Writing, Gender, Identity

Summary module description:
This module introduces students to a range of texts on, and critical approaches to, issues of feminism, gender and sexuality. Lectures will also address dominant topics in this field including ?race?, ?class?, ?capital?, ?difference?, ?histories?, and ?identity?. Each lecture focuses a critical topic through a group of core primary texts and core critical essays. A balance between text and theory will be maintained throughout the module and the ?topic? centred lectures will encourage critical reading of the core texts. Students will be introduced to a wide range of different types of writing about gendered identity and experience; it is a central aim of this module that students are led towards engagement with a body of ideas and approaches that will generate productive critical and reading habits throughout Part 3.

Aims:
The module will encourage students to analyse text through critical perspectives informed by ideas of gender, sexuality, race and class. ?Author-led? approaches will be replaced on this module by ?critical readings led? approaches in order to encourage advanced responses to textual material.

Assessable learning outcomes:
Assessable outcomes
? By the end of the module students will be expected to have developed skills of critical thinking in relation to the core texts.
? Students will be challenging established relationships between writing and gender and between primary and secondary material.
? Students will produce essays capable of interrogating textual material through critical perspectives.
? Students will be engaging with text via close analysis and integrating their readings with critical and theoretical frameworks.

Additional outcomes:
Oral and written communication skills will be developed, together with critical, interpretative and analytical abilities. Students will also enhance their IT competence through the use of relevant web resources in a critically informed manner. Students will develop increased familiarity with a range of critical and theoretical resources.

Outline content:
This module will work with a group of ?core? primary texts and ?core? critical/theoretical essays: three pieces of writing in each group will be nominated as ?compulsory? texts and students will be required to demonstrate substantial knowledge of these texts in assessment. Lecturers will be free to select whichever combination of texts they feel to be productive: ?race?, for example, may use Audre Lorde?s essay, ?Age, Race, Class, and Sex? in intersection with impulses in The History of Mary Prince and Ain?t I a Woman?; ?sexuality? may use Foucault?s ?History of Sexuality? and/or Helene Cixous?s ?The Laugh of the Medusa? , and/or selected extracts from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick?s Between Men to explore aspects of ?Goblin Market?, The Well of Loneliness and/or Rebecca. Seminar leaders will ensure that the ?compulsory? texts are discussed in class, and lectures will be organised to provide detailed reference to all texts used on the module.

The body of primary texts may include Daphne du Maurier?s Rebecca, Ruskin?s ?Sesame and Lilies?, John Stuart Mill?s The Subjection of Women, Virginia Woolf?s A Room of One?s Own and ?Professions for Women?, Henry James?s novella, In the Cage, The History of Mary Prince, Radclyffe Hall?s The Well of Loneliness, and the poetry of Anne Sexton. The texts selected from this list will change annually. Critical essays may include Luce Irigaray, ?The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine?, Parveen Adams, ?The Woman in Question?, Laura Mulvey ?Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema?, selected sections from Michel Foucault?s Discipline and Punish and History of Sexuality, Helene Cixous ?The Laugh of the Medusa? and ?Sorties?, Gilbert and Gubar, ?Infection in the Sentence?, and bell hooks, ?Writing Autobiography?.
Brief description of teaching and learning methods:
A combination of lectures and structured seminar discussion, for which students are required to do preparatory reading. Students are also entitled to a half-hour tutorial on their formative essay. With the consent of the module convenor, students may also undertake a placement, through which they will learn how to apply the knowledge and skills gained in studying for this module in a professional context outside the University.

Summative Assessment Methods:
Written exam 67%
Written assignment including essay 33%

Other information on summative assessment:
Formative assessment methods:
Students write one formative essay, of approximately 1500 words. Feedback will also be provided on the assessed essay of 1800-2000 words, or the equivalent placement report. Feedback on written exams will be available on request from the Director of Teaching and Learning.

Penalties for late submission:
The Module Convener will apply the following penalties for work submitted late, in accordance with the University policy.
where the piece of work is submitted up to one calendar week after the original deadline (or any formally agreed extension to the deadline): 10% of the total marks available for the piece of work will be deducted from the mark for each working day (or part thereof) following the deadline up to a total of five working days;
where the piece of work is submitted more than five working days after the original deadline (or any formally agreed extension to the deadline): a mark of zero will be recorded.

The University policy statement on penalties for late submission can be found at: http://www.reading.ac.uk/web/FILES/qualitysupport/penaltiesforlatesubmission.pdf
You are strongly advised to ensure that coursework is submitted by the relevant deadline. You should note that it is advisable to submit work in an unfinished state rather than to fail to submit any work.

Requirements for a pass:
A mark of at least 40% overall.