Feminist Thought

Readings

[C] = Eli Clare, Exile and Pride (South End Press, 1999). 978-0822360315. 

[E] = Cynthia Enloe, Twelve Feminist Lessons of War (University of California Press, 2023). 978-0520397675. 

[H] = Jack Halberstam, Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability (University of California Press, 2018). 978-0520292697. 

[K] = Ibram Kendi, How to be an Antiracist (Penguin Random House, 2019). 978-0525509301. 

[KI] = Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (Milkweed Editions, 2015). 978-1571313560. 

[M] = Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. (One World, 2021). 978-0525509561. 

Week 1

• No readings assigned. 

Week 2

Session 2: How do we think about and experience feminist theory? 

• Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.”
• Gina Crosley-Corcoran, “Explaining White Privilege to A Broke White Person.” (PDF)
• Tia Cross, Freada Klein, et al., “Face-to-Face, Day-to-Day Racism CR.” (PDF) 

Recommended

• Pat Parker, “For the White Person Who Wants to Know How to Be My Friend.”
• karnythia, “The Do’s and Don’ts of Being a Good Ally.”
• Lynet Uttal, “Nods That Silence.” (PDF)

Session 3: Tools of feminist theory   

• Combahee River Collective (1977), “A Black Feminist Statement.”
• Trina Grillo (1995), “Anti-essentialism and Intersectionality: Tools to Dismantle the Master’s House.”  

Recommended

• Audre Lorde (1985), “Poetry Is Not a Luxury.” (PDF)
• ——— (1977), “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” (PDF)
• Southern Poverty Law Center (2017), “Ten Ways to Fight Hate.”  

Week 3

Session 4: Social construction

• Joanna Kadi (1996), “Stupidity ‘Deconstructed’.” (PDF)
• Sally Haslanger, “You Mixed?” (PDF) Chapter 13 in Adoption Matters. Edited by Sally Haslanger and Charlotte Witt. (Cornell University Press, 2005). 978-0801489631.
• Linda Alcoff (1991–2), “The Problem of Speaking for Others.” (PDF)

Recommended

• Sally Haslanger (2005), “Gender and Social Construction.” (PDF)

Optional

• Patricia Hill Collins, “The Politics of Black Feminist Thought.” Chapter 1 in Black Feminist Thought. 2^nd ed. (Routledge, 2000). 978-0415924849. [Preview with Google Books]

Session 5: Keywords

• No readings assigned.

Week 4

Session 6: Sex and gender:  What is the work that sex does? 

• Paisley Currah, “Introduction.” In Sex Is As Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity (New York University Press, 2022). 978-0814717103. [Preview with Google Books]
• ———, “‘If Sex Is Not a Biologic Phenomenon’.” Chapter 1 in Sex Is As Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity (New York University Press, 2022). 978-0814717103. [Preview with Google Books]

Recommended

• Paisley Currah, “The Work That Sex Does." In Intimate States: Gender, Sexuality, and Governance in Modern U.S. History. Edited by Margot Canaday, Nancy F. Cott, and Robert O. Self. (University of Chicago Press, 2021). 978-0226794754.
• Anne Fausto-Sterling, “Why Sex Is Not Binary,” New York Times, Oct. 25, 2018.
• ———, “Science Won’t Settle Trans Rights.” Boston Review, Feb. 10, 2020.
• ———, “Gender/Sex, Sexual Orientation, and Identity Are in the Body: How Did They Get There?,” Journal of Sex Research 56 (4–5): 529–55. Note that “SO” = sexual orientation. 

Session 7: Sexism/Sex oppression

• Marilyn Frye (1983), “Oppression.” In Gender Basics: Feminist Perspectives on Women and Men. 2^nd ed. Edited by  Anne Minas. (Cengage Learning, 2000). 978-0534528393. 
• Iris Marion Young (1990), “Five Faces of Oppression.” Chapter 2 in Justice and the Politics of Difference. (Princeton University Press, 1990). 978-0691023151. [Preview with Google Books]
• Emi Koyama (2001), “The Transfeminist Manifesto.” (PDF)  

Recommended

• Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Signs 5, no.4 (1980): 631–60.

Week 5

Session 8: How to be an antiracist?  

Please first read Kendi; then afterwards read Vennochi’s Op Ed.     

• [K] Introduction, Chs. 1–5, 9–12. [Preview with Google Books]
• Joan Vennochi, “Is There Only One Way to Think, Talk, Teach, and Write about Racism?,” Boston Globe, September 25, 2023.

