Women’s and Gender Studies 11
Fall Semester 2007
THE CROSS-CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER
Professor Kristin Bumiller
Departments of Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies
Cooper House 308 (Office Hours: Wednesday 10-Noon)
E-mail: kbumiller@amherst.edu
Professor Martha Saxton
Departments of History and Women’s and Gender Studies
Chapin Hall 111 (Office Hours: Tuesday 1-3)
E-mail: msaxton@amherst.edu
Description: This course introduces students to the social and historical construction of gender and gender roles from a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective. We study gender through a variety of genres: social science studies, novels, historical analysis, and political treatises. This semester we will focus on the impact of political economy on women and gender relations. We begin by considering how early conceptions of “feminism” were a response to and critique of liberalism and colonialism. We then look at the historical changes in the family, economy and society and their impact on the transformation of the role of women and gender relations. The rest of the semester is devoted to understanding how the global rise of neoliberalism has led to a new understanding of the feminist project and set the stage for many of the challenges and opportunities we face in the twentieth-first century.
Requirements: Students are expected to complete the readings before each class and come prepared to discuss them. Participation is integral to the class and will be considered in the final grade. The assignments will include two papers and a final exam.
Books Available for Purchase:
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions
Slavenka Drakulic, S.: A Novel About the Balkans
Assia Djebar, Fantasia
Vivian Gornick, The Solitude of Self
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Melissa Wright, Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism
Readings:
INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE
Tuesday, September 4
CONTEMPORARY GENDER POLITICS: POSTFEMINISM
Thursday, September 6
Mary Douglas Vavrus, “Opting Out Moms in the News: Selling New Traditionalism in the New Millennium,” Feminist Media Studies 7:1 (2007), pp. 47-60. (handout)
Rosalind Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility,” European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10:2 (2007), pp. 147-166. (handout)
FEMINISM CROSSING CULTURES
Tuesday, September 11
Uma Narayan, “Cross‑Cultural Connections, Border Crossing, and ‘Death by Culture,” in (1997) Dislocating Cultures, New York: Routledge, Chapter 3, pp. 83‑117. (e-reserve)
THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION AND GENDER DIFFERENCE
Thursday, September 13
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (1979), Emile or On Education, U.S.: Basic Books, pp. 78-93, 357-406. (e-reserve)
Kathleen M. Brown, (1996) Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs, pp. 107-136. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. (e-reserve)
FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM
Tuesday, September 18
Carole Pateman, (1988) The Sexual Contract, pp. 77-153. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (e-reserve)
Patricia Williams, (1991) The Alchemy of Race and Rights, “On Being the Object of Property,” pp. 216-236, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (e-reserve)
VICTORIAN WOMANHOOD
Thursday, September 20
Nancy F. Cott, “Passionlessness: An Interpretation of Victorian Sexual Ideology, 1790-1850,” Signs 4:2 (1978), pp. 219-236. (e-reserve)
Harriet Jacobs, (1987) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Chapters 1-7, 10-11, pp.5-42, 53-62. (e-reserve)
Anne McClintock, (1995) Imperial Leather, pp. 207-231. New York: Routledge.
(e-reserve)
EQUALITY FEMINISM
Tuesday, September 25
Vivian Gornick, The Solitude of Self. (P)
BOURGEOIS FEMINISM
Thursday, September 27
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own. (P)
WOMEN AND COLONIALISM
Tuesday, October 2
Assia Djebar, Fantasia. (P)
Thursday, October 4
FALL BREAK
MODERN FEMINISM
Thursday, October 11
Simone de Beauvoir, (1974) The Second Sex, pp. xv-xxxiv. New York: Vintage Books.
(course packet)
Ruth Rosen, (2001) The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America, pp. 94-260. New York: Penguin Books. (course packet)
WOMEN AND THE MODERN STATE
Tuesday, October 16
Linda Gordon, “Black and White Visions of Welfare: Women’s Welfare Activism, 1890-1945”, The Journal of American History, 78:2, (Sep., 1991), pp. 559-590. (course packet)
Marianne Ferber and Julia A. Nelson, (2003) Feminist Economics Today: Beyond Economic Man, pp. 1-31, 115-133. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. (course packet)
Rebecca Dingo, “Securing the Nation: NeoLiberalism’s U.S. Family Values in a Transnational Gendered Economy,” Journal of Women’s History, 16:3, 2004, pp. 173-186. (course packet)
FEMINISM AND NEOLIBERALISM
Thursday, October 18
Wendy Brown, “Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy,” Theory and Event 7:1 (2003). (course packet)
Lisa Duggan, (2003) The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy, Boston: Beacon Press, pp. ix-xx, 43-66. (course packet)
Kristin Bumiller, In an Abusive State, Chapter 1. (course packet)
GENDER AND GLOBAL POVERTY
Tuesday, October 23
Nancy Scheper Hughes, (1992) Death Without Weeping, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, Chapter 8, pp. 340-399. (course packet)
GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT
Thursday, October 25
Pradeep Panda and Bina Agarwal, “Marital Violence, Human Development and Women’s Property Status in India,” World Development 33:5 (2005), pp. 823-850.
