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Prof Anne Phillips

This course is available on the MPhil/PhD in Gender, MSc in Gender, MSc in Gender (Research), MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation, MSc in Gender, Policy and Inequalities and MSc in Political Theory. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course is capped at 2 groups. The deadline for applications is 12:00 noon on Friday 5 October 2018. You will be informed of the outcome by 12:00 noon on Monday 8 October.

This course covers some of the central debates in contemporary feminist political theory, with a particular emphasis on the legacy and usefulness of liberalism. The course focuses on debates and differences within feminist political theory, rather than justifications for, or defences of, feminist political theory. Among the problems raised are conceptions of the individual and individual autonomy; the relative invisibility of gender issues in mainstream literature on justice and equality; the tendency to conceive of equality in sex-blind terms; the tendency to presume a universally applicable set of norms. We consider the theoretical debates in relation to a number of contemporary political issues. Topics likely to be addressed include: feminism and contract, individualism and autonomy, identity politics, equality and the politics of difference, marriage, multiculturalism, and universalism.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the MT.

There will be a reading week in week 6 of the MT for advice and feedback sessions.

Students will be required to submit a short essay of roughly 1,500 words. Students will be given a list of questions to choose from, and should choose a topic other than the one they choose for their final assessment.

Most of the material is in the form of articles, and a detailed list will be handed out at the beginning of the course. The following is only an indicative list: Carole Pateman (1988) The Sexual Contract; Iris M Young (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference; Wendy Brown (1995) States of Injury; Anne Phillips (1995) The Politics of Presence; Clare Chambers (2017) Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State; Eleonore Lepinard (2011) 'Autonomy and the Crisis of the Feminist Subject: Revisiting Okin's Dilemma', Constellations 18/2:205-221.

Essay (100%, 4000 words).

This course typically recruits students from both the MSc in Political Theory programme and MSc in Gender programmes; this provides a good mix of expertise from mainstream and feminist theory.