GWS 550: Feminist Theories Humanities, CRN 30426
Prerequisite: At least one graduate-level humanities course or consent of instructor.
Projansky
Mon. 1-3:50

This course explores a wide range of questions in interdisciplinary feminist theory and gender studies, particularly those that have influenced and been shaped by the fields of literary studies, film studies, social and cultural history, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, critical race theory, and queer studies.

The course emphasizes the humanities over social and natural sciences but also questions the disciplinary boundaries drawn among these three areas and seeks to emphasize how work in the social and natural sciences has informed and been informed by feminist work in the humanities.

The goals in this first part of the course are to develop a common vocabulary for the class, to address the intersections of and tensions among various modes of thought, to take the time to read often-cited feminist scholarship in order to come to our own understandings about this influential material, and to consider how newer work contributes to and transforms the conversation.  While not exactly an "overview" of feminist theory, this section of the course should provide a solid grounding in many of the key questions and debates in feminist theory.

The second section of the course builds on this grounding by addressing recent book-length case studies of recent interdisciplinary feminist scholarship (topics TBA).  Our goal will be to explore the methodologies, theories, assumptions, objects of analysis, and legacies of early feminist studies work in each of these case studies.  Among other things, these books will help us to address history, literature, popular culture, diaspora, ethnography, law, representation, and discourse.  This section of the course not only brings these particular topics to the table but also gives students an opportunity to compare various methodologies, to think through the scope of book-length projects, and thereby to make explicit their own methodological and theoretical approach to feminist studies.

The course ends with a discussion of student work on the contemporary state of feminist studies in various disciplines and journals.  Thus, we end by asking "What is the present state of feminist studies" and "How do we position ourselves in relation to that present?"