Syllabus Completion: all the Reading, Writing and Web Assignments

http://femtheoumd.blogspot.com/

theories of feminism, thinking and action

WMST 400, Fall 2008 UMD
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm at HBK 0103

PREREQUISITES: designed for upper division undergraduates who have taken at least one feminist course, preferably from the women's studies department. Some other courses may be used to satisfy this prerequisite, but need approval. Email Katie King for interview if necessary.

Professor: Katie King
Office: 2101F Woods Hall, University of Maryland, College Park
Katie’s office hours: 2:30-3:30 pm T & W
Office phone: 301.405.7294 (voice mail)
Katie's home tel. 301.589.2195, call only 10 am-7 pm
Email: katking@umd.edu
Homepage: http://www.womensstudies.umd.edu/wmstfac/kking/

Class Blog at: http:// femtheoumd.blogspot.com/
ELMS login at: https://elms.umd.edu/


Reading, Writing & Web Assignments FINAL VERSION ! Oct. 7, 08

Readings are of several sorts: some will be discussed in depth in class, others are background reading to enrich discussion and class and research experiences.

Generally speaking with some exceptions, Tuesdays are lecture days, Thursdays are discussion days. Attendance both days is essential.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THEORY, FEMINISMS, AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Tuesday, 2 September—Welcome to Our Course!
• HANDOUTS: syllabus, histories and documents handout, two summary sheets
What do we know coming to the class?

Thursday, 4 September—Theory makes worlds
• read the syllabus carefully, come to know it thoroughly
What will we do in this feminist theory class? a focus on creating a learning community to share our feminist knowledge worlds and participate in social change.

Tuesday, 9 September—Worlds feminisms made historically: waves, generations, social movements
• read: Berger, WAVE; everyone should read the first three essays; from the remaining thirty choose ten that interest or inspire you most; be ready to say how you chose them. For the next class you will do some web work on feminist historical sources and will fill out your first summary sheet to make connections between the web sources and this reading. You may wish to work on these at the same time, starting now. So look at the next class assignments too to see how to do this.
Feminist historians and social movement theorists have worked hard to demonstrate how feminist theory is directly created within and for social movements. Kinds of feminisms have different historical trajectories and produce a range of forms in which feminist theory is created, used and shared.

Thursday, 11 September—Feminist historical sources and web worlds
• web action: historical sources, read and analyze 3 to talk about and share; one you know already but add to, two you don't so much; see handouts and assignment links on blog
• DUE: summary sheet 1, completed before and with book group; this one is slightly modified for our first assignment connecting readings and web sources.
Feminist theory emerges from concrete complexities and historically active social movements. Why do we need to know about these histories? Take some time to notice how some learning also requires unlearning.

THE MATRIX OF DOMINATION, STANDPOINT THEORY, AND INTERSECTIONALITY

Tuesday, 16 September—What it takes to create knowledges: standpoint theory and identity politics
• read: Collins, Prefaces, Acknowledgements, Parts 1 and 3, Glossary: pp. vi-44; 227-290; 298-301.
Collins' matrix of domination brings together marxist standpoint theories and postmodern theories of subjectivity and positionality to create an afro-centric feminism. In the years in which Black Feminist Thought becomes very influential, a range of identity-based feminisms assert their histories and disciplinarities. Legal studies produce critical race theory. Intersectionality becomes both an umbrella term for many theories of political subjectivity, and also a new social science based methodology across disciplines.

Thursday, 18 September—Beginning in the Middle
• DUE: summary sheet 2, completed before and with book group.
How do we learn to put in context many theories all at once? There is no "beginning" to start from really, although histories help to track developments. Feminist generations keep recreating their own beginning, but at some point have to come to terms with feminisms that are already at work. How does one be simultaneously an initiator, a founder, a joiner and a sustainer? How do you do this yourself?

Tuesday, 23 September—Revising Oneself: critique and criticism-self-criticism
• read: Mohanty, Introduction, Chaps. 1 & 9: Under Western Eyes, and Revisited (pp. 1-42; 221-252)
The second wave in the US is known for its practice of critique, its histories of sectarian politics, and its conflict and confrontations. "Under Western Eyes" works critique in transnational terms in which the US as center of feminist theory comes under scrutiny.

Thursday, 25 September—Accountabilities
• DUE: summary sheet 3, completed before and with book group.
What does one use critique for? how do we connect and reflect on critique, debunking, critical thinking, revisioning, self-criticism?

Tuesday, 30 September—NO CLASS, Rosh Hashanah

THOUGHT AND CORE THEMES FOR FEMINISTS

Thursday, 2 October—Moving among knowledge worlds
• read: Collins, Part 2: choose at least three of the seven chapters to read carefully. Pick at least one that is something you know very little about experientially.
How do Collins' revisions from a transnational perspective alter the core themes of Black Feminist Thought? Why are these the core themes? When are they specific to Black feminism and when are they generalizable?

Tuesday, 7 October—Images, oppressions, relationships, self-definitions
• DUE: summary sheet 4, completed before and with book group; turn in logbook for the first time.
• Format Lottery for graded assignments: We will discuss how the first graded assignments will work. Note they are completed either individually or in pairs.
How do images travel and why? How do oppressions relate across differences? What relationships need to be nurtured by feminism and have nurtured it in various identity groupings? Why does self-definition matter?

