Course Description:
This colloquium focuses on critical discussions of a diverse range of feminist texts, practices, and politics. One of the guiding concerns will be pursuing the relationship between feminism, theory, and politics. The readings cover critical encounters between feminists and the male theorists to whom so many are responding; between and among feminisms; between feminist theory and other resisting theories and theories of resistance.
Readings:
Freud, S. Three essays on the theory of sexuality (Basic Books).
Foucault, M. 1978. History of sexuality. Volume I: An introduction. New York: Vintage.
Fuss, D. 1989. Essentially speaking: Feminism, nature, and difference. New York: Routledge.
Butler, J. 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and subversion of identity. New York: Routledge. Differences. 1997. Joan Scott, ed. 9:3. Social text. 2000. Ann Pellegrini and Janet Jakobsen, eds. 18:3 issue on secularisms at the millennium.
Hausman, B. 1995. Changing sex: Transsexualism, technology, and the idea of gender. Duke University Press.
Holland, N., ed. Feminist interpretations of Jacques Derrida.
Grosz, E. Jacques Lacan: A feminist introduction.
Longino, H. Science as social knowledge.
Wiegman, R. 1995. American anatomies: Theorizing race and gender. Duke University Press.
Schedule:Week 1: Introducing the course. Discussing research assignment. Week 2: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, selections from The German ideology, reprinted in The Marx-Engels reader. 1978. Robert C. Tucker, ed. New York: WW. Norton, 148-175.
Williams, R. 1973. Base and superstructure. New Left Review. 82 : 3-16. (R)
Althusser, L. Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. Reprinted in Lenin and philosophy and other essays by Louis Althusser, Ben Brewster, tr. 1971. New York: Monthly Review Press, 127-186.
Week 3: Brief in-class review of term-paper choices.
Freud, S. Three essays on the theory of sexuality (Basic Books).
Riviere, J. 1929. Womanliness as a masquerade. Reprinted in Burgin, Donald, and Kaplan, eds. Formations of fantasy. 1986. London: Methuen Books, 35-44.
Irigaray, L. 1975. Psychoanalytic theory: Another look, and The power of discourse. In This sex which is not one, Catherine Porter, tr. 1985. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 34-85.
Week 4:
Grosz, E. 1990. Jacques Lacan: A feminist introduction. Chapters 4-6. Recommended: Chapters 1-3.
Week 5:
Foucault, M. 1978. The history of sexuality, Volume I: An introduction, Robert Hurley, tr. New York: Pantheon Books.
Alcoff, L. M. 1996. Dangerous pleasures: Foucault and the politics of pedophilia. In Susan Hekman, ed. Feminist interpretations of Michel Foucault. Penn State Press, 99-135.
Week 6:
Holland, N. ed. Feminist interpretations of Jacques Derrida, Introduction and chapters 1-4, and 9.
Week 7:
Fuss, D. 1989. Essentially speaking: Feminism, nature, and difference. New York: Routledge.
Recommended: de Lauretis, T. 1994. The essence of the triangle or, taking the risk of essentialism seriously: Feminist theory in Italy, the U.S., and Britain. In Noami Schor and Elizabeth Weed, eds. The essential difference. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1-39.
Week 8:
Butler, J. 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
Recommended reading: Butler, J. 1993. Imitation and gender insubordination. Reprinted in Henry Abelove, MichŽle Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin, eds. The lesbian and gay studies reader. New York: Routledge, 307-320.
First paper due
Week 9:
Wiegman, R. 1995. American anatomies: Theorizing race and gender. Duke University Press. Chapters 1-3, and 6.
Week 10: More gender trouble. Essays by: Butler, Martin, Rubin, Hammonds, Weed. 1994. Differences, 6:2+3.
Recommended: Editors introduction, xv-xviii, and Gayle Rubin, Thinking sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. Reprinted in Abelove, et. al., The lesbian and gay studies reader, 3-44.
Week 11: Social text, Secularisms at the Millennium, selected essays will be assigned as soon as the issue is out.
Week 12:
Second paper due
Longino, H. Science as Social Knowledge, chapters 1-6.
Week 13:
Women's studies at the edge. Differences, 9.
Final papers due
There is one research project for this course. But this one assignment is structured through three pieces of writing and two presentations.
Choose one of the topics listed below.
Step I: Do preliminary research focused on these questions: What are the political issues at stake? What are the theoretical problems that require investigation? Write up a 10-15 page paper which includes a thorough annotated bibliography. We will meet one evening, two weeks before the deadline for presentation and discussion of your research result.
Step II: Do research focused on the theoretical problems you had produced in step I. What political conclusions would you draw from your theoretical research for the original issues at stake? Write up a 10-15 page paper which includes a thorough annotated bibliography. We will meet one evening, two weeks before the deadline for each topic for presentation and discussion of your research result.
Step III: Final paper, combine your total research into one final 20-25 page piece.
Topics:
1) Who is a child? What is sex? Whose labor? The debate on child and sex work, nationally and internationally.
2) Genes, hormones, and sexualities. What makes us male and female, masculine and feminine, heter- or homosexual?
