& THE CENTER OF GENDER STUDIES
UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS
POST-GRADUATE PROGRAMME IN GENDER STUDIES
Inter-Departmental and Inter-Disciplinary
Self-financed
Co-ordinators:
The
UNESCO
Chair
in
Gender
Equality
and
Women´
s
Empowerment and the Centre for Gender Studies of the University of Cyprus
Program Description
The University of Cyprus Gender Studies postgraduate programme is interdisciplinary, self-financed, and co-ordinated by the UNESCO chair and the Centre
for Gender Studies board (as will be appointed at each time). The courses for the
program are university-wide, and are offered by departments throughout the
University and by outstanding academics and researchers from around the world.
It is addressed to students with an accredited University degree from across the
disciplines,
and
its
structure
seeks
to
combine
excellence
in
scientific
postgraduate education, innovative research, and a critical approach, not only
towards theoretical, but also towards more practical and concrete, issues.
The master’s degree can be completed in one academic year full-time study, or in
2-3 academic years part-time study, and by earning 90 credit hours of taught
course-work. The PhD program can be completed in 3 (i.e. six semesters) to 8
(i.e. 16 semesters) academic years.
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The degree programmes are offered in either the Greek or the English language.
Aim of the Programme
The main aim of this programme is to equip graduates with Gender Studies
expertise and the competence and skills they will require to be employed in either
the public or private sector, in executive, research and official posts to manage,
promote and investigate gender issues through an inter-disciplinary perspective.
Also, the course aims to educate, train and prepare persons who will be able to
take up a leading role in the field of Gender Studies, and who will promote and
develop issues of gender in an innovative and creative manner across various
scientific disciplines, within the framework of current democratic values and
societal institutions.
More specifically, the programme aims to:

Promote Gender Studies at a postgraduate and inter-disciplinary level.

Support the specialized study of central texts in gender studies literature
and research, as well as the study of EU literature and body of publications
on the subject of gender equality.

Integrate research on the construction of gender within its historical and
social context.

Contribute to the development of modern and up-to-date policies and
policy frameworks on gender matters, through the production of related
scientific research and discourse.

