The books listed below are the main readings for the course.
[Bechdel] = Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Mariner Books, 2007. ISBN: 9780618871711.
[Davis] = Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obsolete? Seven Stories Press, 2003. ISBN: 9781583225813.
[Dreger] = Dreger, Alice Domurat. One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal. Harvard University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780674018259. [Preview with Google Books]
[Lahiri] = Lahiri, Jhumpa. Unaccustomed Earth. Vintage Books, 2009. ISBN: 9780307278258.
[Lederman] = Lederman, Muriel, and Ingrid Bartsch, eds. The Gender and Science Reader. Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 9780415213585.
[Stryker] = Stryker, Susan. Transgender History. Seal Press, 2008. ISBN: 9781580052245.
[Levi] = Levi, Robin, and Ayelet Waldman, eds. Inside this Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons. McSweeney’s Books, 2011. ISBN: 9781936365500.
The readings table below features these, as well as others that are required reading for the course.
| WEEK # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction: Questions of Method / Theory |
Moi, Toril. ““I Am Not a Feminist, But…”: How Feminism Became the F-Word.” (PDF) Prevention of Money Laundering Act 121, no. 5, (2006) 1735–41. Eisenstein, Zillah R. “The Problem of Theorizing Feminism.” In Contemporary Feminist Theory: A Text / Reader. Edited by Mary F. Rogers. McGraw-Hill, 1997, pp. 484–90. ISBN: 9780070540026. Harding, Sandra. “Introduction: Is There a Feminist Method?” In Feminism and Methodology: Social Science Issues. Indiana University Press, 1988, pp. 1–14. ISBN: 9780253204448. [Preview with Google Books] Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” (PDF - 2.1MB) Feminist Review 30 (1988): 61–88. |
| 2 | Questions and Strategies: Social Sciences |
Hartsock, Nancy C. M. “The Feminist Standpoint: Toward a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism.” In Contemporary Feminist Theory: A Text / Reader. Edited by Mary F. Rogers. McGraw-Hill Humanities, 1997, pp. 258–72. ISBN: 9780070540026. Collins, Patricia Hill. “Learning from the Outsider Within.” Chapter 7 in Feminist Approaches to Theory and Methodology: An Interdisciplinary Reader. Edited by Sharlene Hesse-Buber, Christina Gilmartin, and Robin Lydenberg. Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 135–78. ISBN: 9780195125221. Narayan, Uma. “The Project of Feminist Epistemology: Perspectives from a Non-Western Feminist.” Chapter 36 in Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives. 3rd ed. Edited by Carole McGann and Seung-Kyung Kim. Routledge, 2013. ISBN: 9780415521024. Stryker, Susan. “(De) Subjugated Knowledges: An Introduction to Transgender Studies.” In The Transgender Studies Reader. Edited by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle. Routledge, 2006, pp. 1–18. ISBN: 9780415947091. |
| 3 | Questions and Strategies: Humanities |
Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” In Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985. W. W. Norton & Company, 1994. ISBN: 9780393311624. Scott, Joan Wallach “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” Chapter 2 in Gender and the Politics of History. Revised edition. Columbia University Press, 1999, pp. 28–50. ISBN: 9780231118576. Ahmed, Sara. “Whose Counting?” Feminist Theory 1, no. 1 (2000): 97–103. Winter, Bronwyn. “Who Counts (or Doesn’t Count) What as Feminist Theory? An exercise in Dictionary Use.” Feminist Theory 1, no. 1 (2000): 105–11. Ermath, Elizabeth. “[What Counts as Feminist Theory](http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1177/14647000022229100)?” Feminist Theory 1, no. 1 (2000): 113–18. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism.” Chapter 3.4 in Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Edited by Reina Lewis and Sara Mills. Routledge, 2003, pp. 306–23. ISBN: 9780415942751. |
| 4 | Questions and Strategies: The Sciences |
[Lederman] “Dominion Over Nature.” Chapter 8, pp. 68–81. [Lederman] “Selections from “The Flight to Objectivity.” Chapter 8, pp. 82–97. [Lederman] “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Chapter 15, pp. 169–88. [Lederman] “Democratizing Biology: Reinventing Biology from a Feminist, Ecological, and Third World Perspective.” Chapter 33, pp. 447–65. [Lederman] “Creating Sustainable Science.” Chapter 34, pp. 466–82. Wilson, Elizabeth A. “Somatic Compliance–Feminism, Biology and Science.” Australian Feminist Studies 14, no. 29 (1999): 7–18. For reference: National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering. National Academies Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780309100427. |
| 5 | Questions of Narration and Experience |
Weiler, Kathleen. “Reflections on Writing a History of Women Teachers.” Harvard Educational Review 67, no. 4 (1997): 635–57. [Lederman] “From Working Scientist to Feminist Critic.” Chapter 7, pp. 59–63. Scott, Joan. “The Evidence of Experience.” Chapter 4 in Feminist Approaches to Theory and Methodology: An Interdisciplinary Reader. Edited by Sharlene Hesse-Buber, Christina Gilmartin, and Robin Lydenberg. Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 79–99. ISBN: 9780195125221. [Bechdel] |
