Feminist
Theory
SOCY
5036, Spring 2007
|
Professor AnnJanette Rosga |
Class Time/Day: Thurs. 3:30-6:20pm |
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Office: 214 Ketchum Hall |
Classroom: Ketchum 33 |
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Phone: 735-2389, email:
rosga@colorado.edu |
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Office Hours: Tues
3:15-5:00; Thurs 1:00-2:00 |
[T]o admit the importance of theory is to make an
open-ended commitment,
to leave yourself in a position where there are always
important things you don't know.
...Theory makes you desire mastery ...[but]...makes
mastery impossible.
Jonathan Culler
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making
them felt.
Audre Lorde
Course Description &
Requirements
Depending
on how one slices it, "feminist theory" can span decades (if not centuries),
disciplines, genres, agendas, languages, cultures, geographies and topical
foci. Possible organizational schemas for a graduate seminar on this material
proliferate wildly. Rather than attempting a representative sampling or making
any pretense to comprehensiveness, this course will focus primarily on feminist
theories that are generally categorized as "poststructuralist," and
will endeavor to ensure that students acquire sufficient vocabulary and
familiarity with key texts to understand and work with these theories.[1] Among other things, this means that
the course will prioritize a reckoning with the epistemological ramifications
of poststructuralist feminist theory: how do writings that fall within this
loosely bounded arena impact the kinds of questions we might ask in social
research? What "moves" do they enable us to make in our study of
social phenomena? What are the assumptions made by these theories and how might
they affect what we think we know about the social world, how we know it, and what any of us
think we're up to when we set out to study it?
The
first half of the term will be spent reviewing the necessary corollary concepts
to any study of poststructuralist feminist theory (e.g. structuralism,
semiotics, psychoanalysis, subjectivity, discourse, language, power/knowledge).
This material will be covered primarily in lecture-discussion format, while the
readings assigned will each draw upon and make use of specific key concepts.
During
the second half of the term, we'll set out to explore specific applications of
feminist poststructuralist theory. The course will focus particularly on the
ramifications of these theories – theories that arise out of, and
analyze, the experience of living in and through the mediations of "marked"
categories (woman, queer, [post]colonial) – for the study of lives lived
in/through/via "unmarked" experiences and institutions. Put another
way, the course will ask: of what use are poststructuralist feminist, queer,
and/or postcolonial theories for the analysis of topics that are not primarily
identified in terms of their connection to "oppressed" groups? To
this end, we will examine feminist theories of masculinity, heteronormativity,
"white"-ness, the state, nation and empire.
Writing & Presentation
Requirements
Papers
Approximately
half of the credit for this course is to be earned via traditional analytical
writing assignments. This requirement may be fulfilled in one of two ways.
Option one is to write a full-length (15-25pp.) seminar paper on a particular
topic of interest, using the theoretical material covered in this class. The
second option is to write 3 shorter (5-7pp.) reading-response essays, each
considering (and placing into conversation) the writings of 2-5 different
authors.
In order
to facilitate our understanding of material that is often highly abstract, the
remaining two assignments are designed to concretize, to encourage you to
directly apply, and to facilitate our discussions of theoretical texts:
Applications
Each
student will be required to prepare one 10-15minute presentation for the class
in which she or he describes an application of one or more particular
theoretical texts to a topic or issue that is apparently unrelated to the
topics taken up by the text(s). (For example, one might apply Donna Haraway's
analysis of technoscience to a legal practice or institution, or Chandra
Mohanty's discussion of the "western gaze" to biomedical imaging
procedures.) This assignment will likely be most useful to you if you can apply
a given theoretical text(s) to a topic of particular interest to you (e.g. your
dissertation research topic, or a topic you're considering for your
dissertation). The goal of your presentation should be not simply to summarize,
or to illustrate your grasp of, the theory under discussion, but to extend our
understanding of that theory by showing how it affects your consideration of a
seemingly unrelated topic.
Engagements
Theoretical
texts are, of course, written by real live people to real live people. While the text remains static on
the page, the meanings attributed to that text and the uses to which it is put
by other authors change over time. The original text's author may even have
changed her or his mind significantly about what s/he's written since the
text's publication – either based on responses to the text or based on
her or his intellectual development. Theory is dynamic and it is meaningful
only in its engagement by/with humans.
This
assignment asks you to investigate the engagements of a theory studied in
class. The best way to do this is to examine how other scholars have engaged
your chosen author's text. Choose a specific text from this syllabus. Find
three other authors whose writings substantively discuss this piece, and/or
other related
works by this author.[2] Read the works by these three
additional authors that engage your chosen text/author; compare and contrast
their usages, interpretations, emphases, etc.; and prepare another 10-15 minute
presentation about your findings to present in class. You may carry out this
assignment individually or in a group with one or two other students.
