FSEM 146   Feminist Security Studies

Faculty Profile for Professor Thomson

Feminist Security Studies is a Peace and Conflict Studies (PCON) course about the relationships between women and wars: the impacts wars have on women, the ways women participate in wars, the varying political stances women take toward war, and the ways in which women work to build peace. Peace and Conflict Studies examines mass violence, such as war, genocide and ethnic cleansing, from the perspective of those who survive it, to learn of ways to avoid or interrupt instances of mass violence. Our course focuses on contemporary academic debates on peace, conflict and security through the lens of critical feminist security literatures.Students learn how to identify the global and local systems that perpetuate mass violence to examine how gendered norms, identities and assumptions shape processes of peace and security. Students read approximately 40 pages a week; and learn how to read like a scholar. Students who successfully complete this course receive credit for PCON 260 and satisfy the confronting collective challenges liberal arts practice requirement.

Susan Thomson is in her 11th year at Colgate, teaching courses in lived experiences of violence and war, research methodologies and feminist practice. Before becoming a professor, Professor Thomson worked as a human rights lawyer in the international system, at the Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Her research focuses on state-society relations in Africa, particularly in Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa. She also writes about the ethics of fieldwork with violence-affected and marginalized communities. She also directs the University of Cape Town study group (on human rights in South Africa) and an extended study to Namibia (to study colonial legacies of genocide). She loves Flour & Salt donuts and weekend trips to her native Canada!