Thursday, 9 October—NO CLASS, Yom Kippur

Tuesday, 14 October—Cartographies of Struggle
• read: Mohanty, Chaps. 2, 6-8: Cartographies & Part II, Demystifying Capitalism (pp. 43-84; 139-217). Be ready to name assignment themes.
How are the ways Collins and Mohanty use marxist feminisms similar? How are they different? What political work do they each need marxism for? How does that work change from the 80's to the 2000's?

Thursday, 16 October—Pedagogies of Dissent
• DUE: summary sheet 5, completed before and with book group; turn in logbook for the first time. Set up for class conferencing.
How does Mohanty make connections between globalization and teaching in a women's studies classroom? What connections seem most important to you? As a student how do you understand her concerns as a teacher?

***FIRST SET OF CLASS CONFERENCES: many feminisms, many kinds of thought
From Tuesday, 21 October to 4 November

everyone will finish the class having done both a paper and a presentation.
Whether you do a presentation or a paper this time will be determined by lot.
1/3 of your grade. Both will require additional research as well as keeping up with class readings. Much of the research will emerge out of lectures and their resources, so attending lectures faithfully and taking good notes will make this work a lot easier.

The first conferences address topics analyzing
• Forms in which feminist theory is shared and ways of classifying feminist theories.
Standpoint theory? Black feminist thought? Postmodernism and posthumanism? How do we describe the varieties of feminist theories and the forms they take? You, perhaps with a partner, will take up some of these issues, decided in email consultation with Katie, in either a presentation for the class or in a paper.

Tuesday, 21 October—Presentation Grp. 1
Thursday, 23 October—Presentation Grp. 2

Tuesday, 28 October—NO CLASS
Thursday, 30 October—NO CLASS

Tuesday, 4 November—All papers due & all logbooks.

A SONG FOR MANY MOVEMENTS

Thursday, 6 November—Movement theories, theorists, and grassroots analysis
• read: Incite, everyone read Parts I & III. Choose one chapter from Part II to read as well.
Grassroots activist theory is one of the pivotal forms of feminist theory. The Incite Collective here, published by an activist press, raises issues intended to reposition activisms under globalization. Their critiques are urgent and confrontational. They produce, implicitly and explicitly, as direct theory and as written theory, a range of analyses of how social change does, can, and should operate today.

Tuesday, 11 November—Managing dissent? industrial complexes? how change is made
• DUE: summary sheet 6, completed before and with book group.
The notion that dissent is controlled and directed in capitalist forms of democracy is a theme running through a range of progressive movements. It pressures the structure/agency relationships of different social change theories toward the structure side. How do you position your own feminist assumptions about how social change works?

Thursday, 13 November—Academic theories, everyday life, and worldliness
• read: Haraway, the whole pamphlet. Choose one section as your favorite and be prepared to explain it to others.
• DUE: summary sheet 7, completed before individually, to share in whole class discussion & to turn in for yourself individually.
Why do we need to think of ourselves in a world of companion species? How does the most current knowledge in biology and related fields get incorporated into a feminist activist and academic theoretical argument? How does such work restructure what used to be called the nature/nurture divide as feminists worked with it? Why is this a shift in a feminist critique of humanism, and a resituation of academic activisms?

***SECOND SET OF CLASS CONFERENCES: many movements producing direct theories
From Tuesday, 18 November to 2 December

everyone will finish the class having done both a paper and a presentation.
1/3 of your grade. Both will require additional research as well as keeping up with class readings. Much of the research will emerge out of lectures and their resources, so attending lectures faithfully and taking good notes will make this work a lot easier.

The second set of conferences are built around
• A project in making or using feminist theory with attention to histories of feminist movements.
How did second wave feminists produce theory in CR groups? What happens when you work in a similar group? How did the separate routes to feminism taken by some identity groups affect what counts as theory and how we understand social change? What does globalization have to do with feminist practices? These and similar projects with attention to histories of feminist movements will focus this assignment. Katie and Renee will help you figure out which issues you want to think and know more about in either a presentation for the class, or in a paper.

Tuesday, 18 November—Presentation Grp. 1
Thursday, 20 November—Presentation Grp. 2

Tuesday, 25 November—NO CLASS
Thursday, 27 November—NO CLASS

Tuesday, 2 December—All papers due & all logbooks.

LEARNING, UNLEARNING, ANALYSIS

Thursday, 4 December—Theories of feminism, why theories in the plural?
• Reread & review: everything. Read parts of books we didn't get to. Reread your favorite stuff. Be prepared to say what you have read and reread and why.
What has the course been put together the way it has? How has that shaping contributed to the arguments of the course? What elements of the course have meant the most to you? What will you take away from the class?

Tuesday, 9 December—Analyzing Learning I
• DUE: Grp. 1 Learning Analysis & final logbooks.
We will share learning analyses in the class and consider the learning community we have built.

Thursday, 11 December—Analyzing Learning II
• DUE: Grp. 2 Learning Analysis & final logbooks.
We will share learning analyses in the class and celebrate our final day.