IGS 745Gender and Development

The course introduces students to the history of development, its underlying assumptions, and its range of supporters and critics. It considers the various meanings given to development by women and men, not just as aid beneficiaries and/or locals of far-flung regions but also as development and humanitarian aid workers, policy makers and government officials. In exploring how development projects and policies unfold, and how they are appropriated, experienced and contested in daily life in urban and rural areas of the developing world, with particular attention to the Arab region, the course inquires about the underlying political, economic, social, and gender dynamics that make development and humanitarian aid contentious.