About MA Gender Studies (middle East Pathway) in SOAS University of London

The MA Gender Studies (Middle East Pathway) critically examines popular discourses on gender and sexuality in the Middle East and provides an alternative approach to the study of gender and sexual norms in this misunderstood and much maligned region.

It draws on the compelling field of Middle East gender and sexuality studies to introduce nuanced historical and contemporary explorations of gender and sexual dynamics in the region. More than just learning to ‘represent’ the Middle East, students will be encouraged to see it as a zone of theoretical production as well.

This programme encourages a move away from essentialist and culturalist understandings of the Middle East and towards an exploration of the  conditions of possibility for the ways of being and living associated with the region. It centres the agency of actors on the ground,  drawing on their voices as a means of challenging the centrality of the Western canon.