WS 525 Section 001: Feminist Theory Maj Text
Fall 2012
3 Credit Hours
Primary Instructor: Dr. Jennifer Purvis
Syllabus subject to change.
Feminist Theory: Discursive Horizons
Course Description: Part I in a Women’s Studies course sequence, this course establishes a baseline of knowledge of feminist theory in order to prepare students for the advanced study of contemporary feminist theory in WS 530. Students may enroll in either course, or both. This course does not serve as a prerequisite to Part II in the sequence. Feminist Theory: Discursive Horizons entails an analysis of the critical debates within feminist theory concerning the future, a subject about which an array of recent anthologies, articles, monographs, conferences, conference panels, and roundtables have been devoted. Though feminist theorists offer intellectual and political challenges to dominant narratives of progression and kinship order—imbued with heteronormativity, reprocentrism, and metaphors of stasis—this issue has become a major topic of debate within feminist theory and Women’s Studies, particularly in the intersections between feminist theory and queer theory, although in some respects these areas have not sufficiently drawn from one another. While these connections have intensified, additional (and queerer) feminist attention to these dominant narratives is needed, given that these narratives play a central role in ordering discourses, institutions, politics, identifications, and selfhood. With an emphasis on issues of sexuality and gender, we will examine feminist rearticulations and recontextualizations of subjectivity and embodiment within Feminist and Queer Theory and analyze how these debates draw from and expand interrelated fields, such as Queer Phenomenology, Trans Theory, Postcolonial Theory, and Critical Race Theory. (Prerequisites: None)
Course Objectives: Students will gain an understanding of how the concept of the future functions as a locus of contention and how various thinkers have articulated intellectual and political challenges to dominant narratives of time, progression, and kinship order, which then challenge discourses, institutions, politics, and formulations of subjectivity. Students will become conversant with an assortment of theories which bear upon current debate, all of which attempt to resolve the injustices that follow from dominant visions of difference and some of which contribute to the development of more effective feminist visions of politics and temporality. Students will emerge with a more complex understanding of sexuality and gendered difference and the liberatory theories that inform an array of feminist strategies and agendas.
Course Outcomes: Students will become familiar with the debates surrounding the future and use this knowledge to conduct their own independent research on a particular topic or set of topics within the general framework of the course. This research will locate and expand upon insights crucial to the development of politically efficacious feminist theory, geared toward the development of a politics and a temporality more productively aligned with feminist projects committed to the eradication of the subjection of women and other minoritarian subjects.
Reading Schedule (subject to change, addition, or substitution):
* = Electronic copies (available on E-Learning)
W 8/22 Introductions, Syllabus review
8/29 Mimi Marinucci, Feminism is Queer
9/5 Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies, Parts 1 + 2; *Jennifer Purvis, “Grrrls and Women Together in the Third Wave: An Intergenerational Approach”
9/12 Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies, Parts 3 + 4
9/19 Course Packet: Selections from Pleasure and Danger (OOP); *Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”; *Elspeth Probyn, “Perverts By Choice”
9/26 Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays + *“Paradigm”; *Crowder, “From the Straight Mind to Queer Theory”; *Lauren Berlant, “America, Fat, the Fetus”; *Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book”
10/3 Jakobsen and Pellegrini, Love the Sin; *Linda Martín Alcoff, “Who’s Afraid of Identity Politics?”; *William Wilkerson, “Is There Something You Need To Tell Me?”
10/10 The Judith Butler Reader, Parts 1 + 2
10/17 The Judith Butler Reader, Part 3-end + Butler, *“The End of Sexual Difference?” + *”Sexual Politics, Torture, and Secular Time” + *“Merely Cultural” + *“Critically Queer”
10/24 Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology; *Puar and Rai, “Monster, Terrorist, Fag”; *Povinelli and Chauncey, “Thinking Sexuality Transnationally”
10/31 Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology; *Jasbir Puar, “Mapping U.S.Homonormativities” + *“Queer Times, Queer Assemblages”
11/7 Lee Edelman, No Future
11/14 J. Halberstam, *“F2M” + *“Transgender Butch”; *Leo Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?”; *“Theorizing Queer Temporalities: A Roundtable Discussion”; Proposals due
11/21 Thanksgiving Break—No Class
11/28 Women’s Studies for the Future: Foundations, Interrogations, Politics, Intro, Parts I-II; Wendy Brown, “The Impossibility of Women’s Studies”; Last day to turn in Proposals
12/5 Women’s Studies for the Future: Foundations, Interrogations, Politics, Parts III-V (-end); Robyn Wiegman, “Academic Feminism Against Itself”; Complete set of reading responses due
Finals Week: 12/10-14th—Final Research Papers due—(during scheduled final exam period: Tuesday, 12/11, 3:30-6pm)
Course Requirements:
1.) Attendance: This class meets weekly and is discussion-based, so your attendance is expected at each meeting. If you are absent, you miss a great deal of information and class discussion. The general rule is to be in attendance, without exception, every week, barring extreme circumstances, such as illness or emergency. In cases of unavoidable conflict, you are permitted to excuse yourself from up to two class sessions. Beyond this, your final grade will be reduced by one half of a letter grade for every class you miss.