Support the fostering and development of leading personalities who will be
able to work on the subject of gender equality in all its dimensions.
Structure of the Gender Studies Master Degree
The programme consists of 90 ECTS which are distributed as follows:
OPTION A:
The programme includes seven courses, 2 core/ compulsory and 5 optional, and
the production and submission of research work on a gender-related question,
issue, matter or debate (compulsory). It also includes 3 post-graduate seminars,
two of which will be pre-set and compulsory. Total number of credits: 7 course X
9 ECTS + 3 seminars X 3 ECTS (9 ECTS) + Dissertation (18 ECTS) = TOTAL 90
ECTS.
OPTION B:
2
27 ECTS in compulsory courses + specialization courses, 9 ECTS in common core
courses 3 seminars X 3 ECTS (9 ECTS)+54 ECTS Elective courses= TOTAL 90
ECTS
List of core/ compulsory courses (18 -27 ECTS)
1. EDU 682 Qualitative Research in Education or EDU 683 Quantitative
Research
2. GRS 629 Feminist Theory: Study of classic and founding texts of
feminism; research and fundamental issues in feminist theory. Theoretical
background in, and contemporary theoretical approaches to, gender
studies.
The historical, social and individual approach to gender.
Contemporary philosophical approaches to gender and feminism.
Compulsory Seminars
GRS 774 Academic Writing:
The seminar aims to help the students develop the academic writing skills
necessary for the writing of a post-graduate (master’s) dissertation: that is, it
instructs the students on organizing the text, the presentation of the
argument and the discussion of evidence, argument and material, the
presentation of data, establishing conclusions, referencing and how to avoid
plagiarism.
GRS 775 Discourse Analysis:
The seminar analyzes and examines inter-disciplinary discourse through a
variety of ways, and also analyzes discourse as a composite part of the social
milieu and social institutional structures.
GRS 776 Queer theory and the study of sexuality:
The seminar aims to introduce students to the queer theory and the study of
Sexuality by contextualizing the term “queer” and queer theory within the
broader liberation movement and the demands for rights relating to gender
and sexuality.
Elective Courses (45 – 54 ECTS)
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Elective courses include a) courses which are already run by departments from
across the University and could be offered for the Gender Studies programme
(Group A) and b) courses which are new and are structured and designed
specifically for the Gender Studies postgraduate programme by the departments
and schools (Group B). In addition a course from another postgraduate
programme/or department may also be considered as an elective course as long
as the student´s supervisor approves of the substitution.
Indicative List of Group A Courses
The following are courses already running in other postgraduate studies
programmes at the University and may be offered also for the Gender Studies
programme.
GAL 503 Gender Theories
GAL 580 Gender: A reliable category of analysis?
EDU 599 Gender theories and the Politics of the Curriculum
EDU 536 Religions and Gender
EDU 641 Gender and Education
SPS 613 Social Anthropology
SPS 614 Sociology of Social Movements
SPS 514 Feminist Theory
PSY 722 Cross Cultural Issues in Psychology
BMG 535 Byzantine Masculinities and Femininities
BMG 561 The image of Women in Byzantine Literature
ARC 562 Portraits of Women in Byzantine Art
BMG 544 Byzantine Outsiders
Indicative List of Group B Courses
Each department and school will add to/ select courses to teach from the list.
GRS 689 Independent Course of Study
Aims to familiarize the students with texts and research data not covered by
other courses.
GRS 601 Power, Ideology, Inequality
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Comparative perspectives on inequality in different societies with the use of
both a contemporary and a historical approach.
GRS 602 History of Sexuality
Investigates how sexual identity is presented, constructed and comprehended
from the 19th century to the present day (from Freud to Foucault to the official
documents and publications of the EU).
The course offers to students a retrospective view of how gender and masculinity
have become valid historical categories of analysis during the last three decades.
Through the discussion of fundamental theories, currents and conceptions in the
study of gender the course aims to highlight the process through which the
elaboration of gender as a field of inquiry has contributed to a re-thinking of
traditional analytical categories as well as producing some entirely new
approaches. To this end, the discussion on the ‘historisation’ of gender revolves
around its relation to categories such as race, labour, violence, religion, economy,
class, body, sexuality, age, hegemony and popular culture. A further special focus
is given to the importance of feminist theorists and their role in the emergence of
the study of masculinity.
GRS 603 Critical Theory in Gender Studies
The course examines central debates, positions and ideas in contemporary
cultural theory, from Marxism to post-modernism (texts drawn from Freud,
Klein, Lacan, Kristeva, Adorno, Fromm, Habermas, Žižek, Mitchell, Giddens
and Althusser).
GRS 604 Writing (and) Gender: Masculinity, Femininity and Beauty in
Literature
The course aims to study basic literary texts from the perspective of gender
and its construction through literary and cultural representations. Texts are
connected with the historical, social and cultural perspective from which they
originate, so as to analyze and problematize the processes by which discourse
constructs both gender and the ways we come to experience the gendered
self.
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GRS 605 Psychoanalysis and Social Theory
The course aims to study and foreground the complexity of the relationship
between established psychoanalytical theories and feminist thought.
It will
especially refer to psychoanalytical theories such as Lacan’s, which have been the
specific target of feminist critics but have also served to establish certain feminist
theories. Discussion and examination of the above points will have the purpose
of better understanding, analyzing and employing these theories, as well as
approaching them in a critical manner.
GRS 606 Queer Theory and Civil Rights
This course analyzes the relationship between the term “queer” and queer theory
with the broader liberation movement brought about by feminism’s turn towards
demands for rights relating to gender and sexuality. It discusses those demands
so that the participants are trained to advocate for the civil rights of individuals
across the gender spectrum, and the legal protection of those rights, through a
critical engagement with the above issues.
GRS 607 Men and Masculinities
Discusses and juxtaposes, initially, the essentialist view of masculine “identity”
with post-modern feminism’s own engagement with it.
The frameworks of the
course involve a discussion of the school’s part as an arena of hyper (hetero)
sexuality, where multiple formations of masculinities are constructed and
simultaneously (re) constructed.
At the same time, the course debates and
critically approaches the various mechanisms through which homophobic policing
and misogyny establish their presence within a variety of spaces and contexts.
GRS 608 Femininity and Masculinity
The course discusses the subject of gendered identities in adolescence, within
data and material from the relevant international literature. Also discusses the
factors that influence the formation of gendered identities within the school,
family life, the male and female experience, and within the relationships and
interaction between genders.
GRS 609 Gendered Culture and the Socio-political Context: Issues and
questions of power, regulation, control, patriarchy, familial and interfamilial discrimination.
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The course will emphasize the cross-temporal and socio-historical analysis of
gendered culture and the socio-political context, based on the findings of
feministic scholarship and research. Within this framework, it will also present,
discuss and critically approach the findings of research which highlight the intense
inter-relationship between the professional choices of young people, their views
on family life, and the formation of gendered identities in adolescence.
GRS 610 Gender, Media and the Production of Knowledge
The framework for this course expands to an historical and critical overview of the
dominant trends in the area of gender and the Media, as this has been analyzed,
recorded, and researched within international literature and scholarship.
The
course also presents the dominant trends within research and the problematics
surrounding gender and the Media, debating the dominant discourse which is
articulated within those trends and problematics. Moreover, the course attempts
to implicate the participant audience in the following three areas of concern: (a)
investigation of the construction of sexuality and gender by and within the Cypriot
Media; (b) Gender and Media audiences; and, (c) Gender and new technologies.
GRS 611 Body, Gender, Sex in an Inter-cultural and Comparative
Perspective
The course adopts an intercultural and comparative perspective for the analysis,
description and critical examination of the terms sex, body, and gender. Those
