Violence, Gender and Resistance
in West Asia
Olimpiada Usanova, Saida Sirazhudinova
Overview
Gender-based violence constitutes a structural and persistent form of inequality that shapes social relations, legal systems, and political responses across different societies. In West Asian countries, gender-based violence intersects with authoritarian governance, armed conflict, migration, and deeply rooted patriarchal norms, producing specific patterns of vulnerability as well as resistance.
This course examines gender-based violence in West Asia through feminist and queer perspectives, with a particular focus on physical, sexualized, economic, and psychological violence against women, children, and queer individuals. Special attention is paid to domestic violence, femicide, so-called “honour” killings, female genital mutilation, violence in conflict settings, and violence affecting displaced and migrant populations.
The course combines comparative regional analysis (Northern Caucasus, Southern Caucasus, and Iran) with an exploration of legal frameworks, social practices, and forms of resistance. It critically engages with activism, women’s initiatives, and survival strategies such as migration and evacuation, highlighting how individuals and communities contest violence and create alternative spaces of agency.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- Identify and critically analyse different forms of gender-based violence in West Asian contexts using feminist and queer theoretical approaches;
- Understand how gender-based violence is shaped by legal systems, political regimes, armed conflict, and migration processes;
- Compare manifestations of violence across different countries and social contexts within the region;
- Assess the role of activism, women’s movements, and queer initiatives in resisting and challenging violence;
- Develop skills in critical reading, comparative analysis, academic discussion, and written argumentation related to gender and violence.
Course Outline
You can see and download the course syllabus below.
Instructors
Olimpiada Usanova
Olimpiada Usanova is a scholar, lawyer, and human rights advocate specializing in human rights, gender discrimination, the protection of women’s rights, and the prevention of gender-based violence. She has worked both in her home country, Russia, and internationally. She was a research fellow at Dickinson Law, Pennsylvania State University (2016–2017), at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC (2019–2020), and at the Women’s Human Rights Training Institute in Bulgaria (2020–2022).
Olimpiada is the author of the monograph Individual Law Enforcement: Transformation of Understanding Rights and Status of the Individual (in Russian), as well as numerous academic articles on the protection of women’s rights against gender discrimination and on human rights theory.
She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Marie Jahoda Center for International Gender Studies (MaJaC) at Ruhr University Bochum (Germany). Her research focuses on human rights, gender discrimination, and gender-based violence (with a particular emphasis on femicide), especially in the context of authoritarian systems.
Saida Sirazhudinova
Saida Sirazhudinova is a Russian sociologist, political scientist, and legal scholar based in France. She defended her doctoral dissertation in Political Sciences on “The Formation of the Foundations of Civil Society in the Traditionalist Conditions of the North Caucasus” (2011). Her research focuses on gender, femicide, domestic violence, masculinity cultures, civil society, Islam, and migration. She teaches courses on the history of ideology, conflict studies, philosophy, sociology, theory and history of civil society, gender sociology, sociology of terrorism, and sociology of literature, among others. She has led research projects on women’s activism and the role of women in Islam, conducting fieldwork on gendered violence in the North Caucasus, including analyses of “honor killings” and female genital mutilation. In France, she founded the initiative to support women directly.
Certification
This course is hosted by Marburg University, Center for Conflict Studies and certified with 6 ECTS upon successful completion.
Please check the course requirements from the course syllabus and inform your instructor(s) about your request to receive a certificate for this course.
You will find the full syllabus on Moodle course page.
At the end of the semester, the instructors will inform the learning designer about your request and grade. The certificate will be prepared with the university secretariat and it may take up to 8 weeks.
Registration
Our courses are held on a digital learning platform, Moodle. Before you create your account on Moodle, we have some notes for your and others’ digital security.
- When you register, you can use a nickname. Nicknames with offensive, racist or sexist undertones will not be accepted.
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- We aim to create an inclusive learning environment with our participants and educate ourselves in a more inclusive language. Be eager and tolerant to learn from each other and challenge any discriminating language. You can have a look at it here.
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Course Details
Duration
17.04.26 – 17.07.26
Time
Fridays, 14:00 CET
Credits
6 ECTS
Language
English
Host Institution
Marburg University, Center for Conflict Studies
Registration:
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