Women’s studies and gender research

Offered by the School of Political and Social Inquiry

Telephone: +61 3 9905 2991

Email: sue.stevenson@arts.monash.edu.au

Women’s studies is an exciting interdisciplinary field of study offering feminist perspectives on gender, sexuality and culture. We strive to provide our graduates with a broad knowledge of, and a familiarity with, feminist theory and methodology. Our postgraduate programs seek to bring innovative theory and research techniques to the study of women’s lives, their status in society, and the dilemmas and contradictions surrounding gender identity, power relations and sexualities. In this way, women’s studies attempts to correct the absence of material on women and gender relations that for a long time characterised more traditional areas of study. Women’s studies also emphasises the diversity of women’s experience. Beyond general considerations of the changing status of women and where dominant ideas and assumptions about gender and sexual difference come from, women’s studies also covers specific issues such as how different cultures shape gender identities and sexualities, shifting cultural and historical modes of femininity and masculinity, how questions of sex or gender relate to questions of class and race, how women are represented in film, literature and the media, and the role of women and gender in important political, economic, sociological and philosophical debates.

Supervisory expertise is offered across feminist literary, historical and cultural studies; gender studies; medicine, birth and motherhood; postcolonialism and indigeneity; gender and cultural difference; feminist pedagogy; gender and crime; transgender, feminist and queer theory; film, visual culture, popular culture and performance.

Relevant course groups

Doctor of Philosophy

Masters degree by research

Masters degree by research and coursework

Postgraduate Diploma in Arts (Research)

Graduate Certificate

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