EC966: Labour Economics

The aim of the module is to equip students with the analytical tools and the knowledge to study and understand the economics of unemployment, jobs and wages.

The module relates recent developments in labour-economics research with policy-relevant issues.

Welcome to Gender, Crime and Justice,

 This module aims to provide a comprehensive and critical understanding of the relationship between gender, crime and justice. The module will explore the  sociological  and  criminological approaches to the study of deviance, gender and crime in contemporary society. You  will be presented with a range of theoretical and conceptual issues around the theme of gender, crime and justice including feminist writing on the meaning and relevance of gender. The course will highlight some of the key issues when exploring crime, victimisation and criminal justice in relation to gender. The content will draw on relevant policy material in this field.

Disability, Inequality, and the Life Course is a Year 2 optional module that introduces students to the sociology of disability. The particular focus of the module is to provide explanations for numerous disability inequalities that exist across the life course. Upon completion of the module, students will have an appreciation of existing theoretical approaches to understanding disability inequalities as well as knowledge of empirical research on a wide range of relevant topics. The module is primarily research-led: we will regularly engage with existing empirical work on disability in order to better understand mechanisms and social processes behind the association of disability with social inequality.

This core module provides students with a sound foundation in the ‘basics’ required for good doctoral research. It also encourages students to engage with a broad range of issues that inform the research process. Key topics include the philosophy of social science, the role of theoretical ideas, the function of literature reviews, the relationship between theories, methodologies and methods of research, the specification of research questions, the importance of being able to communicate effectively, the diversity of forms of academic writing, the value of certain software packages, and the centrality of questions about the ethics and politics of research.

The format of seminars varies with the topic. Some sessions begin with a presentation by a member of academic staff before developing into open discussion; other sessions take the form of a workshop. Most importantly, all of you will make a presentation to the seminar about the challenges and opportunities of your particular research topics.

The aim of all sessions is to provide a supportive environment in which research students can learn from each other and can raise questions about all issues affecting the craft of research.

Advanced modules available within the doctoral programme enable students to specialise in areas of particular relevance or interest, thereby building upon the foundations provided in the Research Process and Research Design module.

There is also a requirement for all students to make a brief presentation on their thesis topic in the ‘Research Presentation’ sessions.  The emphasis in these sessions will be on ways of formulating ‘researchable’ problems, identifying clear research questions, and finding appropriate methods of collecting, storing and analysing information.  These presentations will form the basis for each student’s upgrade document (see ‘Assessment’), which is a key feature of monitoring student progress.

Provisional Outline of Course

Week 1: Introduction: Indigenous feminisms, post/colonial feminisms and the intersections of political struggles

Week 2: Feminism, post/coloniality and the question of sovereignty (Assam)

Week 3: Feminism, terror and security (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Sudan) 

Week 4: Feminism, socialism and authoritarianism (China)

Week 8: Feminism, reproduction and land rights in settler colonial states (Australia, US, Canada)

Week 9: Feminism and Revolution (Algeria)

Week 10: Summary workshop/ Time for assessment discussion

Illustrative Bibliography

R. Icaza (2017) 'Decolonial Feminism and Global Politics: Border Thinking and Vulnerability as a Knowing Otherwise' in M. Woons & S. Weier (eds.) Critical Epistemologies of Global Politics, E-International Relations Publishing.

Kaul, N. & Zia, A.(2018) ‘Knowing in our Own Ways: Women and Kashmir’, Special Issue EPW/RWS

Osuri, G.(2018) ‘Sovereignty, vulnerability, and a gendered resistance in Indian-occupied Kashmir’, Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal, 3(2) 228-43.

Menon, Nivedita. 2012. "Victims or Agents?" in Seeing like a Feminist. pp. 173-212. 

Radha Kumar (1999) 'From Chipko to Sati: The Contemporary Indian Women's Movement'. in N. Menon (ed.), Gender and Politics in India. OUP, pp.342-369.

Fong, M. (2016) One Child: The story of China’s most radical experiment, Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt.

Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko (eds.) (2013) The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory, Columbia University Press.

Hershatter, G. (2018) Women and China’s Revolutions, Rowman & Littlefield.

Maha El Said, Lena Meari and Nicola Pratt (eds.) (2015) Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance: Lessons from the Arab World, London: Zed.

Nadje Al-Ali & Nicola Pratt (2009) What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Seedat, F.(ed.) (2017) ‘Special Issue: Women, Religion and Security’, Agenda, 30(3).

M.E.M.Kolawole (1997) Womanism and African Consciousness, Africa World Press Inc.

B. Badri & A. M. Tripp (eds.) (2017) Women’s Activism in Africa, London: Zed.

B. Fredericks (1997) ‘Reempowering Ourselves: Australian Aboriginal Women’, Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 35(3).

Green, J. (ed.) (2017) Making Space for Indigenous Feminism(2^ndedition), Fernwood Publishing.