2.) Participation: In this course, your careful reading and thorough consideration of assigned texts is required, as is your frequent and substantial participation in class discussion. It is not sufficient to merely read the materials on the reading schedule and attend class. You must engage with the substance of the texts and the insights of other members of the class and share your findings through written comments as well as your contributions to class discussion. Because this is a seminar class, your active participation is crucial—both in terms of your own success and that of the course. Thus, participation weighs heavily in the determination of your final grade. Your standing assignment for each class is to formulate a short reading response (in the range of one developed paragraph to one full page) or (in a situation where you are not sure what to respond to) you may prepare a set of three comments/questions in response to the readings and (regardless of which approach you take) you will be required to participate in the pass-and-read portion of class, in preparation for class discussion. In your reading responses, you will draw out and respond to the critical substance of the text at hand, which we will discuss in class. This standing assignment provides leading questions and remarks that allow you to explore your own interests and perspectives in relation to the course readings in preparation for class. Your objective for this standing assignment is not only to demonstrate your engagement with course materials but to stimulate class discussion for the benefit of the entire class. Therefore, you are expected to share these comments and questions with the class and expand upon them in class discussion in a thoughtful and significant manner and contribute to a dynamic, thought-provoking, and engaging class.
In support of this, we will undertake an activity at the outset of each class. At 2pm, you will pass your response to your neighbor and silently but actively read your classmate’s reading response—that is, you will mark up this printed response with a pen or highlighter, noting its most important points, or key insights. Then, in discussion, you will share the substance of that person’s response, as well as elaborate on, clarify, refine, support, explain, and develop your own insights, which someone else in class will be conveying after reading your response.
Keep in mind, though responses are not simply summaries of the assigned readings, some contextualization is necessary in order to demonstrate comprehension and convey your meaning. Thus, for each comment, talking point, or discussion question you raise, you should take care to present these ideas within the context of the material. That is, you should ground your points, or observations, firmly within the text, or texts; and you will support these ideas with direct textual evidence from the primary source(s), including quotes and paraphrases (with page numbers for our reference). Your aim should be to point out moments of illumination—either those you locate within the given text, or those you experience while reading it. Each response should identify a text’s distinctive contribution to the debates at hand in the process of bringing out key moments in relation to other texts and perspectives (and your own relevant personal observations and experiences). Be sure to relate the readings of the day to each other and note connections to previous texts in the course, where relevant. The aim of this assignment is to document your engagement with the course readings in preparation for class and help maintain quality class discussion.
If you have difficulty deciding what to write about, here are some suggestions: enumerate the most important points in the readings or moments of insight you experienced while reading; expand on a point that connects the readings with other texts/perspectives; or locate the primary insight or place of convergence among the readings for the day. There is no strict formula for this; these are simply suggestions, since course texts are rich with insights and often quite dense. You may consult outside sources to add dimension to your responses as you see fit, but this is not required, and space is limited. I will review your responses weekly and also at the end of the semester, whereupon I will review their content as an indicator of your degree of engagement and progress in the course and evaluate your Participation largely on the basis of your responses. (Retain your marked copies throughout the semester; those are the copies I will collect.)
3.) Essay Assignments: You are each required to write one 5-page essay on the text (or texts) of your choice (based in the readings for that day) and present this short essay to the class on Wednesday in a 10-minute presentation. As in the case of your reading responses, your short essay should demonstrate a substantive engagement with the text(s) of the day (an engagement with the most important points, or the vital substance—i.e., a critical response, but this will be formulated into an essay, to be read in conference presentation style); again, it will not suffice to write a summary. This paper/presentation should be geared towards opening up new perspectives and designed to generate discussion. This shorter paper will be based on the assigned reading(s) for the day and include specific textual evidence from that source or sources (quotes and paraphrases fully cited, using parenthetical notation), but you will also address 1-2 critical sources that you find through your own independent research. You will not submit a reading response on the day of your presentation. Your short paper may serve as the prelude to your major research paper (20 pages) in which you will address a topic of your own choosing at greater length; but the two projects need not be related. The longer research paper should reflect your own interests, but it should also actively engage the issues and debates of the course texts, as well as the content of the course texts themselves (you are required to reference any course texts relevant to your topic). You must also conduct a significant amount of secondary research for this final project and include any outside sources in your final essay research packet, the contents of which I will review in more detail at the close of the semester. You will write a short proposal (1-2 pages) outlining your extensive research undertaking for the final paper, to be completed by the date indicated on the reading schedule. Major research papers are due at the end of the semester. Since this is, in essence, your final exam, they will be collected during finals week, during or in close proximity to the scheduled final exam period.
Grading Policy:
Your fulfillment of the objectives of this course will be determined by your successful completion of the following assignments and weighted in percentages as follows:
Participation/Responses 30%
Short Critical Paper/Presentation 20%
Proposal 10%
Final Research Paper 40%
Policy Regarding Late Work:
All work must be completed and submitted in a timely fashion in order to succeed in this course. Late responses that do not contribute to class discussion will be less valuable and will be evaluated accordingly. If you are late to class or come to class without a reading response, your participation in the pass-and-read portion of class will be compromised, and your participation grade will reflect this. Once you commit to a date for a paper/presentation, you should do your best to honor this commitment, as there is a schedule of presentations and a limited number of spots. In the case of all formal papers—short and long/final paper—you should request an extension in advance of the due date, whenever possible, if you find you need more time. If you miss a major paper deadline, you must be able to provide documentation of legitimating circumstances (should I request it); penalties will be assessed on a case-by-case basis. In general, your syllabus is a contract and should be treated as such.
Attendance: This class meets weekly and is discussion-based, so your attendance is expected at each meeting. If you are absent, you miss a great deal of information and class discussion. The general rule is to be in attendance, without exception, every week, barring extreme circumstances, such as illness or emergency. In cases of unavoidable conflict, you are permitted to excuse yourself from up to two class sessions. Beyond this, your final grade will be reduced by one half of a letter grade for every class you miss.
Required Texts: (at the Supply Store, Ferguson Center):
Recommended/Optional Texts: (a feminist theory glossary)
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The Academic Misconduct Disciplinary Policy will be followed in the event of academic misconduct.
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