MA in Gender, Media & Culture
1 year full-time or 2 years part-time.
If you're applying for funding, you'll need to apply by a deadline. The deadline for applicants applying for AHRC funding is 1 March. More information is available from the Department. Find out more about funding opportunities for home/EU applicants, or funding for international applicants.
As part of the admissions process, you may be offered an informal advisory meeting with the Programme Convenor.
Find out more about applying
You should have an undergraduate degree of at least second class standard in a relevant subject. If your first language is not English, please check our English Language requirements.
AHRC
Previous graduates have embarked on professional careers in social research, think tanks, the arts and cultural sectors, government and public administration, development, human rights, NGOs, and in media and communications globally. They have also progressed to PhD study.
Graduates from this programme gain conceptual and methodological knowledge of the key concepts and debates in the study of gender and culture; the skills of critical analysis; the ability to distinguish and appraise a range of socio-cultural research methodologies; the skills to design and develop a research project; and the ability to recognise and account for sensitive ethical issues relating to research and representation. The two core courses provide you with the necessary skills to understand the relationships between early debates in the fields of gender studies, feminist theory and feminist cultural theory, and the ability to critically engage with new developments in these fields. Furthermore, you will gain a critical appreciation of the role and place of the body and affect in the development of feminist cultural theory and gender theory, and the challenges that contemporary socio-cultural changes bring to the theorisation of the body.
Please see Tuition fees.
Convenors
Yasmin Gunaratnam, Sociology
Please see Staff research interests.
Contact the Postgraduate Programmes Officer
The MA in Gender, Media and Culture introduces you to recent debates on gender in the disciplines of sociology and media and communications studies, and to the interdisciplinary domains of feminist social and cultural theory.
Drawing on the internationally recognised and pioneering expertise of staff in the Department of Sociology and Department of Media and Communications, the programme offers you the opportunity to develop cutting-edge critical skills in relation to cultural approaches to gender formation and gender theory.
As well as these theoretical and analytical points of orientation, the MA Gender, Media and Culture aims to help you grasp the importance of epistemology and methodology for the evaluation of empirical investigations of gender formations. The programme therefore introduces you to, and offers training in, the key socio-cultural methods for the study of gender in the contemporary world, including methods for the study of visual culture; the body and affect; and memory and autobiography.
These two elements of the programme are brought together in a dissertation study, which involves tailored supervision in the application of research methods to a specific topic.
Overall the programme has the following interrelated aims:
- to provide in-depth interdisciplinary knowledge of contemporary gender formations
- to provide theoretical, analytical and methodological points of orientation for understanding gender and culture transnationally and across different societies and geo-political regions
- to offer skilled supervision in the development and completion of a small research project which tests thoroughly a range of research skills
- to expose students to a lively research environment and the relevant expertise of the RAE top-rated and research-led Departments of Sociology and Media and Communications
What you study
Core components of the programme will familiarise you with the wide range of debates integral to the fields of gender studies, feminist theory, and cultural studies. These include: questions about sexual difference and the performativity of gender; gender, science, and reproductive technology; debates on affect and emotion; gender and migration and the new international division of labour; and feminism and autobiography.
You complete one core course and two option courses each term, as well as a dissertation course in the spring term. The first core course introduces key debates and developments in feminist theory, cultural theory and, in particular, feminist cultural theory. It introduces both early debates which defined these fields and contemporary developments and departures. More specifically, you will be introduced to social constructivist and post-structuralist perspectives, to the ‘new materialism’ associated with Deleuzian thinking, to debates on feminism, ethnicity and the critique of universalism; to key questions in relation to feminism, biology and reproductive technology; to debates on family, kinship and psycho-analysis and the emergence of queer theory and its intersection with feminist theory.
The second core course examines the place of affect and the body in feminist theory and feminist practice. It will first examine and engage the place of the body within the field of arts, culture and representation; feminist theatre practice; gender, passing and ethnicity, in feminist writing; and in feminist film theory. Secondly, it examines and critically engages the field of emotion, the politics of ‘happiness’, contemporary feminist scholarship on affect, and also the politics of science, technology and transformation in women’s/human bodies. Thirdly, it will consider the issues that arise from old and new flows of migration and other kinds of bodily movement; and finally examine the role and value of narrative in feminist writing. This course therefore offers instruction in cutting edge issues in contemporary feminist cultural theory.
There will be a series of dissertation workshops to help you plan and develop your dissertation, especially in regard to issues of methodology and method. Each student will be assigned a supervisor who will work with you to develop your proposal and undertake independent research.
Assessment
Essays and Dissertation
Register your interest
If you register your interest in this programme we will keep you informed about open days and send you relevant further information. If you subsequently decide to apply for this programme you will be able to use the same login details to apply.
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