, personalities, events, trends, activist groups etc.).