R. Aída Hernández Castillo (2010) ‘The Emergence of Indigenous Feminism in Latin America’, Signs, 35(3).

This module explores the process of taking the text from page to performance. Through a programme of practical, workshop and seminar explorations, the module will consider artistic choices and how they generate meaning, and how they reflect and respond to wider political, social, cultural and artistic contexts. This year we will be focusing on Hamlet and Hamlet-adjacent media to explore ways of working between written text into performance. Class time will be devoted to play analyses and seminar-style discussions. In general, each class is divided into three components: 

1. Lectures and play readings 

2. Group discussions and activities on videos and/or critical texts that may or may not be directly linked to Hamlet.

3. Practical performance work

FTTP starts in week 1 of the spring term and goes until week 6 of the summer term. We would advise that you familiarise yourself with Hamlet before the module begins; you will find a link to our chosen version in week 1 of the reading list. You are also required to read/watch the relevant weekly material before attending class on Thursday.

Principal Module Aims

This module will introduce you to the practical craft of and the theoretical background to performance analysis and criticism. In the autumn term, the activity of the module is divided between seeing productions and writing reviews of them; workshopping these reviews in class; editing the reviews towards assessed submission; reading and discussing relevant academic and journalistic articles about criticism and particular critical principles/ methods/ approaches to analysing performance; and learning about alternative, digital, performative, and visual forms of criticism. In the spring term, the module will continue to provide you with a dynamic understanding of "performance" as a critical concept for the study of culture while at the time providing you with the opportunity to develop the basic strategies, methodologies and tools of analysis that you need to write scholarly essays from a performance and theatre studies perspective.

Principal Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this module, students should demonstrate an ability to:

•           analyse various kinds of performance and introduce terminology  suitable to the analysis of theatre and performance

•           better understand, appreciate, and discern the different elements of theatre production (writing, directing, acting, design, the role of the audience)

•           produce critical response to (live) performance via various forms of writing as well as visual and digital forms of communication, and have improved skills in written critical expression

•           distinguish between various forms of performance criticism and critical theory and examine how they are shaped by social, political, and historical contexts

•           analyse the role of theory and criticism in the processes of theatrical production and reception

•           have a more nuanced understanding of contentious concepts such as taste, quality, and beauty

Why do the plays of Shakespeare continue to be re-contextualised, reduced and remixed? An intrinsic part of Shakespeare’s legacy is the creative adaptation of his work. The playwright himself was a consummate adapter, drawing on pre-existing materials and re-working these for his audiences, for whom his plays were a form of popular entertainment. How has Shakespeare been re-conceptualised in the context of modern culture and which methods have artists used to render his work accessible? 

This module will challenge your perception of what can be perceived as an adaptation of Shakespeare and each seminar will involve practical exploration of diverse artists, including comedians, composers, directors, rappers and theatre-makers. You’ll engage in the adaptation process and produce your own creative responses to Shakespeare’s work.

We'll focus a wide ranre of adaptation and performance across the term. There is no requirement to read any specific Shakespearean texts for this module, as we'll be exploring and staging various extracts in class, and studying them in the context of live performance and adaptation. However, should you wish to read any, I recommend the Arden Shakespeare editions, all of which are available on Drama Online. 

When selecting which play(s) with which to work for your adaptation assessment in Term 3, you are welcome to select any Shakespearean text you wish to adapt. The exception to this rule is Hamlet, given this is the core text on the first-year Theatre module, From Text to Performance, and the majority of you will therefore already have produced a previous adaptation of this play. Other than, all the world's your oyster!

Module Description:

In 1968, the year of revolt, theorist Roland Barthes famously proclaimed the ‘Death of the Author.’ He has put to rest the notion of the author as originator/ God and placed the reader central stage. This module takes Barthes’s provocation as a point of departure to explore authorial presence and absence on various levels of text and performance from its aesthetic aspects to its political dimensions. Text, as well as performance, consists of multiple writings and potential embodiments, ‘issuing from several cultures and entering into a dialogues with one another, into parody, into contestation; but there is only one place where this multiplicity is collected, united, and in this place is not the author […], but the reader’(Barthes). The aim of this module is to investigate how ‘the reader’ (as also the spectator/participant) constructs ‘the author’? Why is the construction of an ‘author’ in the reception process, and even within some participatory forms, important? How is the author constructed through imaginaries and re-imaginings, over-writings and mutations, repetitions and archiving, fictionalisations and theatricalisations? How is the authorial figure fashioned and constructed through self-referentiality and dramatic irony? How does the figure of the author appear as an intertextual and intertheatrical reference? How is the author/predecessor ghosted within texts and various kinds of performance practices?

The return to the question ‘Who is/was an author?’ is  also to understand the multiple possibilities and limitations of the term along the lines of gender, ethnicity, class, and politics—not so much of authorship—but of the author as an accountable figure both self-fashioned and shaped through public imagination:

•          How does the proclamation of the death of the author decentre those subjects that have historically never occupied the centre, who have historically been marginalised?

•          What are the ethical implications of authorial presence/ absence?

•          What/ where is authorial accountability if the subjectivity of the author is irrelevant?

•          How do different kinds of authorial deaths destabilise the political dimensions of this concept (i.e. censorship, erasure)?

 n order to grapple with these questions we will look at a range of works from Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of the Author and Tim Crouch’s controversial play The Author to postcolonial works such as Amie Cesare’s A Tempest that speak back to the canonical author; from Marina Carr’s biographical play about Chekhov 16 Possible Glimpses to Dead Centre’s deconstructive Chekhov’s First Play and Polly Teal’s feminist intervention in her play Bronte; from Marina Abramovic’s exploration of presence in the performance piece The Artist is Present to absence and censorship in the performances of artist/activists such as Wei Wei.