Rights, Equality and Justice in Education (EDPS0027)

The overall aim of this module is to explore conceptions of rights, equality and justice in education, and to consider how these concepts apply to complex issues in education, including state and private education, equality of opportunity, compensating for inequality, the politics of recognition, the distinction between public and private spheres, multiculturalism, faith schools and student led-curricula. The course begins by looking at competing conceptions of rights, and we explore how these apply to freedom of choice, autonomy, paternalism and multiculturalism. We will look at the right to education, compulsory education, religious schools and multicultural education. We will also look at feminist conceptions of rights, including the right to be free from state interference, and the distinction between the private and public spheres. In the second half of the course we look at equality and social justice. We examine competing conceptions of equality and justice, and we explore how these apply to educational equality, inequality and disadvantage. We look at the idea of giving priority to the people who are worst off and we explore the justification for affirmative action. We also explore a series of feminist arguments that emphasise the ‘politics of recognition’ and consider how this is distinguished from the ‘politics of redistribution’.

Principles and Practice in Oral Medicine (DENT0056)

Gerontology is the multidisciplinary study of ageing processes and individuals across the life course. This module aims to develops a feminist perspective to...

Gender and Ageing: A Feminist Gerentology (CMII0150)

Gerontology is the multidisciplinary study of ageing processes and individuals across the life course. This module aims to develops a feminist perspective to understand the gendered inflections of the shifting social discourses of ageing.  

Described as “unprecedented” by the United Nations (2002), population ageing represents the greatest institutional challenge that governments and economies are facing; as such the need to address the interconnectedness of the cultural construction of ageing and gender is more and more pressing. Developing an intersectional approach, this course investigates how the inflections of ageing vary across gender, race, class, and other markers of identity.  

It discusses ageing as a process rather than a fixed identity, and how feminist gerontology has moved away from a dualistic understanding of gender relations towards examining how the concepts of gender identity and performance interact with age. It draws on Foucault’s conception of biomedicalisation to study how health is pathologised through age and the ways in which the medicalisation of menopause and impotence are entangled with discourses on reproductions stemming from hegemonic notions of masculinity and femininity.  

As a marginalised area, ageing offers a radical critique of hegemonic discourse to open new perspectives on the construction of gender, which encompasses cultural analysis and sociology of intimacy and explores the pleasures and perils of growing old. The course critically addresses the racist, heterosexist and cisgenderist assumptions behind the notion of successful ageing, ethics of care, and the global intricacies of affective labour, drawing upon a range of case studies dedicated to viagra and male impotence, transnational care workers, vulnerability, and new technologies for elderly care. 