Note: this
assignment will be easier and more interesting if you can find scholarly
engagements of your selected text that do not all agree with your author's
premises. For instance, you might look for a scholar whose work your author
disagrees with in her or his text to see if that scholar has written a
rebuttal. Or, you might check to see if the author her or himself has written a
later piece revising elements of the first. Often, theoretical debates won't
take a clear pro-con debate form; the disagreements can be more partial,
oblique, or implicit. So this assignment will also require you to exercise both
your creative research muscles and your critical interpretive reading skills.
Paper
deadlines are for you, for the smooth functioning of the class, and to help me
keep a sane grading schedule. If you require a paper extension for any reason,
please inform me, at least one week prior to the class meeting in which the
assignment is due, of the alternative deadline you intend to meet. For your own
and others' sakes, please make every effort to meet original deadlines.
Presentation
deadlines are vital to meet, since the entire class will be counting on your
contribution in order to fully engage with the day's assigned reading material.
If you determine that you will be unable to make a presentation for which you
have signed up, you are fully responsible for locating another student(s) to
take your place, and for ensuring that the engagements or applications material
will be covered by your replacement.
Attendance & Discussion
Requirements
Attendance
at all seminar meetings is mandatory. The course is designed as an intensive reading
and discussion workshop; your active, well-prepared, participation is essential
to its success. Should circumstances require you to miss a meeting, however,
you are responsible for ensuring that your writing assignments are delivered to
me on time, that you are informed of the material missed in class, and that any
obligations you have to the class or other students are fulfilled or
rearranged. Each absence will result in a 2% reduction in your overall grade.
More than two absences will result in your failing the class.
Whenever possible, I encourage you to work with one or more of your fellow students in preparing to discuss assigned readings in class. An extra eye helps ensure you've identified the salient points of a given text and often helps you to formulate excellent questions about the reading.
If you
have specific physical, psychiatric, or learning disabilities and require
accommodations, please let me know early in the semester so that your learning
needs may be appropriately met. You will need to provide documentation of your
disability to the Disability Services Office in Willard 322 (phone
303-492-8671).
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Application |
15% |
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Engagement |
20% |
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3 short essays @ 15% each OR 1 final seminar paper |
45% |
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Participation |
20% |
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Total |
100% |
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Abbrev. in Schedule |
Text |
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Denise
Riley, Am I That Name? University of Minnesota Press, 1989 |
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M&K |
Carole R.
McCann and Seung-Kyung Kim, Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives, Routledge, 2002
("M&K" in schedule). |
|
JKG |
Judith
Kegan Gardiner, Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory, Columbia University Press, 2002
("JKG" in schedule). |
|
Fine |
Michelle Fine, et. al., eds. Off White: Readings on Race,
Power and Society. New
York: Routledge, 1997. |
|
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Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction,
Vol.1. New
York: Vintage Books, 1978. |
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Bornstein, Kate. Gender Outlaw. New York: Vintage
Books, 1994. |
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Cynthia
Cockburn and Dubravka Zarkov, eds. The Postwar Moment: Militaries,
Masculinities and International Peacekeeping. London: Lawrence and Wishart,
2002. |
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[R] |
Additional readings on Norlin E-Reserve and/or the CULearn website for this class. |
Part 1: Key Concepts
Introduction
to the class and to one another.
January
25: Structuralism and Semiotics
First
Short Essay Due
Spring
break, no class
Part
Two: Diffractions
What we need is to make a
difference in material-semiotic apparatuses, to diffract the rays of technoscience
so that we get more promising interference patterns on the recording films of
our lives and bodies. Diffraction is an optical metaphor for the effort to make
a difference in the world.
...The point is to learn to
remember that we might have been otherwise,
and might yet be, as a matter of
embodied fact.
Donna
Haraway
Second
Short Essay Due
Third
Short Essay or Final Seminar Paper Due
[1] One of the required texts, however, Feminist Theory Reader: Local and
Global Perspectives, contains
a sampling of early canonical works in feminist theory as well as an excellent
sampling of second and third wave "classics." This text was selected
to provide a resource to students with limited background in first-third wave
precursors to, and foundations for, poststructuralist feminist theories. For
those seeking a more synthesized primer relevant to the discipline of
sociology, I strongly recommend Gender and Power, by R. W. Connell (Stanford UP: 1987).
[2] By "substantively
discuss," all I really mean is that you should choose writings that do
more than just cite your author's text. The writings could apply your author's
theory(ies) or arguments, discuss them, use them to illustrate an example or to
make a key point, disagree with them, etc.