terms are examined not only in respect of meaning and content, but also in
respect of their multiple usages in research as well as in the practices of everyday
life.
GRS 612 Performativity: Performing Gender and the Concept of
Performativity in Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble
The course aims to analyze Judith Butler´s feminist theory, emphasising the
analysis,
critical
evaluation,
operation
and
implementation
of
the
terms
“performativity” and “performance”. The problematic which is being articulated
by Butler´s work around the meaning of the term “gender” will be amplified,
especially through the crititcism which has been directed towards it, for example
by Emile Durkheim and Michel Foucault.
GRS 613 Gender and the Cinema
The course studies the filmic representation of socially conceptualized gender
relations and gendered identities within the varying socio-historical contexts. The
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course centralizes, analyzes, and critically engages with the variety of discourses
on the meaning of terms such as “manhood” and “femininity” which may co-exist
even within the same filmic narrative; at the same time, it establishes the
problematic which relates to the ideological speculations of filmic narrative, and
the ways these are not always unambiguous. With the study, critical thought on,
and re-consideration of, the above issues, in tandem with creative debate, the
course attempts to record and compare the rigid gender regimes within a variety
of socio-historical contexts, and also to comment upon historical changes taking
place inside attitudes, ways of life and beliefs, as these are reflected within filmic
narratives.
GRS 614 Gender and Mathematics
Gender-based differences in learning mathematics as well as in relation to beliefs
and attitudes towards mathematics, and the social factors that influence them;
International research output and the gender perspective on mathematics.
gender and mathematics education.
Strategies and planning educators for the
development of a gender perspective in mathematical education.
GRS 615 Gender and Science
The course investigate gendered differences in cognitive development and
performance in Sciences, and the factors that influence them, with emphasis on
international research output and paradigms on the interest, participation and
performance results in the natural sciences across educational levels. Strategies
and planning educators can use to address the gender aspect of natural sciences
courses.
GRS 616 Gender and Biology
The course analyses the physiology of gender and the environment.
New
reproductive technologies; issues and debates in bioethics.
GRS 617 Gender and New Technologies
Issues related to gender and technologies: Feminist theories on technology;
Gender difference in the use of information technology and the acquisition of
competence and skills in information technology; study of these through an
overview and analysis of international research literature; Technology as
masculinised culture; Representations of gender, and the consequences of using
gender to create and/ or reinforce sexist attitudes and conceptions.
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GRS 618 Gender, Equality and the Law
The course examines the relationship between the law, the legal institutions and
gender: The processes of gender construction through the law; Analysis of
statutory law, law literature and jurisprudence on equality, the rule of law, and
equality before the law.
GRS 619 Gender Equality, Human Rights, Gender Equality and the Law
The legal aspect of contemporary issues on gender equality; historical and
contemporary approach to the legal aspect of gender equality; quotas, sexual
harassment, trafficking.
GRS 620 Gender in Greek Letters and Literature
Textual analysis based on the inequalities between genders in relation to the
socio-historical context – such texts might include the Antigone by Sophocles and
the Fonissa by Alexandros Papadiamantis.
GRS 621 Gender in Education
The course examines the way gendered and sexual identities are constructed and
produced within the educational system. In particular, it studies subjects like the
socialization of the two genders, gender and social class, media stereotyping, and
the relationship between gender and success at school.
Emphasis will also be
given to the processes of learning, organization and discipline within the school
environment, which define the acceptable, proper and appropriate manifestations
of gendered sexuality and in the way this gives meaning to the gendered social
stratification of contemporary societies.
GRS 622 Gender and the Economy
This course examines issues like participation of the genders in the labour
market, the relationship between pay and gender, social welfare and gender,
gender and business initiative, gender within the centres of decision-making,
forms of employment and their relationship to gender.
The course studies not
only international literature but also European Union policies on these issues.
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GRS 623 Architecture and Perspectives on Gender: Place, Gender,
Space
The course investigates the gender dimension of designing, as well as the usage
and reproduction of architectural space.
Questions being raised involve the
extent to which the organization and allotment of space reflects and reproduces
gendered social difference/ inequality and how difference/ inequality influences
the design of space.
The course engages in an inter-disciplinary and inter-
scientific approach, employing tools from various knowledge fields, including the
history of architecture and the history of world cities, social sciences, geography,
history and the sociology of science.
GRS 624 “Masculinity”, “Femininity”, “Androgyny”: Psychological
Approaches to Gender Formation
Introduces, presents and critically discusses the major psychological approaches
to gender formation:Freudian theory, psychoanalysis post-Freud, Lacanian theory
and theorization;Nancy Chodorow´s object-relations theory;Albert Bandura´s and
Walter Mischel´s theory of social learning;Lawrence Kohlberg´s theory of
cognitive
development;Gender
schema
theory;
Sandra
Bem´s
theory
of
psychological androgyny. Moreover, the course engages with feminist criticism
and disputation which goes in tandem with theories such as the above.
GRS 625 Work and Gender Identities; A Psychological Approach
The course examines the way gendered identities are formed and produced within
the workplace.
The question is being studied on the basis of the various
psychological theories that relate to identity formation and the theorizing of work
and the workplace.
GRS 626 Work and Gender Identities: A Sociological Approach
The course examines the way gendered identities are formed and produced within
the workplace.
The question is being studied on the basis of sociological
approaches to labour and work and of the theοrizing surrounding the workplace
and work.
It examines the role of gender stereotyping in the choice of
profession, and also gender discrimination within the workplace.
GRS 627 Violence Counselling
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The subject examines the multiple forms of violence as well as the causes and
various effects of violence on victims and perpetrators.
Further, it studies the
role counselling can assume in the prevention of, and response to, violence, along
with the forms of support which is available through counselling.
GRS 628 Entrepreneurship, Administration and Gender
Examines the concepts of business initiative and business management and the
part they play as contributing factors to the development of the economy and
society in general.
Highlights and studies those dimensions and frameworks
which are gender-related and can contribute to the creation of effective services
and to the provision of appropriate education and training on issues of business
initiative and administration, as these are related to, and affect, gender.
GRS 630 European policy and Gender
The course presents, analyses and critically investigates the European Union´s
policy, including the policies of Equality, of the Positive measurements, and the
Gender mainstreaming policy. It employs a critical approach to the theorypractice divide.
GRS 631 Visual Sources in Humanities and Social Sciences
During the last three decades the discussions among social scientists over the
effects and nature of “visual culture,” have provided original insights into how
technologies and imaging systems have had profound implications for the way
we create, record, manipulate, circulate, store, interpret, remember, and use
information. This course aims to highlight the importance of visual sources in
humanities and social sciences and explain the ways in which researchers can
locate, evaluate and interpret visual sources. Learning how to use a “critical
visual methodology” will improve significantly the students’ research skills and
enable them to use photographs, works of art, films, maps, advertisements to
answer
questions
on
issues
of
identity,
human
relations,
power
and
knowledge.
GRS 632 Contemporary trends and issues
The course investigates contemporary trends and issues regarding gender,
equity, equality and gender mainstreaming in the contemporary society
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Structure of the PhD programme
The
Following
are
required
for
the
completion
of
the
doctoral
programme:

