Gender/Politics/Power in Gulf

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course introduces students to significant debates about gender and politics in the Arab Gulf. It uses gender as a lens and connecting hinge through which the historical and political development of states, societies and people in the Gulf region can be re-examined. The course is divided into four parts. The first part will seek to highlight a number of important debates about gender (gender as biological/sociological construct, gendered selves and the politics of difference, coloniality of gender, gender and power relations, gendered in/securities). The second part of the course looks at the pre-modern Gulf states’ histories from the 1800’s to their emergence as independent states in the late 1960s – 1970s. The third section looks at state-building processes in the Gulf’s contemporary period (1970s- present). In the fourth and final section, students will engage with feminist epistemologies (standpoint theory) as they examine primary sources (archives, military expenditures, arms transfers) in order to question what we understand as power, and power in society. I encourage students through their research to abandon the notion of ‘objectivity’, and to instead explore how our ‘politics’ and understanding of ‘history’ is intrinsically shaped by our positionality.