- Brief Outline
- Course Title: Introduction to Gender and Violence
- Course Instructor: Dr. Amit Anand, Assistant Professor, School of Legal Studies, REVA University, Bengaluru
- Course Level: Undergraduate and Postgraduate Students
- Course Duration: 20 hours
- Start Date: July 1, 2022
- Course Content: Refer to Annexure I
- Course Fee: INR 2500
- Course Summary
This course provides a foundation for thinking about how we approach gender and violence from a theoretical perspective, where gender is understood as it intersects with categories such as race, class, caste, ethnicity, sexuality, age. Understanding gender as constitutive of how we think about violence, this course explores how violence particularly against women occurs across in different societies, its manifestation on a societal scale and the effects it has on women.
- Course Aim
This course aims to examine the complex, multifaceted and global phenomenon of gender based violence. This course explores different theoretical and conceptual approaches to violence from an explicitly socio-legal standpoint, drawing and building on gendered and intersectional experiences of women in the context of violence against women. It is particularly concerned with the intersections between violence and gender, where gender is understood as it intersects with categories such as race, class, caste, ethnicity, sexuality, age. Bearing in mind that gendered violence has a long history, and is often justified in most patriarchal cultures, this course will focus on the following questions: Is there a sociological dimension to understanding violence against women? What structural conditions give rise to violence against women? What are the implications of inequality, discrimination, and violence on the rights of women and finally, How far is the existing legal framework both at the domestic and international level equipped in combating violence against women?
- Course Learning Outcomes
After successfully completing this course the students should:
- Be able to demonstrate a critical, nuanced understanding of gender based violence against women from an intersectional perspective.
- Be attuned to the nexus of State, society, social-cultural norms and most importantly the reasons that give rise to varied forms of violence against women.
- Be able to successfully apply theoretical and conceptual approaches to violence and gender to real-world examples, testing the limits of these approaches.
- About the Course Instructor
Dr. Amit Anand is an Assistant Professor at School of Legal Studies, REVA University, Bengaluru. He has passed his PhD (Law) from Lancaster University, U.K. on the topic ‘Unheard and Unnoticed: Violence Against Women in India (A Study of Practice of Witch-hunting, Honour Killing and Devadasi System)’. He holds LL.M (Human Rights) from the University of Reading, U.K. and B.A.LL.B. (Honours.) from National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. He has presented two oral statements to separate United Nations Treaty Bodies in 2021. The first statement was presented before the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the second statement was presented to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. His joint submission on ‘Measures to Prevent Sexual Abuse of Children in Residential Care Homes in India’ to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), September 2021 has also been cited by the UNCRC in its Children’s Rights and Alternative Care – Background Document.
- Mode of fee payment
Account Name: REVA UNIVERSITY
Bank Name: THE KARNATAKA BANK LTD
Account Number: 6662000100000901
Branch: REVA University Branch, Bengaluru
IFSC: KARB0000666
Registration link: https://forms.gle/sPsvbfa3wiAvz9re9
For any queries contact: amit.anand@reva.edu.in
Annexure – I
- Introduction to the course – why look at gender and violence? This lecture will provide an introduction to the course and examine some key ideas on gender and violence. A key question posed will be why gender is important for the study of violence and why gender based violence matters.
- Theorizing gender and violence – This lecture explores different understandings of gender and violence through varied theoretical concepts which conceptualize violence as fundamentally gendered and related to how societies are structured. The different theoretical concepts will help in the understanding of how power and control (within the context of violence) are overwhelmingly associated with men and masculinities.
- Women and the law – This lecture provides a brief overview and analysis of the existing international human rights law mechanisms in relation to protecting women from gender based violence.
- Violence against women in contemporary India – This lecture provides a brief overview of some of the current experiences and challenges faced by women in contemporary India in the context of violence against women. The focus particularly will be on the following current challenges: a.) sexual violence within the context of marriage through the offence of marital rape, b.) the problem of under-reporting of crimes against women and c.) the adverse impact of sexual violence on the reproductive health of women.
- ‘Culture’, ‘honour’ and gender – This lecture examines debates on the harmful practice of honour-based violence. It also considers how this practice has been explained within policy and practice.
- Mapping gender based violence through witchcraft accusations – This lecture provides a brief overview of the contemporary belief in witchcraft by focussing on how witchcraft accusations and persecutions are often used to suppress and dominate women, in order to preserve patriarchal norms.
- War, conflict and gendered violence – This lecture explores the interrelations between gender and war from a critical gender perspective.
- Female perpetrated sexual violence – This lecture discusses questions of power circulating within notions of sexual violence by utilising current research on recognizing ‘forced to penetrate’ cases as rape in the United Kingdom. It will do so by examining different circumstances in which sexual violence and harassment might occur against young male adults by female perpetrators and how this interacts with the conventional understanding of male power or ‘maleness’.