Optional

• Mike Damiano and Hilary Burns, “Following Layoffs, Boston University Announces ‘Inquiry’ Into Ibram Kendi’s Antiracist Center,” Boston Globe, September 20, 2023.
• ———, “‘I Had to Take the Long View.’ Ibram Kendi Defends Management of Embattled Research Center,” Boston Globe, September 21, 2023.

Session 9: The costs of structural racism 

Reading (if you have time)

• [M] [Preview with Google Books]

Video

• Heather McGhee, “Racism Has a Cost for Everyone.” December 2019. TEDWomen. 
• “Magic City Books—Heather McGhee Virtual Event.” February 22, 2021. YouTube. (This is an hour-long podcast Heather McGhee did with Ibram Kendi.)

Optional video

• “Heather McGhee: The Sum of Us.” April 20, 2021. YouTube. (This video features McGhee with Helene Gayle, CEO of The Chicago Community Trust.)
• “Heather McGhee and Sen. Elizabeth Warren: The Sum of Us.” February 17, 2021. YouTube.

Week 6

• No readings assigned. 

Week 7

Session 11: Sexuality

• Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” Chapter 5 in Sister Outsider (Penguin Publishing Group, 2020). 978-0143134442. [Preview with Google Books]
• Gayle S. Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality.”(PDF) Chapter 9 in Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader. Edited by Richard Parker and Peter Aggleton. (UCL Press, 1999). 978-1857288117. 

Recommended (on being bi-)

• Jan Clausen, “My Interesting Condition.” Journal of Sex Research 27, no. 3 (1990): 445–59.

Session 12: Trans*—What’s in a name?  What’s in a body?

• [H] “Preface.” [Preview with Google Books]
• [H] Chapter 1: Trans* What’s in a Name? [Preview with Google Books]
• [H] Chapter 2: Making Trans* Bodies. [Preview with Google Books]

Week 8

Session 13

No readings assigned.

Session 14: Trans* as a social movement

• [H] Chapter 3: Becoming Trans*. [Preview with Google Books]
• [H] Chapter 4: Trans* Generations. 
• [H] Chapter 6: Making Trans* Feminism. 
• [H] “Conclusions.” 

Optional

• [H] Chapter 5: Trans* Representation.

Week 9

Session 15: Gender and the social construction of the welfare state 

• Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon, “A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State.” Signs 19, no. 2 (1994): 309–36.
• Wahneema Lubiano, “Black Ladies, Welfare Queens, and State Minstrels: Ideological War by Narrative Means.” In Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power. Edited by Toni Morrison. (Pantheon, 1992). 978-0679741459. 
• Steven Klein, “America Is Learning to Reject Socialism, but Love the Welfare State.” Foreign Policy, February 17, 2021.

Recommended

• Nancy Folbre, “The Nanny State.” Chapter 4 in The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family (New Press, 2001). 978-1565846555. 
• Crittenden, Ann, “How Mothers’ Work Was ‘Disappeared’: The Invention of the Unproductive Housewife.” Chapter 3 in The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued (Picador, 2010). 978-0312655402. 
•  ———, “The Welfare State Versus a Caring State.” Chapter 10 in The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued (Picador, 2010). 978-0312655402. 

Session 16: Militarism and gender

• Carol Cohn, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals.” Signs 12, no. 4 (1987): 687–718.
• ———, “Gender and National Security.” In A New Vision: Gender. Justice. National Security. (PDF) Edited by Tom Z. Collina and Cara Marie Wagner. Ploughshares Fund Study Report No. 5. April 2019.
• ———, “The Perils of Mixing Masculinity and Missiles,” New York Times, January 5, 2018.

Optional

Carol Cohn and Claire Duncanson, “How the Women, Peace and Security Agenda Must Change in Response to the Climate Crisis.” Consortium on Gender, Security & Human Rights. December 3, 2020.

———, “Women, War and Climate Change.” War Resisters’ International. December 15, 2020.

For reference

• Costs of War. Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs, Brown University.

Recommended podcast

• “Faculty Research Fellow Heidi Peltier Gives Talk on Post-9/11 Military Spending for MIT’s Radius Initiative.” The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. October 2020.

Week 10

Session 17: Twelve feminist lessons of war

• [E] Chapter 1: Women’s Wars Are Not Men’s Wars. [Preview with Google Books]
• [E] Chapter 3: Getting Men to Fight Isn’t So Easy. [Preview with Google Books]
• [E] Chapter 4: Women as Soldiers Is Not Liberation. [Preview with Google Books]
• [E] Chapter 8: Feminists Organize While War Is Raging. 
• [E] Chapter 10: Militarization Starts during Peacetime.
• [E] Chapter 11: Ukranian Feminists Lessons to Teach Us about War. 

Session 18: Public event: “Has Feminism Made Progress?” with Mary Harrington and Professor Anne McCants

• No readings assigned.

