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SP30276: Gender, sexuality, science, and technology

Follow this link for further information on academic years Academic Year: 2015/6
Further information on owning departmentsOwning Department/School: Department of Social & Policy Sciences
Further information on credits Credits: 6
Further information on unit levels Level: Honours (FHEQ level 6)
Further information on teaching periods Period: Semester 2
Further information on unit assessment Assessment Summary: CW 25%, ES 75%
Further information on unit assessment Assessment Detail:
  • 25% Essay Plan (CW 25%)
  • 75% Essay (ES 75%)
Further information on supplementary assessment Supplementary Assessment: Like-for-like reassessment (where allowed by programme regulations)
Further information on requisites Requisites:
Further information on descriptions Description: Aims:
This unit will enable students to critically analyse the historical, theoretical, and practical considerations behind human gender, sexuality, science and technology. It will also help students understand, critique and articulate how scientific and social science definitions of gender and sexuality impact the development of new technologies for human reproduction, medical advances in biomedicine, and political battles over gender and human rights.
The aims of this unit are to introduce students to:
1.) The key historical events and thinkers that produced the core texts, concepts and studies in gender, sexuality, science and technology.
2.) The innovative laboratory, scientific research, and technological work on human gender and sexuality since the pre-Renaissance.
3.) Key theoretical, STEM subject, Social Science, Feminist, and Humanities perspectives that illustrate the past-present-and-future relationships between gender, sexuality, science, and technology.
4.) Core epistemological relationships that define how gender and sexuality, co-exist with science and how those interconnected relationships developed alongside human technology interventions over time.
5.) How the concept of modern gender and sexuality studies uses science and social technology to both establish and critique models of normalcy, pathology, and biology.
6.) Keyword definitions of gender, sexuality, science, and technology.

Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the unit the students should be able to:
1.) Understand and critically analyse the historical, theoretical, and practical considerations behind human gender, sexuality, science and technology.
2.) Critique and articulate how scientific and philosophical definitions of gender and sexuality impacted the development of new technologies (e.g., contraception), medical advances for intersex individuals, and political battles over transgender legal rights.
3.) Recognize and understand how everyday science and technology research works in relation to discussing human gender and sexuality.
4.) Critique and debate how definitions of gender, sexuality, science, and technology produce conflicts in public policy, social history, families and children, the law, and education.
5.) Critically review the ethical uses and abuses of categories that define the 'normal' modern human as illustrated by the interdisciplinary study of gender, sexuality, science, and technology.
6.) Distinguish how the concepts of gender, sexuality, and science and the practices of technology merge and separate into distinct categories across the centuries.
7.) Critically evaluate and understand how definitions of modern gender and sexuality grew out of historical encounters between previous epoch's science, technology, and medicine.
8.) Identify and critique the growing medical literature that is re-examining the basic definitions of human gender and sexuality by using scientific studies that then develop new human technologies for gender and sexuality.

Skills:
1.) To understand concepts related to gender, sexuality, science, and technology and how those concepts help produce and support these categories.
2.) To recognize the use of science and technology in everyday life and how they both improve and complicate everyday understandings of gender and sexuality.
3.) To think about and then design a more ethical definition of human gender and sexuality.
4.) To scrutinize how media representations of gender and sexuality create politically complicated social understandings of scientific and technological practices.
5.) To think creatively about how textual and visual representations of gender, sexuality, science, and technology have produced new ways of thinking about the human.
6.) To synthesise information from a number of sources to create a coherent argument
7.) To use ICT to illustrate arguments. Content:: 1.) Defining gender, sexuality, science, and technology in both history and the current age
2.) Examples and demonstrations of current scientific, technical, and medical research into gender and sexuality
3.) Uses and abuses of scientific and technological research and gender/sexuality bioethics
4.) Ethically guided scientific and technical research on gender and sexuality and its future relationships with humans
5.) Keystone Feminist critiques of science and technology, alongside critiques of gender and sexuality
6.) Critiques of laws both restricting and extending legal rights to individuals who are transgender, intersex, and gender neutral.
7.) Definitions of the Human in relationship to theories of gender and sexuality
8.) Interdisciplinary texts: historical, contemporary and speculative
9.) Analysing popular culture representations of gender, sexuality, science, and technology in art, film, television, and music.
10.) Public understandings of debates about gender and sexuality in science and technology research, health care, politics, and social well being
11.) Innovations in understanding the relationships between gender and sexuality in the academic literature and science and technology research.
Further information on programme availabilityProgramme availability:

SP30276 is Optional on the following programmes:

Department of Social & Policy Sciences
  • UHSP-AFB16 : BSc(Hons) Social Policy (Year 3)
  • UHSP-AKB16 : BSc(Hons) Social Policy with Year long work placement (Year 4)
  • UHSP-AFB05 : BSc(Hons) Social Sciences (Year 3)
  • UHSP-AKB05 : BSc(Hons) Social Sciences with Year long work placement (Year 4)
  • UHSP-AFB04 : BSc(Hons) Sociology (Year 3)
  • UHSP-AKB04 : BSc(Hons) Sociology with Year long work placement (Year 4)
  • UHSP-AFB10 : BSc(Hons) Sociology and Social Policy (Year 3)
  • UHSP-AKB10 : BSc(Hons) Sociology and Social Policy with Year long work placement (Year 4)

Notes:
* This unit catalogue is applicable for the 2015/16 academic year only. Students continuing their studies into 2016/17 and beyond should not assume that this unit will be available in future years in the format displayed here for 2015/16.
* Programmes and units are subject to change at any time, in accordance with normal University procedures.
* Availability of units will be subject to constraints such as staff availability, minimum and maximum group sizes, and timetabling factors as well as a student's ability to meet any pre-requisite rules.