1865.08 - Theories about Gender and Literature


Course number
1865.08
Title
Theories about Gender and Literature
ECTS
10
Purpose
Teaching students how to read theories and use them in textual analysis.
Content
In recent years sociologists and historians have found it useful and necessary to use instruments of literary analysis to analyse the social construction of reality. For example, rather than taking for granted that language reflects the reality it refers to, they are reading texts with a view to analysing how words and texts construct meaning from reality and how this impacts on, for example, political decision-making. One example is attitude to gender. As we know, gender is not just congenital, but is also constructed in dynamic interactions within family, society, school, religion, culture and other dimensions. Gender is said to be constructed, that it is a social construct and that gender is created in discourse on many different platforms and in different media. This is a joint course offered in collaboration between the Faculty of Faroese Language and Literature and the Faculty of History and Social Sciences, it is taught by a literary scholar, a historian and a political scientist. We will read theories about gender and the importance of gender in culture and society, including texts by Simone de Beauvoir, Toril Moi, Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser, Yvonne Hirdman and Pierre Bourdieu. The course will particularly focus on Bourdieu’s tools of analysis. Students of literature will analyse ballads, novels and poems in depth and students of history and political science will analyse historical and contemporary texts by politicians and the public administration, all of which illustrate attitudes towards gender in the Faroes.
Learning and teaching approaches
3 hours a week in the first semester. The course will be organized into lectures, student presentations and debates.
Assessment method
Students from the Faculty of Faroese Language and Literature: 6-hour written exam or set take-home assignment. Students from the Faculty of History and Social Sciences: 6-hour written exam or set take-home assignment. External marking following the Marking Scale of 00 to 13.
Contact
Malan Marnersdóttir