Feminist Theory
WAGS 200
Fall 2011
Chapin 103
Krupa Shandilya
30E Johnson Chapel
x5464
Office hours: Mon. &Wed.:10am-11am
Course Description:
In this course we will investigate contemporary feminist thought from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. We will focus on key issues in feminist theory such as the sex/gender debate, sexual desire and the body, the political economy of gender, the creation of the “queer” as subject, and the construction of masculinity among others. This course aims also to think through the ways in which these concerns intersect with issues of race, class, the environment and the nation. Texts include feminist philosopher Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, anthropologist Kamala Visweswaran’s Fictions of Feminist Ethnography and feminist economist Bina Agarwal’s The Structure of Patriarchy.
Course Materials:
Books for purchase are marked P on the syllabus and can be found at Amherst Books, 8 Main Street, 413.256.1547. All Other Required Readings for this course can be found on E-Reserve (E).
Required Texts:
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace, Penguin Books: 2000
Shani Motoo, Cereus Blooms at Night, Grove Press: 2009
Anais Nin, Little Birds, Mariner Books: 2004
Patricia Powell, A Small Gathering of Bones, Beacon Press: 2003 (Available only through the WAGS department, 14 Grosvenor House. $14)
Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Tribeca Books: 2011
Carole McCann, Seung-Kyung Kim (ed.), Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives, Routledge: 2009
Films are marked (F). We will be discussing the following films over the course of the semester:
Madhur Bhandarkar, Fashion (2008)
Jane Campion, The Piano (1993)
Madhur Bhandarkar, Chandni Bar (2001)
Claire Denis, White Material (2010)
Course Requirements
1. I expect you to attend class regularly and inform me by email if you miss a class.
2. Read the readings before class, not during or after class or right before the papers are due.
3. There will be three papers. The approximate weighting is as follows:
Paper 1: (4-5 pages) 20% of base grade
Paper 2: (4-5pages) 25% of base grade
Paper 3: (6-7 pages) 30% of base grade
Speaker Report : (4-5 pages) 10%
Class Attendance: 15%
Due dates for Papers: Paper 1: Friday Oct. 13th
Paper 2: Friday Nov. 11th
Speaker Report: Friday Dec. 2nd
Paper 3: Friday Dec. 16th
WEEK 1
Wed. Sept. 7th
Introduction
WEEK 2:
FEMINIST THEORIES?
Mon. Sept. 12th: Feminisms
Uma Narayan, “The Project of Feminist Epistemology: Perspective from a Nonwestern Feminist” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Feminist Encounters: Locating the Politics of Experience” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives (P)
Wed. Sept 14th: Why Theory?
bell hooks, “Theory as Liberatory Practice” Yale Journal of Law & Feminism 4:1, 1991-1992.
Maria C. Lugones and Elizabeth V. Spelman, “Have We Got a Theory for You!” Women's Studies International Forum, 1983
WEEK 3
THE CATEGORY OF ANALYSES: THE SEX/GENDER DEBATE
Mon. Sept. 19th: The Category of Woman
Sandra Harding, “The Instability of the Analytical Categories of Feminist Theory” Signs
Vol. 11, No. 4 (Summer, 1986), pp. 645-664
Donna Haraway “Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives
Shani Motoo, Cereus Blooms at Night (P) Chapters 1-6
Wed. Sept 21st: Being a Woman/Becoming a Woman
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Chapter 1, Vintage: 1989.
Shani Motoo, Cereus Blooms at Night Chapters 7-11
WEEK 4
Mon. Sept.26th: Between Woman and Man
Shani Motoo, Cereus Blooms at Night Chapters 12-19
Judith Butler, “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex”
Yale French Studies No. 72, Simone de Beauvoir: Witness to a Century (1986), pp. 35-49
Christine Delphy, “Rethinking Sex and Gender” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives
DESIRE: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FEMINISM
Wed. Sept. 28th: Sexuality
Sigmund Freud, “Female Sexuality” Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, Touchstone: 1997, 184-201.
Franz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, Grove Pres: 2008, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3
WEEK 5
Mon. Oct. 3rd: Writing Desire: L’ecriture Feminine
Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa” Signs, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Summer, 1976), pp. 875-893
Luce Irigary, “When Our Lips Speak Together” Signs, Vol. 6, No. 1, Women: Sex and Sexuality, Part 2 (Autumn, 1980), pp. 69-79
Anais Nin, Little Birds (P) (selections)
Wed. Oct. 5th: The Gaze and Desire
Laura Mulvey “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Feminist film Theory (ed.) Susan Thornham, pp. 58-69.
Vanita Reddy, “The Nationalization of the Global Indian Woman: Geographies of Beauty in Femina” South Asian Popular Culture Volume 4, Issue 1 April 2006, pp. 61-85.
