WMN3140 - Gender and Crime

Leader: JaneMaree Maher

Offered

Caulfield Second semester 2007 (Day)
Clayton Second semester 2007 (Day)

Synopsis

This unit examines the gendering of crime and the role gender and gender stereotypes play in the operations of the criminal justice system. The subject uses key critical feminist and cultural theories to explore how social norms of femininity and masculinity produce particular gendered understandings of crime and criminality. It provides practical interpretative skills to enable students to apply these theoretical insights to the criminal justice system, to popular and media representations of crime and to the development of public policy. Topics include: the gendered nature of crime; gender and policing; femininity, masculinity and violence; family violence; constructions of rape.

Objectives

By the successful completion of Gender and Crime, students will have acquired the following skills:

1. A grounded working knowledge of the major theoretical and methodological approaches that constitute the field of feminist approaches to crime and justice.
2. An informed theoretical critique of how gender is constituted in society, the media and the criminal justice system.
3. An interdisciplinary approach to textual analysis.
4. Library based research skills and a working knowledge of the major data-bases used in cultural studies.
5. The ability to think critical and analytically, and to be able to articulate those thought processes in a high standard of written and oral expression.
6. A focus upon the production of scholarly research as the end point of a process of reading, discussion, drafting and debate.
7. The production of thoroughly researched, well documented and presented formal essays.
8. The ability to work independently as scholars.

Assessment

Class test (1500 words equivalent): 30%
Research essay (3000 words): 60%
Class preparation and participation: 10%

Contact hours

2 hours (1 x 1 hour lecture and 1 x 1 hour tutorial) per week