Syllabus

Course Description

This class will engage students in a critical examination of several influential works participating in the elaboration of feminist theories today. Readings and discussions will focus on a series of themes and issues - rage, bodies, gender, family, consumerism, and the transformation of and through vision - that will facilitate the confrontation of ideas emanating from various academic disciplines and critical frameworks.

Goals

Students will become famliar with fundamental debates marking feminist theories today. By becoming participants in this inquiry, students will gain comptence in analytical reading and writing as well as in the pertinent use of theory to examine concrete issues that mobilize concepts of sex, gender, race, and nation.

Requirements

Presence - a must! Participation is a criterion for grading, and presence is necessary in order to participate in the class discussion.
All students will acquire a web account and an email address in orer to participate in an archived listserve discussion group. Students will post all work done for this class on their web site and will partcipate in discussions on the listserve.
Act as secretary for the class at least once during the semester. Notes for the class will be posted on the course web page.
Post a written summary each class on one of texts assigned for class. Students will usually do this working with a partner from the class. Summaries will include the main ideas of the author, an empirical definition of the critical framework within which the text appears to be situated, the text's "blindspots" (omissions, areas of necessary negligence...), and links, associations, or/and oppositions with other readings. Alternately, students will be responsible for seeking pertinent examples of social and cultural phenomena that bear a relationship to the readings.
Students will take a midterm during the semester in order to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of material.
Students will write two five-page papers during the semester. Students will participate in a peer review process, meet with me to go over the paper and complete a re-write. Each version of the paper will count as half of the grade assigned to the paper.
Students will complete a 10-page final paper on a topic chosen in consultation with the professor (me!).
Students will take a final exam on Monday May 11 from 8:00-Noon.
Students will attend Newcomb speakers and events in conjunction with the class. Reading assignments may be changed to make the most of special events.

Schedule of Assignments

"R"indicates a text on reserve at the Women's Center library

January 14 Introduction. What are we doing and why?

January 19 No class. Martin Luther King Day

January 21 Sexed Tech

Dale Spender, "Women, power and Cyberspace", Nattering on the Web, 161-247. R
Have email account and web site up

January 26 Rage of Theory; Theories of Rage (1)

James J. Sosnoski, "A Mindless Man-driven Theory Machine: Intellectuality, Sexuality, and the Institution of Criticism", F, 33-50
Nina Baym, "The Madwoman and her Languages: Why I don't do Feminist Literary Theory", F, 279-292
Shoshana Felman, "Woman and Madness", F, 7-20
Joanna Russ, "'Anamalousness' and 'Aesthetics' from How to Supress Women's Writing", F, 97-114.

January 28 Raging Theory; Theories of Rage (2)

bell hooks, "Killing Rage. Militant Resistance", "Beyond Black Rage. Ending Racism", Killing Rage , 8-30.
Adrienne Rich, "Violence: The Heart of Maternal Darkness", Of Woman Born, 256-280 R
Linda Carroll, "Holy Anorexia Revisited: The Reputation of Fasting in the Case of Maria Janis" R

February 2 Bodies of Matter; Matterless Bodies

Thomas Laqueur, "Destiny is Anatomy" and "Discovery of the Sexes", Making Sex, 25-62, 149-192 R
Luce Irigaray, "The Sex Which is not One", F,363-369.

Febraruy 4 From Theoretical Lacks to Real Erasures

Ann duCille, "The Occult of True Black Womanhood; Critical Demeanor and Black Feminist Studies", Female Subjects in Black and White, 21-56 R

Trinh T. Minh-ha, 'Woman, Native Other", Woman Native Other, 79-116. R

Febraruy 9 Pleasures and Perils of Embodied Truths (1)

Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, "The Bio-Social Debate", "It's All in the Mind", Deceptive Distinctions 46-98 R

Monique Wittig, "The Category of Sex", Sex in Question, 24-29 and "The Straight Mind", Feminism and Sexuality, 144-149 R

February 11 Pleasures and Perils of Embodied Truths (2)

Helene Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa", F, 347-362

Fatima Mernissi, "The Muslim Concept of Active Female Sexuality', Beyond the Veil, 27-40

Marna Lazgreg, "Feminism and Difference. The Perils of Writing as a Woman on Women in Algeria", Feminist Studies 14.1, 81-107. R

*February 13 Paper I (A) due in my box by 4:00 p.m.

February 16 The Nature of Artifice

Nicole-Claude Mathieu, "Sexual, Sexed and Sex-Class Identities", Sex in Question, 42-71. R

bell hooks, "Beyond Black Only", Killing Rage, 196-203

Sherry Turkle, "Tinysex and Gender Trouble", Life on the Screen R

February 18 Peer Review Day

*February 20 Paper I (B) due in my mailbox by 4:00 p.m. (Newcomb 311)

February 23 Lundi Gras. No class

February 25 Failure by Exclusion

Elizabeth Spelman, "Hairy Cobbler and Philosopher-Queens", "Who's Who in the Polis", Inessential Woman, 37-71 R

Fatima Mernissi, "The Muslim and Time", "the Prophet and the Hadith", The Veil and the Male Elite, 15-48 R

Article on Algerian Revolution

March 2 Critical Sexuality

Teresa de Lauretis, "Female Homosexuality Revisited", The Practice of Love, 28-78 R