Master degree

Successful completion of courses totalling, 27 -45 ECTS

Success in a comprehensive examination, 33 ECTS

Submission of a doctoral dissertation on an original subject matter/ a
subject matter which makes an original contribution to knowledge.

Research (4 stages X 30 ECTS) 120 ECTS

Doctoral dissertation: 60 ECTS
TOTAL: 240 /258 ECTS
GRS 820 Comprehensive exams (33 π.μ.)
GRS 891 Research I (30 π.μ.)
GRS 892 Research ΙΙ (30 π.μ.)
GRS Research ΙΙΙ (30 π.μ.)
GRS Research IV (30 π.μ.)
GRS 895 Dissertation Writing Ι (30 π.μ.)
GRS 896 Dissertation Writing ΙΙ (30 π.μ.)
CONTACT DETAILS
Mary Koutselini
___________________________________________________________________________
Dr Mary Koutselini
Professor
Curriculum and Instruction
Chairperson
Department of Education
Chair holder of the UNESCO chair
In Gender Equality and Women’ s Empowerment
University of Cyprus
P.O.Box 20537
Nicosia 1678, Cyprus
+357 22 892959
+357 22 892942
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+357 22 892958
+357 22318269 (fax)
edmaryk@ucy.ac.cy
http://www.ucy.ac.cy/goto/scienceed
http://www.ucy.ac.cy/goto/unesco
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