S1015 Gender, Space and Everyday Life in the City

Cities in the globalised world have become meeting places for multiplicity of cultures, economies, political regimes and social constructions in which the notions of femininities and masculinities and of the roles of women and men in society changes constantly. In such dynamic times traditional notions of citizenship, planning, development, urban spaces are constantly changing. The purpose of this course is to introduce new understandings and explanations of some of the current changes taken place in cities of today, in an era of political and economic restructuring.
In addition, the course will examine the relationships between gender relations and everyday life in the city. It focuses on the extent to which gendered roles and power relations affect women and men\'s use and perception of urban spaces and their everyday life in the city. To do so, tThe course will focus on the intricacies between gender planning and development, the right to the gendered city, emotions in the city and cultural and social gendered construction of space.
The course consists of two parts:
Part I: The introduction of concepts and theories which link the understanding of space with social relations especially gender relations. We will focus on concepts such as : power, discourse, social construction, representation and identity and their connection to gender studies. In addition we will use theories like: Marxsim, and Dual System theory to explain gender inequalities. We will also use the Lefebvrian notions of space and his conceptualization of the right to the city in order to deepen the discussion on the right to the gendered city.
Part II: Deals with specific topics related to gender relations in the city. We will focus on the following issues:\r\n

- The Epistemological Development of Feminist Geographies
This part deals with the development of academic knowledge in feminist geography. It will highlights the major developments in this field beginning in the 70\'s until today.
- Gendered Belonging and Memory in the City
This part introduces the notion of \'emotional geographies\' and the research done on expressions of emotions and everyday life. We will discuss in particular the notions of comfort and belonging. This part is based on an extensive research in Jerusalem and London.
- Gendered and Cultural Constructions of Urban Space
This part focuses on the extent to which social divisions of private and public transform into gendered power divisions of permitted and forbidden and how cultural norms affect women\'s everyday life in the city. We will discuss specific example from Israel such as the Bedouin women and Ultra Orthodox neighborhoods in Jerusalem together with examples from other cities in the world (and examples from the cities where the course students live).
- The Right to the Gendered City
In this part we will discuss the feminist critique on the Lefebvrian notion of the right to the city which is one of the basic theoretical foundation of the research on everyday life. We will base this critique on everyday situations in the city where the right to the city is violated on a gendered base.
- Citadenship (city citizenship) and Gay Communities in the City
This part will introduce a research carried out in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem which focuses on the notion of citadenship and the everyday life of gay communities in the two cities.
- Resistance and Everyday Life
The notion of resistance is highly researched and criticized lately, of the over use and over interpretation of everyday practices as resistance. In this part we will discuss this critique and will introduce new terminologies of resistance (bayat)
- CT Maps – Cognitive Methodologies of Everyday Life
In this part we will learn a new methodology of understanding the use and perception of space in the everyday entitled CT Maps. I will introduce the methodology and we will experience its use (Fenster, 2010)/

\r\nRequired preliminary knowledge – none