Scholarship concerning gender as a social construct has become an established field of study over the last twenty years. The analysis and critique of culturally shaped attributes and behaviours have been successfully developed and expanded into the humanities and social sciences curriculum largely through the work of feminist scholars, in courses developed from a woman-centred perspective. The multidisciplinary major and a minor sequence in gender studies evolves from this scholarship to offer a developing critique and understanding of both masculinities and femininities. Drawing on feminist, malestream and post-structuralist theorising of gender, the subjects offered investigate gender relations as a collective social issue.
Particular attention will be paid to gender and power in social, historical, political and representational frameworks as they are understood through differences in class, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
The major and minor sequences consist of a designated multi-disciplinary group of subjects drawn from a pool of designated mass communications, history-politics, sociology, Koorie studies and social welfare subjects. Students will use and analyse feminist and comparative gender critiques of traditional areas and objects of study. The individual subject outlines describe the specific approach taken and indicate the significance of gender issues to the curriculum presented. The final interdisciplinary subject, GSS3101, is compulsory for the major.
The objectives of this major are to enable students:
Students should choose subjects so that they complete twelve points at first level, sixteen points at second level, twenty-four points at third level, including the compulsory subject GSS3101.