Second-Year Level
Faculty: Arts and Humanities
Home Department: Women’s and Gender Studies
NQF Level: 6 | Credit Value: 20 | Duration: One Semester
Semester Offered: First Semester
Year Level: 2
Programmes Offered In: BA (2102), BA (Extended Programme) (2612), BTh (2013)
Module Overview:
This module introduces students to the study of sex, gender, and sexuality from feminist perspectives. It explores how social meanings are attached to biological sex and how gender is performed and constructed in diverse contexts. Students engage with key feminist debates around identity, power, and intersectionality.
Main Outcomes:
On completion of this module, students should be able to:
- Use feminist theory to explain the difference between sex and gender.
- Summarise feminist critiques of biological and gender binaries.
- Identify and describe different performances of gender across contexts.
- Recognise gendered power differences in various social settings.
- Apply key concepts such as masculinities, femininities, gender identities, heteronormativity, and intersectionality.
- Identify how gender intersects with race, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and religion.
- Critically analyse personal experiences of gender socialisation.
Main Content:
- Exploration of the social meanings ascribed to biological sex.
- Intersectionality and power dynamics expressed through gender performance.
- Key feminist concepts including femininities, masculinities, heteronormativity, trans and intersex identities, and debates on social constructionism versus essentialism.
Pre-requisite Modules: None
Co-requisite Modules: None
Prohibited Module Combination: None
Faculty: Arts and Humanities
Home Department: Women’s and Gender Studies
NQF Level: 6 | Credit Value: 20 | Duration: One Semester
Semester Offered: Second Semester
Year Level: 2
Programmes Offered In: BA (2101), BA Extended Programme (2612), BLIS (2201), BTh (2013)
Module Overview:
This module explores the intersections of gender, politics, and culture in South Africa. Students critically engage with contemporary and historical gender struggles to understand how political and cultural systems shape gender identities and power relations. The course encourages reflection on how these insights can contribute to building a more gender-just society.
Main Outcomes:
On completion of this module, students should be able to:
- Apply appropriate concepts and tools to analyse gender identities, practices, and struggles in contemporary South Africa.
- Conduct interdisciplinary analyses of gendered dynamics in historical and political contexts.
- Explore key debates in the field of gender in South African politics and culture.
- Critically discuss ways to create a more gender-just society through understanding culture and politics.
Main Content:
- Case studies of gender struggles and identities in South Africa, past and present.
- Theories and concepts for exploring gender across disciplines such as history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and literary studies.
Pre-requisite Modules: None
Co-requisite Modules: None
Prohibited Module Combination: None
Third Year Level
Faculty: Arts and Humanities
Home Department: Women’s and Gender Studies
NQF Level: 7 | Credit Value: 20 | Duration: One Semester
Semester Offered: First Semester
Year Level: 3
Programmes Offered In: BA (2101), BTh (2013), BLIS (2201)
Module Overview:
This module focuses on gender and development within the context of global and local economic and environmental challenges. Students examine feminist theories that reveal how development processes and global structures are gendered and how they impact women, particularly in the Global South.
Main Outcomes:
- On completion of this module, students should be able to:
- Identify and describe how the global economic environment is constructed in gendered ways.
- Explain how global economic systems disadvantage women, especially in the Global South.
- Analyse contemporary environmental challenges through a gendered lens.
- Explain the gendered impacts of environmental and developmental policies.
- Articulate informed feminist arguments on gender and development debates.
Main Content:
- Theoretical frameworks around gender and development.
- Case studies on gendered dimensions of developmental and environmental challenges.
- Debates foregrounding feminist responses to global inequality and sustainability.
Pre-requisite Modules: None
Co-requisite Modules: None
Prohibited Module Combination: None
Faculty: Arts and Humanities
Home Department: Women’s and Gender Studies
NQF Level: 7 | Credit Value: 20 | Duration: One Semester
Semester Offered: Second Semester
Year Level: 3
Programmes Offered In: BA (2101), BTh (2013), BLIS (2201)
Module Overview:
This research-focused module equips students with the theoretical and practical tools to conduct feminist research. Students design, implement, and report on an independent research project that engages with contemporary gender issues using qualitative feminist methodologies.
