About MA Transnational Queer Feminist Politics With Special Reference To The Middle East in SOAS University of London

The MA Transnational Queer Feminist Politics (Middle East Pathway) at SOAS is a unique programme, its principal aim being to re-focus issues prioritised in western Gender Studies and Queer Studies on the complex specificities of Asia, Africa and the Near and Middle East. The programme offers the specialised study of gender and sexuality in relation to the cultures of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, together with rigorous training in, and questioning of, contemporary gender and queer theory. In terms of gender theory, it offers a solid foundation with sufficient breadth and depth to facilitate a range of specialist pathways. In terms of specialisation, it draws on the expertise of internationally recognised scholars of Asian, African and Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS. This pathway will apply the theoretical and methodological frameworks described above to the study of the Middle East. Core modules examine how gender and sexuality are lived and negotiated in the Middle East, with a particular emphasis on the ways in which people in or from the region grapple with how to live a non- or anti-normative life. Importantly, it approaches the Middle East as a transnational rather than bounded space – one to which and from which discourses, people and commodities move – and thinks through what this might mean for the study of gender and sexuality in the region.  

In terms of gender and queer theory, it offers a solid foundation with sufficient breadth and depth to facilitate a range of specialist pathways. In terms of specialisation, it draws on the expertise of internationally recognised scholars of Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS.