Module description
Does gender affect how technology is interacted with? Can technology have a gender? These questions will inform discussions and debates about the ways that people produce, consume and use technology (both hardware and software). By looking at histories and trends in the integration of technology into everyday life, this module will interrogate the relationship between gender and technology and open up questions about how today's tools both challenge and reproduce ideologies of gender. During this module, students will assess contemporary debates about the role various technologies play in the production of gender norms and practices. In analysing a range of hardware and software, students will engage with gender and technology theories from research in internet studies, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, history and philosophy. Developing an interdisciplinary understanding of these theories will facilitate critical engagement with popular debates about technology's role in the production of everyday life and its gendered substructures.
Assessment details
- One x Essay 1000 words (30%)
- One x Essay 2800 words (70%)
Educational aims & objectives
The educational aim of this module is to provide an understanding of how gender informs the design, maintenance, understanding, and use of technologies. Students will be working with learning materials that encourage them to critically reflect on how technologies can be both gendered and gendering. The module also aims to introduce students to core theories and concepts in gender studies, and to situate these in relation to debates and perceptions of technology. Another educational aim of this module is for students to learn to express their critical thinking around gender and technology through the format of written essays.
Learning outcomes
After completing this module, students should be able to:
- Synthesise contemporary debates about the relation between gender and technology.
- Contribute to discussions about social and political concerns regarding the relation between gender and technology.
- Describe and critically examine gender theory and concepts.
- Apply gender theory and concepts to examine the relation between gender and technology.
- Communicate knowledge and develop and structure an independent argument, and present this in writing through the format of independently written essays.
Teaching pattern
Ten one-hour lectures and ten one-hour seminars