Main Outcomes:
- On completion of this module, students should be able to:
- Develop a viable research question.
- Conduct a review of relevant literature.
- Explain and justify the use of qualitative feminist research methodologies.
- Employ appropriate data-gathering methods and address ethical considerations.
- Write up and present a coherent final research report.
Main Content:
- Designing and implementing a gender research project.
- Conducting a literature review.
- Selecting appropriate feminist qualitative methods.
- Addressing ethical issues in research.
- Writing and presenting a final research report.
Pre-requisite Modules: None
Co-requisite Modules: None
Prohibited Module Combination: None
Postgrad Level
In this Honours core course, students will engage comprehensively with literature and thinking in feminist qualitative research methodologies. You will explore various feminist qualitative research methodologies, research methods, and methods of data analysis appropriate for your research and think deeply and critically about the ethical and political considerations of your research. All students will have the opportunity to conceptualise, plan and conduct a small feminist qualitative project at the end of the course. This is a year-long course.
Students in this MA core course delve in-depth into the development of feminist methodologies and principles over the last few decades. This includes a focus on the current paradigm shifts towards decolonial, post-qualitative, indigenous and new materialist research methodologies. This course will further introduce you to a range of participatory research methods, including arts-based research, walking and swimming methodologies. By the end of the course, you’ll have produced a research proposal ready for submission. This course runs over both semesters.
Students in this MA structured and Honours core course are equipped with a knowledge and understanding of key global philosophical traditions, writers, and publications that are relevant to their location in South Africa. Students are called to critically engage with relevant arguments and have the opportunity to share a short presentation. Previous students have commented that they enjoyed the lively discussions with lecturers and their peers and “walked away inspired and intrigued to learn more”. In this way, students learn to take ownership of the theory in the African context.
In 2024 the course is co-taught by Desiree Lewis and Lwando Scott
Note: This course is compulsory (a “core” course) for Honours and structured Masters students. However, all new MA and PHD students are strongly recommended (in some cases required) to participate actively – without doing any assignments). It is a first semester course, but runs for most of the year in order to accommodate students' needs for reflection and time for writing assignments.
“Owning Feminist Theorising” equips postgraduates with a knowledge and understanding of key global philosophical traditions, writers, and publications that are relevant to their location in South Africa. Conventionally, feminist theorising is seen in terms of “waves of feminism”: such as the first, second, and third waves. This Western-centric categorisation conveys the linear evolution mainly of North American, Western European, and British feminism in scholarship and the academy.
The main aims of this course are to:
- Encourage students to take ownership of theory
- Make students aware of the concrete and practical implications of theorizing,
- Help students identify and critically use key approaches and concepts for independent analyses in essays and research projects;
- Help students acquire knowledge of and insight into the global theoretical models, thinkers, and topics that are especially relevant to African contexts.
There is NO fee payable for your postgraduate application
MA & PhD students are able to submit at any point during the academic year, keeping in mind that it may take up to 2 weeks to review the proposal and the outcome of the reviewer. These together with the registration of supervisor and title must serve at the Faculty Higher Degrees Committee and approved by the Senate Higher Degrees Committee. We generally recommend that students and supervisors try to submit the proposal and accompanying documents by November of the academic year, to prevent any delays in the registration for the following academic year.
Also, note that all MA Thesis and PhD students must register their title and supervisor within their first year of registration. Students who are enrolled in the MA Structured programme can register their title and supervisor in their second year of study. I have attached the Arts meeting dates. Students and supervisors use the document submission date as a guide, as no late documents are accepted unless approved by Prof Moolla or Robyn Southgate.
International Applicants
All applicants who did not obtain their qualifications in South Africa please note:
- You need to submit all your qualifications to the South African Qualifications Association (SAQA) for an evaluation
- We cannot respond to your application until you submit a certificate issued by SAQA stating the NQF level of your qualifications.
- Please visit the SAQA website at www.saqa.org.za for more information about the process.
