Thursdays 5:00-7:00 PM
September 21, 2023 - October 19, 2023
Application Deadline: September 15, 2023
This microseminar will be offered in person on the Boston University campus.
Feminist scholars of International Relations (Sjoberg, MacKenzie, McEvoy and Mazurana) were some of the first academics to take seriously the impact of politically violent women (PV) women (and men) in global politics. Over time, scholars sought to further complicate our thinking about violent women and men by looking beyond gender binaries in their analysis and reframe their own analyses “intersectionally” (Crenshaw 1989).
This short, discussion-based course will begin with a conversation about the value that intersectionality - as a lens and a methodology - can bring to our work. With these new understandings, the course will draw upon film, podcasts, archival data, newspapers, class visits and attendance at an international conference on Northern Ireland (at BU), to explore depictions of PV women (and men) in three different contexts: Sri Lanka/Tamil Tigers, Northern Ireland/Loyalist Women and the U.S./Femcels & Incels. The course concludes by asking the question “In what ways are our understandings of PV people enhanced by using intersectional techniques?”
Faculty
Sandra McEvoy is a Clinical Associate Professor of Political Science and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Boston University. McEvoy’s primary research interests include the dynamics of political change including women’s participation in political violence; and gender-focused strategies that incorporate perpetrators of political violence into long-term conflict resolution strategies. She has written extensively on the Northern Irish conflict including, the gendered motivations for women's participation in political violence and the impact that such participation has on notions of men and masculinity. McEvoy’s secondary area of interest explores the vulnerabilities of LGBT+ populations during conflict and natural disasters. Her current project is as coeditor of The Oxford Handbook on Global LGBT Politics (expected fall 2019). The Handbook is one of the earliest collections that uses sexuality as a critical lens through which to understand global politics.