(course packet)
Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild eds., (2002) Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy, pp. 1-13, 85-103, 115-141. New York: Henry Holt and Company. (course packet)
WOMEN IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY
Tuesday, October 30
Melissa W. Wright, Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism. (P)
Thursday, November 1
Melissa W. Wright, Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism. (P)
Constanza Tobio and Magdalena Diaz Gorfinkiel, “The Work-Life Balance I—new gendered relationships in Spain: ‘the other’ in the care triangle,” International Journal of Iberian Studies, 2007, 20:1, pp. 41-63. (course packet)
CONSUMPTION SOCIETY
Tuesday, November 6
Zygmunt Bauman, (2007) Consuming Life, pp. 117-150. Cambridge: Polity Press.
(course packet)
Susan Porter Benson,“Consumer Cultures,” ed. Nancy Hewitt, (2002) A Companion to Women’s History, pp. 274-294. UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. (course packet)
Juliet B Schor, (2004), Born to Buy, pp. 9-37, New York: Scribner. (course packet)
BIOPOLITICS
Thursday, November 8
Nikolas Rose, (2007) The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century, pp. 9-40, Princeton University Press. (course packet)
Deborah Heath, Rayna Rapp and Karen-Sue Taussig, “Genetic Citizenship,” in David Nugent and Joan Vincent, eds., A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics, (2004), pp. 152-167, Blackwell Publishing Ltd. (M) (course packet)
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, “Designer Babies and the Pro-Choice Movement,” Dissent, Summer 2007, pp. 37-43. New York: Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc. (course packet)
Tuesday, November 13
Donna J. Haraway, “Fetus: the Virtual Speculum in the New World Order,” in (1997) Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse, pp. 173-212. (M) New York: Routledge. (course packet)
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, “Is Biopiracy an Issue for Feminists in the Philippines?” Signs, (Winter 2007), 32:2, pp. 332-336. (course packet)
GENDER AND GENTRIFICATION
Thursday, November 15
Caitlin Cahill, “At Risk? The Fed Up Honeys Re-Present the Gentrification of the Lower East Side,” Women’s Studies Quarterly, Spring/Summer 2006. (course packet)
Trip to “DARE” in Providence, RI
POSTCOLONIALISM
Tuesday, November 27
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions (P)
GENDER AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Thursday, November 29
Bina Agarwal, (October 2002) “Gender Inequality, Cooperation and Environmental Sustainability,” in Jean-Marie Baland, Pranab Bardhan, and Samuel Bowles eds. (2007) Inequality, Cooperation, and Environmental Sustainability, Princeton University Press, Chapter 11, pp.274-313. (course packet)
Wangari Muta Maathai, (2006) Unbowed, pp. 119-205. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
(course packet
South End Press Collective, (2007) What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race and the State of the Nation, pp. 133-166. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. (course packet)
GENDER AND WAR
Tuesday, December 4
Slavenka Drakulic, S.: A Novel about the Balkans (P)
HUMAN RIGHTS
Thursday, December 6
Debra L. DeLaet, (2006) The Global Struggle for Human Rights, 119-133. Belmont, California: Thomson Wadsworth. (course packet)
Catharine MacKinnon, Are Women Human? and other international dialogues (2006), pp. 237-278, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. (course packet)
Film: Born into Brothels
“The Crushing Burden of Rape: Sexual Violence in Darfur,” A briefing paper by Medecins Sans Frontieres, International Women’s Day, March 8, 2005. (course packet)
FEMINISM AND A CULTURE OF CONTROL
Tuesday, December 11
Indepal Grewel, “Security Moms in the Early Twentieth Century United States: The Gender of Security in Neoliberalism,” Women’s Studies Quarterly, Spring/Summer 2006. (course packet)
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Pierce the Future for Hope: Mothers and Prisoners in the Post-Keynesian California Landscape,” in Julia Sudbury, Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex, (2005), New York: Routledge, pp. 231-253.
(course packet)