HU Credits: 1

Degree/Cycle: 2nd degree (Master)

Responsible Department: International Relations

Semester: 1st Semester

Teaching Languages: English

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Dr. Swati Parashar

Coordinator Email: swati.parashar@gu.se

Coordinator Office Hours: By appointment

Teaching Staff:
Dr. Swati Parashar

Course/Module description:
This course throws the spotlight on contemporary violent conflicts, using the intersectional lens of coloniality and gender. By adopting feminist, post/de-colonial epistemic enquiries and methods, the lectures and activities in the course question dominant practices of knowledge creation and dissemination.

Course/Module aims:
The course aims to enable students to understand violent conflicts in different parts of the world, by raising new questions about what gets 'known', who creates 'knowledge', what remains hidden or visible and what relationship exists between the 'knower' and the 'known'. Taking gender and coloniality as categories of analysis the course draws from the examples of conflicts in Asia and Africa (Kashmir and Maoist conflicts in India, Civil War in Sri Lanka, Genocide in Rwanda etc.), offering wider reflections on decolonising knowledge practices.

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
• UNDERSTAND that violent conflicts are gendered and different warring bodies (victims, survivors, witnesses, perpetrators) challenge as well as uphold the existing gendered order.
• COMPREHEND that coloniality exists in multiple forms, and there is never a complete severance from the colonial past, which continues to affect the relationship between and within the categories of the colonised and the coloniser.
• GRASP that coloniality plays a role in setting up a gender hierarchies and the prevailing gendered order is also reshaped by colonial hierarchies.
• APPRECIATE critical forms of epistemic enquiries, and ontological frameworks that promote alternative forms of knowledge creation and dissemination
• LEARN from examples discussed in the class to be able to apply the findings to other relevant cases of interest.
• CONTRIBUTE to the decolonial-feminist project by sharing their experiences and understandings of violent conflicts and its everyday impact.

Attendance requirements(%):
100%

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: Class discussions will draw attention to the existing research and analyse them using insights from feminist and post/de-colonial theories and praxis. Individual projects as well as group and class discussions will be based on course readings, and on experiential narratives. Students are advised to consider the classroom as a respectful and safe co-constitutive space in which they should actively contribute by sharing their thoughts, experiences and encourage others to the same. Writing and reading comprehension skills are both critical to pass this course.

Course/Module Content:
1. The Coloniality of Gender and the Gender of Coloniality: An Introduction to Concepts and Themes
2. Why and How are Conflicts Gendered
3. Why Coloniality Continues to Matter: Postcolonial Debates
4. Complicities and the Decolonial Project
5. The Invisible Violence: Beyond Wars and Armed Conflicts
6. Towards Alternative Futures: Worldism and Beyond

Required Reading:
Braithwaite, John and D’Costa, Bina. 2018. Cascades of Violence. Canberra: ANU Press.

Parashar, Swati. 2014. Women and Militant Wars: The Politics of Injury. London: Routledge

Parashar, Swati. 2018. "The Postcolonial/Emotional State: Mother India’s Response to its Deviant Maoist Children." In Revisiting Gendered States: Feminist Imaginings of the State in International Relations, edited by Swati Parashar, J. Ann Tickner, Jacqui True and V. Spike Peterson, 157-173. New York: Oxford University Press.

Parashar, Swati, (edited) Special Issue, “Feminism and Postcolonialism: Rethinking Gender, State and Political Violence”, in Postcolonial Studies 2016, Vol. 19 (4)

Talpade-Mohanty, Chandra (1994), ‘Under Western Eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourse’, reprinted in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, eds. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 196-220.

Anna M. Agathangelou and L. H. M. Ling (2009), Transforming World Politics: From empire to multiple worlds, Routledge, New York

Nandy, Ashis (1983) The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism (Oxford University Press: Delhi)

• Lugones, Maria. 2010. “Towards a Decolonial Feminism” Hypatia 25(4): 742-759.

Peace Medie and Alice J. Kang, “Power, Knowledge and the politics of gender in the global South”, European Journal of Politics, v. 1, n. 1-2, (2018): 43.

Tickner, J. A. (1997). You just don’t understand: Troubled engagements between feminists and IR theorists. International Studies Quarterly, 41(4), 611–632.

Additional Reading Material:
Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, London: Pandora, (1989).

Parashar, Swati. 2018. “Discursive (in)securities and postcolonial anxiety: Enabling excessive militarism in India”, Security Dialogue, Vol 49, Issue 1-2, pp. 123 – 135

Edward W. Said, Orientalism, London: Penguin Group, (2003)
Hisako Motoyama, “Formulating Japan’s UNSCR 1325 national action plan and forgetting the “comfort women”. International Feminist Journal Politics, v. 20 n. 1, (2018): pp. 39-53.
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, “Getting the Story Right, Telling the Story Well: Indigenous Activism, Indigenous Research” in Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Zed Books (2012): pp. 218 – 229.
Parashar and D’Costa 2017 ‘Feminist Foreign Policy: The South Asia Conundrum’, The Disrupted Journal. Centre for Security Studies. Vol. 1, No. 1.

D’Costa, 2011 (2013) Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia, London: Routledge.

Frantz Fanon, ‘Algeria Unveiled,’ Monthly Review Press, 1965

Eisenstein Zilla. 2007. Sexual Decoys: Gender, Race and War in Imperial Democracy. London: Zed Books.

Gentry Caron E., Sjoberg Laura. 2007. Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women's Violence in Global Politics. London: Zed Books.

Shepherd Laura J.. 2012. Gender, Violence and Popular Culture: Telling Stories. London: Routledge.

Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and subversion of identity. New York: Routledge

Grading Scheme :
Active Participation / Team Assignment 20 %
Submission assignments during the semester: Exercises / Essays / Audits / Reports / Forum / Simulation / others 50 %
Presentation / Poster Presentation / Lecture 30 %

Additional information:
This a compressed course will have six meetings:
Sunday, 26.11.23, 16:30-20:15
Tuesday, 28.11.23, 18:30-20:15
Thursday, 30.11.23, 16:30-18:15
Sunday, 3.12.23, 18:30-20:15
Tuesday, 5.12.23, 18:30-20:15
Thursday, 7.12.23, 16:30-18:15