'You Will Love Every Minute': Reflecting on the First Year of Applied Gender Studies at the University of Strathclyde

Written By Melody House, MSc Applied Gender Studies 2018-19  

(with help from classmates Ross McNeilage, Kat Schütz, Rebecca Dickson,  Katie Fannin, Amanda Stanley and Nikki Chung)

On the 20^th of September last year, I sat nervously outside Graham Hills 222. I was waiting for our first class in the Applied Gender Studies Masters course to begin. I had no idea what to expect. My head was full of all the usual fears and feelings of self-doubt: What if I say something stupid? What if I do not understand anything? What if I cannot do this? Now, one year later, I am writing this blog as the new Gender Studies students pile into their stuffy classroom - probably just as nervous.

I have been thinking about what I would have liked to hear that day, had I had the opportunity to talk to someone who had taken the course. So, I have written this blog to try an answer some of those questions. I decided to collaborate with my classmates on this, in order to make it as comprehensive as possible. What follows is a reflection of our experiences of the course, and some advice to this year’s students.

The Interdisciplinary Nature of Gender Studies

One of our first misconceptions about the course was that it would be purely sociological. As such, a number of us felt a bit out of place having come from very different academic backgrounds. However, you will soon realise that Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary degree, and this is what makes it so exciting to study. One only needs to read the synopsis of Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women to see that almost everything is gendered, and just how important it is to interrogate that. One of the first tasks you will be set is keeping a sex/gender diary, which is a great exercise in realising how gendered our world truly is. No matter your discipline - film, geography, economics, law, software sciences, sport, biology, history, media, politics - you are sure to find a gendered angle of analysis. You will start to realise just how subjective our knowledge, and our knowledge production, actually is. So much of what we know, and what we take as ‘objective fact’, is based on an often biased and one-sided perspective. This course allows you to see and understand the world in a completely different way. It can be intimidating, and at times frustrating. However, it also feels revolutionary.

The Diverse Options for Classes

One of the most difficult elements of this course is choosing your classes. Besides the three core classes, there are eight others to choose from. These will give you the opportunity to either further your knowledge in a topic in which you are already well versed, or learn something completely new. I had never studied History before, but found the Gender, Health & Modern Medicine course with Dr Laura Kelly completely fascinating. Ross had a similar experience with Global Queers: Travel Writing & Sexual Politics. As he says, it was one of the best classes he has ever taken and Dr Churnjeet Mahn is incredible.   Kat felt the same way about Dr Catherine Eschle and her class, Feminism & International Relations. She describes it as, ‘an eye-opening reframing of what I thought international relations meant and how gender impacts (international) politics and developments across all levels and our own lives’. Rebecca loved Professor Kirstie Blair’s Transcultural Fandom and British Popular Culture class, writing, ‘I really enjoyed looking at how gender is situated in fanfiction and fandoms’. She also got to satiate a personal goal of finally watching ‘the first Lord of the Rings film in its entirety’. There are so many great options. If you are struggling to choose, ask to be allowed to audit an additional class – to go along for the discussion without having to do the written work.

Images from Katie’s exhibition at Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL), 2019. ‘Women’s Words: Celebrate, Protest, Support'.

The other classes we enjoyed were Advanced Reading in Gender Studies, which gives you the chance of working one-on-one with a supervisor on a topic of your choosing, and the Gender Studies Research Placement. The latter is a great option for anyone who wants to get some practical experience in applying your skills developed through the course to a research project with a placement organisation. It is also an opportunity to do something quite creative. Katie was placed with the Glasgow Women’s Library and ended up curating an exhibition for them that focused on the diverse and beautiful writing by women in the Library’s archives. Amanda was also placed with the Library. For her placement, she assisted in the research and development of the Library’s fantastic Stridewith Pride Heritage Trail.

The Stride With Pride Heritage Trail pamphlet cover, GWL

Take Advantage of the Resources

There are so many fantastic resources at your disposal with this degree. The Feminist Research Network organises seminars by guest lecturers every few weeks, and they also run a blog to which students are encouraged to submit their class work (click here to read the first in a series of our blog posts from earlier this year). There is also a feminist reading group at Strathclyde, which will help you discover new texts and engage with some of the PhD students, and there is a Royal Literary Fund fellow you can visit to help improve your academic writing. There are plenty of events going on all the time, hosted by organisations such as Gender Equal Media Scotland, and Engender. Attending these events is a great way of meeting new people and, as Nikki notes, a way of taking your mind off some of the stress of assignments. Of course, there is also Glasgow Women’s Library (mentioned above), which you will get to access in some of your classes. Make sure you take advantage of this, as Rebecca writes, ‘it was a real honour and privilege to be able to access and work with a number of items from the archives when discussing the work feminism in all of its forms has done, continues to do, and needs to do in the future’.

Overall, this course has been an incredible experience. We have learnt so much, and we all feel eternally grateful to Professor Karen Boyle, who has created such a fantastic and exciting degree for us all. If you are that nervous student, sitting outside your class, unsure of what to expect: Relax! Applied Gender Studies is an inclusive, challenging, and intellectually exciting course. We know you will love every minute of it.

Follow @StrathGender to get updates on the Applied Gender Studies Masters programme at Strathclyde.