Madhur Bhandarkar, Fashion (film)
WEEK 6
Mon Oct. 10th: FALL BREAK
Wed. Oct. 12th: Desire and Power
Ranjana Khanna, “The Ethical Ambiguities of Transnational Feminisms” Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism, Duke University Press Books: 2003, 207-230
Jane Campion, The Piano (1993) (film)
Friday Oct. 13th: Paper 1 Due
WEEK 7
THE BODY: POST-STRUCURALISM, BIOPOWER AND FEMINISM
Mon. Oct. 17th: Biopower
Michel Foucault, “The Body of the Condemned” Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Vintage: 1995, pp. 3-31
Michel Foucault, “We ‘Other Victorians’” History of Sexuality: Vol. 1, Vintage: 1990, pp. 1-14
Wed. Oct. 19th: Bodies and Power
Judith Butler, “Bodies and Power Revisited” Feminism and the final Foucault (ed.) Dianna Taylor, Karen Vintges, University of Illinois Press: 2004, pp. 183-196
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (P) Chapters 1-6
WEEK 8
Mon. Oct. 24th: Politics of the Body I
Susan Bordo, “Feminism Foucault and the Politics of the Body” Feminist theory and the body: A Reader, (ed.) Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick, Routledge: 1999, pp. 246-257
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace, Chapters 7-20
Wed. Oct. 26th : Politics of the Body II
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace, Chapters 21-23
Lucy Valerie Graham, “Reading the Unspeakable: Rape in J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace”
Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Jun., 2003), pp. 433-444
Elleke Boehmer, “Not Saying Sorry, Not Speaking Pain: Gender Implications in Disgrace” Interventions: international journal of postcolonial studies, Volume 4, Number 3, 1 November 2002 , pp. 342-351
WEEK 9
GENDER AND LABOUR: MARXISM, SOCIALISM AND FEMINISM
Mon. Oct. 31st: Marx and Feminism
Friedrich Engels, “Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State,” The Essential Feminist Reader (ed.) Estelle Freedman, Modern Library: 2007, 104-11.
Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (P)
Heidi Hartmann, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives
Wed. Nov. 2nd: The Gendered Division of Labour
Bina Agarwal, “Bargaining and Gender Relations: Within and Beyond the Household” Feminist Economics, 1997, vol. 3, issue 1, pp. 1-51
Heidi I. Hartmann, “The Family as the Locus of Gender, Class, and Political Struggle: The Example of Housework” Signs, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring, 1981), pp. 366-394
WEEK 10
Mon. Nov. 7th: The Political Economy of Gender
Iris Young, “Socialist Feminism and The Limits Of Dual System Theory” Socialist Review 10.2-3 (1980), 169-188.
Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex” in Rayna Reiter, ed., Toward an Anthropology of Women, 157-210.
Madhur Bhandarkar, Chandni Bar (2001) (film)
Wed. Nov. 9th: Theorizing Women’s Labour
Gayatri Spivak, “Introduction”, Breast Stories Seagull Books: 1997
Mahasveta Devi, “The Breast Giver” Breast Stories, Seagull Books: 1997
Friday Nov. 11th: Paper 2 due
WEEK 11
RACE AND NATION: CRITICAL RACE THEORY, POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND FEMINISM
Mon. Nov. 14th: Race as a Critical Category for Feminist Thought
Uttal, Lynet. "Inclusion Without Influence: The Continuing Tokenism of Women of
Color," in Gloria Anzaldúa, ed., Making Face, Making Soul/ Haciendo Caras:
Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color, pp. 42-45.
Grillo, Trina and Stephanie Wildman. "Sexism, Racism, and the Analogy Problem in
Feminist Thought," in Jeanne Adleman and Gloria M. Enguidanos, (eds.) Racism in the Lives of Women
The Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives
Claire Denis, White Material (2010) (F)
Wed. Nov. 16th: The Politics of Race
Gwendolyn Mikell, “African Feminism: Toward a new Politics of Representation” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives
Mitsuye Yamada, “Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster: Reflections of an Asian American Woman” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives
Patricia Hill Collins, “The Politics of Black Feminist Thought” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives
WEEK 12: THANKSGIVING BREAK
WEEK 13:
Mon. Nov. 28th: Race, Nationalism and Gender
Anne McClintock, “Massa and Maids: Power and Desire in the Imperial Metropolis” Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, pp. 75-131
Anne McClintock, “‘No Longer in a future Heaven’: Gender Race and Nationalism” Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives (ed.) Anne Mcclintock, Aamir Mufti and Ella Shohat, Univ. of Minnesota Press: 1997, pp. 89-112
Wed. Nov. 30th: Woman and Nation
Lata Mani, “Multiple Mediations: Feminist Scholarship in the Age of Multinational Reception” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives
Saba Mahmood, “Feminism, Democracy, and Empire: Islam and the War of Terror,” in Women Studies on the Edge, ed., Joan W. Scott, Duke University Press, 2008
Friday Dec 2nd: Speaker Report Due
DECENTERING THE SUBJECT: QUEER THEORY AND MASCULINITY STUDIES
WEEK 14:
Mon. Dec. 5th: Queer Theory
Eve Sedgwick, “Epistemology of the Closet” Epistemology of the Closet, 67-90
Judith Halberstam, “Introduction: What’s Queer About Queer Studies Now?” Special Issue of Social Text, co-edited with David Eng and Jose Munoz (Vol. 84–85 Fall/Winter 2005), pp. 1-17
Gayatri Gopinath, “Funny Boys and Girls: Notes on a Queer South Asian Planet” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives
Wed. Dec. 7th: Desiring Women
Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality & Lesbian Existence” Journal of Women's History, Volume 15, Number 3, Autumn 2003, pp. 11-48
Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn (selections)
Audre Lorde, “An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich,” Sister Outsider
WEEK 15
Mon. Dec. 12th: Desiring Men
Marlon Ross, “Beyond the Closet as Raceless Paradigm,” Black queer studies: a critical anthology (ed.) E. Patrick Johnson, Mae Henderson, Duke University Press: 2005, 161-189
Anthony Lemelle, Jr., "Black Masculinity as Sexual Politics" Black Masculinity and Sexual Politics, Routledge: 2009, 1-35
Patricia Powell, A Small Gathering of Bones (P) Chapters 1-4
Wed. Dec. 14th: Masculinity
Judith Halberstam, “Shame and White Gay Masculinity” Social Text 2005 23(3-4 84-85):219-233
Patricia Powell, A Small Gathering of Bones Chapters 5-7
Friday Dec. 16th: Paper 3 Due