| 6 | Postructuralist Questions |
Scott, Joan W. “Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: or, The Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism.” Chapter 12 in Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences. 2nd ed. Edited by Anne C. Hermann and Abigail J. Stewart. Westview Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780813367880. Butler, Judith. Excerpt from Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. Routledge Classics, 2011. ISBN: 9780415610155. [Bechdel] |
| 7 | Bodies in Culture |
Halberstam, Judith. “An Introduction to Female Masculinity: Masculinity without Men.” Chapter 1 in Female Masculinity. Duke University Press. 1998, pp. 1–43. ISBN: 9780822322436. [Preview with Google Books] [Stryker] |
| 8 | Bodies and State Power |
Hodes, Martha. “The Mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story.” American Historical Review 108, no. 1 (2003): 84–118. [Davis] [Levi] |
| 9 | Production / Reproduction |
Coontz, Stephanie. “Reconceptualizing Family History.” Chapter 1 in The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families, 1600-1900. Verso, 1988. ISBN: 9780860919070. ———. “Results and Prospects: Toward the Twentieth-century Family.” Chapter 9 in The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families, 1600-1900. Verso, 1988. ISBN: 9780860919070. Roy, Modhumita. “Foreign Babies / Indian Make: Outsourcing Reproduction in the Age of Globalization.” Chapter 3 in Locating Cultural Change: Theory, Method, Process. Edited by Partha Pratim Basu and Ipshita Chanda. Sage Publications, 2011. ISBN: 9788132105763. Ragoné, Helena. “Of Likeness and Difference: How Race Is being Transfigured by Gestational Surrogacy.” Chapter 2 in Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism. Edited by Helena Ragoné and France Winddance Twine. Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 9780415921107. Colen, Shellee. “Like a Mother to Them: Stratified Reproduction and West Indian Childcare Workers and Employers in New York.” Chapter 5 in Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction. Edited by Faye D. Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp. University of California Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780520089143. [Preview with Google Books] |
| 10 | Bodies and Identities: The Case of Conjoined Twins |
[Dreger] Viewing TEDtalksDirector. “Alice Dreger: is anatomy destiny?” June 10, 2011. YouTube. Accessed July 25, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59-Rn1_kWAA |
| 11 | Globalized Capital and Globalized Women I |
Ault, Amber, and Eve Sandberg. “Our Politics, Their Consequences: Zambian Women’s Lives under Structural Adjustment.” In An Introduction to Women’s Studies: Gender in a Transnational World. 2nd ed. Edited by Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan. McGraw-Hill, 2005. ISBN: 9780072887181. Enloe, Cynthia. “Tracking the Militarized Global Sneaker.” Chapter 2 in Globalism and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link. Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. ISBN: 9780742541122. Haug, Frigga. “The Hoechst Chemical Company and Boredom with the Economy.” Chapter 14 in Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women’s Lives. Edited by Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham. Routledge, 1997. ISBN: 9780415916349. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Planetarity.” Chapter 3 in Death of a Discipline. Columbia University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780231129459. |
| 12 | Globalized Capital and Globalized Women II | [Lahiri] |
| 13 | The Crucial Question: What is to be Done? |
Spalter-Roth, Roberta, and Heidi Hartmann. “Small Happinesses: The Feminist Struggle to Integrate Social Research and Social Activism.” Chapter 15 in Feminist Approaches to Theory and Methodology: An Interdisciplinary Reader. Edited by Sharlene Hesse-Buber, Christina Gilmartin, and Robin Lydenberg. Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 333–47. ISBN: 9780195125221. Turner, Jenny. “As Many Pairs of Shoes as She Likes.” London Review of Books 33, no. 24 (2011): 11–5. Halberstam, Judith. “Introduction: Low Theory.” In The Queer Art of Failure. Duke University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780822350453. [Preview with Google Books] Sanders, Lise Shapiro. “Feminists Love a Utopia: Collaboration, Conflict and the Futures of Feminism.” Chapter 1 in Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration. 2nd ed. Edited by Stacy Gillis, Gillian Howie, and Rebecca Munford. Palgrave McMillan, 2007. ISBN: 9780230521742. Moore, Niamh. “Imagining Feminist Futures: The Third Wave, Postfeminism and Eco/feminism.” Chapter 10 in Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration. 2nd ed. Edited by Stacy Gillis, Gillian Howie, and Rebecca Munford. Palgrave McMillan, 2007. ISBN: 9780230521742. |