Judith Butler, "Critically Queer", Bodies that Matter, 223-242 R

March 4 Bodily Properties

Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, "The Body as Property: A Feminist Revision", Conceiving the New World Order, 387-406 R

Carmen Zarroso and Sonia Correa, "Public Servents, Professionals and Feminists: The Politics of Contraceptive Research in Brazil", Conceiving, 292-306 R

March 9 To Bear or Not to Bear

Paola Tabet, "Natural Fertility, Forced Reproduction", Sex in Question, 109-177
R
Julian Murphy, "Is Pregnancy Necessary? Feminist Concerns about Ectogenesis', Hypatia 4:3, 66-84 R

March 16 Figures of Speech

Laura Purdy, "Abortion and the Argument from Convenience", "Abortion, Forced Labor and War, 'Abortion and the Husband's Rights", Reproducing Persons 132-167
R
Barbara Johnson, "Apostrophe, Animation and Abortion', F, 694-707

March 18 Midterm

March 23 Family Ties (1)

Simone de Beauvoir, "The Mother', in Alpern, The Ethics of Reproductive Technology, 135-146 R

Julia Kristeva, "Stabat Mater" R

Marianne Hirsch, "The Mother-Daughter Plot" R

March 25 Family Ties (2)

Fatima Mernissi, "Husband and Wife", "The Mother-in-Law", Beyond the Veil121-136

bell hooks, "Feminism. It's a Black Thing", Killing Rage, 86-97

Elizabeth Dodson Gray, "From Nature-as-Mother to Nature-as- Wife", Green Paradise Lost, 27-42 R

April 1 Family Ties (3)

Hortense Spilleo, 'Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book", F, 384-405

Jane Gallop, "The Father's Seduction, F, 489-506

Susan Jeffords, "Masculinity as Excess in Vietnam Films", 1048-1067

April 6 Buying Power

Nancy M. Harstock, "Gender and Power: Maculinity, Violence, and Domination", Money, Sex and Power, 155-185 R

Susan Willis, "I Shop Therefore I am: Is there a Place for Afro-American Culture in Commodity Culture?", F, 992-1008

April 8 Catch-up Day

April 13 and April 15 Spring Break

April 20 Seeing is Believing (1)

Mary Daly, "Deadly Deception: Mystification through Myth", "Spinning Cosmic Tapestries", Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, 42-72, 385-424 R

April 22 Seeing is Believing (2)

Donna Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective", Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature, 183-201 R

"The Meaning of Spatial Boundaries", Mernissi, Beyond the Veil, 137-147.

Carolyn Martin Shaw, 'The Poetics of Identity: Question Spiritualism in African American Contexts", Female Subjects in Black and White, 349-362 R

*April 24 Paper IV (A) Due by 4:00 p.m.

April 27 Peer Review Day

April 29 Conclusion

Paper IV (B) due

"What is Ethical Feminism", Feminist Contentions, 75-106

May 11 Final Exam

Grading

Participation = 15%
Tests:1x15% = 15%
Reading notes=10%
Papers 2x10%=20% (5-page papers)
1x20%=20% (10-page paper)
Final exam= 20%

Bibliography

Abel, Elizabeth, Barbara Christian and Helene Moglen, Female Subjects in Black and White. Race, Psychoanalysis, feminism. Berkeley, U of California P, 1997.
Alpern, Kenneth D., ed. The Ethics of Reproductive Technology. NY and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992.
Benhabib, Seyla, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, Nancy Fraser. Feminist Contentions. A Philosophical Exchange. NY: Routledge, 1995.
Carroll, Linda. " Holy Anorexia Revisited: The Reputation of Fasting in the Case of Maria Janis", The Psychohistory Review 26:2 (1997).
Daly, Mary. Gyn/Ecology. The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1978.
Epstein, Cynthia Fuchs. Deceptive Distinctions. Sex, Gender and the Social Order. New Haven, Yale UP, 1988.
Estes, Clarissa Pinkola. Women Who Run with the Wolves. Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. NY: Ballantine Books, 1992.
Ginsburg, Fayed and Rayna Rapp, eds. Conceiving the New World Order. The Global Politics of Reproduction. Berkeley, U of California P, 1995.
Harstock, Nancy C. M. Money, Sex and Power. Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism. NY: Longman, 1983.
*hooks, bell. Killing Rage. Ending Racism. H. Holt and Co., 1995.
Jackson, Stevi and Sue Scott. Feminism and Sexuality. A Reader. NY: Columbia UP, 1996.
Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990.
Leonard, Diana and Lisa Adkins, eds. Sex in Question: French Materialist Feminism. London: Taylor and Francis, 1996.
*Mernissi, Fatima. Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Pub. Co., 1975.
---. The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1991.
Nicholson, Linda, ed. Feminism/Postmodernism. NY: Routledge, 1990.
Purdy, Laura M. Reproducing Persons. Issues in Feminist Bioethics. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996.
Rich, Adrienne. " Violence: The Heart of Maternal Darkness." Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. NY: Bantam Books, 1977.
Spelman, Elizabeth V. Inessential Woman. Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988.
Spender, Dale. Nattering on the Net. Women, Power and Cyberspace. New Melbourne, Victoria: Spinnifex, 1995.
*Warhol, Robyn R. and Diana Price Herndl, eds. Feminisms. An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. 2nd edition. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1997.
*Books ordered for the course.