IR5012 - Representing Political Violence

This module is student-led and research focused. You will attend lectures each week which will develop your theoretical knowledge of gendered and racialised media constructions and your methodological skills, and you will apply these to case studies in the seminars.

Developing your ability to critically think about media representations is central to this module and your academic development will be facilitated through weekly lectures and seminars, where you will receive support from your academic community in the form of your peers and the module tutor. The second half of this module looks at particular case studies and how political violence has been gendered and/or racialised. Seminars will guide you through the process of undertaking a case study and doing media analysis.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. The reading list for this module can be found at: http://readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk
(Reading List service online guide for academic staff this containing contact details for the Reading List team – http://library.northumbria.ac.uk/readinglists)

Knowledge & Understanding:
1. Critically engage with academic debates of gender and race in the representation of political violence
2. Critically analyse the contribution of the analytical categories of gender and race to the study of international politics and how social constructions of politically violent actors impact upon their representation

Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:
3. Critically apply methods of textual analysis to case studies to critique representations of political violence
4. Synthesise complex information and present a coherent argument based on evidence and engagement with academic and non-academic sources

Personal Values Attributes (Global / Cultural awareness, Ethics, Curiosity) (PVA):
5. Critically reflect on your own positionality within a gendered and racialised world

You will be assessed by:

1x 3500-word case study (100%) – you will undertake a case study of gendered and/or racialised representations of political violence (MLOs: 1, 2, 3, 4)

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Much of what we learn about political violence is accessed through the media, but the representation of political violence is rarely neutral. This module looks at how gender, race and religion intersect in the representation of political violence to construct the ‘other’ for public consumption, and the implications of these framings. This is a research-centred module based on student enquiry. You will study theoretical and methodological approaches to media representations and apply these insights to case studies of political violence, such as the FARC, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the Iraqi insurgency, Daesh and Black Lives Matter.