Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/Lund University/Gender and sustainability (2014 Q4)/Course description

Course discription: Gender and Sustainability in theory and everyday practice

The course is a unversity course (7,5 hp) offered at Lund University, Sweden within the master programme LUMES (Lund University International Master's Programme in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science).

Learning outcomes

On completion of the course, the student shall be able to: • demonstrate (orally and through writing) a deep understanding of the theoretical and ideological assumptions of different types of gender concepts and feminist approaches including their relevance for sustainability and sustainability research • locate, evaluate and critically review gender dimensions in sustainability policies,initiatives and interventions • identify and explain gender dimensions of various sustainability challenges and how they interact, in terms of impacts and responses, with the gender dynamics of everyday activities and practices • perform a constructively critical analysis of relevant gender and sustainability phenomena/challenges in a systematic way using the key concepts acquired during the course as well as propose gender aware/gender sensitive alternatives • apply skills in using mixed and integrated approaches in research, in particular in understanding feminist methods in relation to methodology and epistemology

Course Content

The course discusses a range of theories, conceptual frameworks and approaches for analysing and understanding relations and interactions between gender and sustainability. Students will be introduced to the broad field of gender studies and to the central issues, key concepts and analytical tools in the current debates regarding inequalities, diversities and social change relevant for sustainability. The course draws on global, regional and local empirical examples to illustrate issues of how gender and sustainability interact. Specifically, the course will examine the following aspects or themes in gender and sustainability debates: • the theoretical foundations of (and theories in) gender studies, feminism (from liberal to radical to postmodern feminism) and sustainability, their similarities, differences and interaction • approaches (such as intersectionality) that help identify and locate gender and make gender dimensions visible in sustainability policies, initiatives and interventions and how they relate to wider social processes and sustainability challenges • how methods (such as standpoint and mainstreaming), methodology and epistemology can be used to problematise and critically review everyday examples of the interaction between gender and sustainability

Wiki article as a final paper

Every student shall write a final paper. It will be possible – and preferable - to start the work with the final paper in the beginning of the course. The final paper will be written as a Wikipedia article aimed to be published on Wikipedia.org. By using this form and structure of the final paper the rationale is to construct, present and disseminate the student’s understanding of a topic within gender and sustainability.

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