Undergraduate - UnitAZA2504 - Culture, gender and sexuality

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	South Africa School of Social Sciences
Offered	South Africa Second semester 2015 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Joseph Minga

Synopsis

This unit examines how mainstream constructions of gender and sexuality are reconceptualised in a range of socio-historical and cultural contexts from the early modern period to the present. It also introduces students to the complex relationship between language, gender and sexuality, exploring how this relationship has been affirmed or deconstructed by various literary and cultural texts.

Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this unit, students should:

have acquired the theoretical lexicon and conceptual framework necessary to make sense of and articulate how gender and sexuality are represented in different cultural texts;
appreciate the uses of literature and other cultural texts in revising and opposing dominant discourses about gender and sexuality;
be able to interpret a literary text or a movie demonstrating a sensitivity to the narrative devices and strategies employed;
demonstrate a development of the skills of analytic and critical discussion introduced at first year level.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 60%
Exam: 40%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Joseph Minga

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Literary and cultural studies
Sociology

Prerequisites

Twelve credit points of first-year Arts units.

Prohibitions

AZA3504, ATS2504, ATS3504