Week 11

Sessions 19 and 20: Class presentations

• No readings assigned.

Week 12

Session 21

• No readings assigned.

Week 13

Session 22: Embodied knowledge

• [C] “A Note about Gender, or Why Is This White Guy Writing about Being a Lesbian?” [Preview with Google Books]
• [C] “The Mountain” [Preview with Google Books]
• [C] Part I. Place: Clearcut: Explaining the Distance. 
• [C] Part I. Place: Losing Home. 
• [C] Part II. Bodies. 
• Eli Clare’s website.

Session 23: Abortion and criminalization of women 

• Martha Davis, “The State of Abortion Rights in the US.” (PDF) International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics 159 (2022): 324–29. 
• Lynn Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin, “Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States, 1973–2005: Implications for Women’s Legal Status and Public Health.” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 38, no. 2 (2013): 299–43. (Skim or skip methods & limitations; also health care professionals, pp. 326–31).
• Taylor Riley et al., “Abortion Criminalization: A Public Health Crisis Rooted in White Supremacy.” American Journal of Public Health 112, no. 11 (2022): 1662–67.
• Erica R. Meiners et al., “Why Policing and Prisons Can’t End Gender Violence.” Boston Review,  January 24, 2022.

Recommended

• Kari White et al., “Texas Senate Bill 8: Medical and Legal Implications.” (PDF) Texas Policy Evaluation Project, the University of Texas at Austin. Research Brief July 2021. 
• Sally Haslanger, “The Adoption ‘Alternative’.” Adoption & Culture 10, no. 2 (2022): 278–83.
• Amia Srinivasan, “Sex, Carceralism, Capitalism.” Chapter 6 in The Right to Sex (Picador Paper, 2022). 978-1250858795.
• Angela Y. Davis, “How Gender Structures the Prison System.” Chapter 4 in Are Prisons Absolute? (Seven Stories Press, 2003). 978-1583225813. [Preview with Google Books]
• ———,  “Abolitionist Alternatives.” Chapter 6 in Are Prisons Absolute? (Seven Stories Press, 2003). 978-1583225813. [Preview with Google Books]
• Dorothy E. Roberts, “Prison, Foster Care, and the Systemic Punishment of Black Mothers.” (PDF) UCLA Law Review 59 (2012): 1474–1500.

Week 14

Session 24: Pornography

• Catharine MacKinnon, “Not a Moral Issue.” (PDF)  Yale Law & Policy Review 2, no. 2 (1984): 321–45.
• Lisa Duggan, Nan D. Hunter, and Carole S. Vance, “False Promises: Feminist Anti-Pornography Legislation.” Chapter 3 in Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture (Routledge, 2006). 978-0415978736. 
• Amia Srinivasan, Excerpts from “Talking to My Students About Porn.” Chapter 2 in The Right to Sex (Picador Paper, 2022). 978-1250858795.
• adrienne maree brown, “Pleasure Dome:  You Can Say Yes to Pornography and Accountability.” Bitch Media. 2019.

Recommended

• Rae Langton, “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 22, no. 4 (1993): 293–330. 
• Laurie Shrage, “Feminist Perspectives on Sex Markets.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive. 2020.

Week 15

Session 25: Native American consciousness and consciousness of the land

• [KI] “The Council of Pecans.” [Preview with Google Books]
• [KI] “The Gift of Strawberries.” [Preview with Google Books]
• [KI] “Learning the Grammar of Animacy.” 
• [KI] “Allegiance to Gratitude.” 
• [KI] “Epiphany in the Beans.” 
• [KI] “The Three Sisters.” 
• [KI] “Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass.” 
• [KI] “The Honorable Harvest.” 
• [KI] “Sitting in a Circle.” 
• [KI] “Burning Cascade Head.” 
• MIT Land Acknowledgment

Podcast

• “The Council of Pecans.” March 1, 2021. YouTube.

Optional

• [KI] “Umbilicaria: The Belly Button of the World.”
• [KI] “The Sacred and the Superfund.”
• [KI] “People of Corn, People of Light.”
• [KI] “Collateral Damage.”
• [KI] “Epilogue: Returning the Gift.”
• Ufuoma Ovienmhada et al., “Towards a Substantive and Meaningful DEI Strategic Action Plan,” The Tech, April 15, 2021.
• adrienne maree brown, “Introduction.” In Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (AK Press, 2019). 978-1849353267. [Preview with Google Books]
• ———, “Love as Political Resistance.” In Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (AK Press, 2019). 978-1849353267. 
• ———, “Principles in Practice.” In Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (AK Press, 2019). 978-1849353267. 

Optional video

• “#HonorNativeLand.” YouTube.