Course Description: This course will explore how women’s lives are shaped by the complex intersections of the major socially constructed systems of differentiation and power: race, class, gender and sexual orientation. We will read theoretical essays and articles based on empirical research that seek to explain how these systems operate and interact to shape group experiences and individual identities. To apply these understandings, we will analyze autobiographies of women from a wide range of race, culture, and class backgrounds. Moving beyond critiques of racism within feminism, we will examine how women of color have shaped feminist thought, and how all of us can participate together in feminist anti-racism work. Prerequisites: WMST 201 or instructor permission.
Course Objectives:
1. To analyze how race, class, gender and sexual orientation operate as socially constructed systems of differentiation and power that interact to shape group experiences and individual women’s lives.
2. To understand how feminists have theorized the workings and intersections of these dimensions of difference, and to test these theories in application to autobiographical texts.
3. To appreciate how women of color have worked to create multicultural feminisms that truly include all women.
4. To participate actively in feminist anti-racism work.
5. To develop critical analysis skills, particularly in dealing with issues of difference.
Course Requirements: Undergraduates
1. Weekly article reports: Each week, each student will submit, before the first class meeting of the week, an analysis of two of the articles assigned for the week—the starred reading and one other. Article reports will briefly summarize what you considered to be the author’s most important points and an idea from the reading that you would like the class to discuss. (300 words per article). (The class will be divided into article teams, so all the readings for each week are covered. Readings will be available on electronic reserve.) The instructor will create an agenda for the second class of the week from student-identified key questions/concepts. 26 article reports, 10 points maximum per report. (260 points.) Late Penalty: 2 points per class session late.
2. Synthesis Essays: at the end of each of three Parts of the course, each student will write a synthesis essay (4-6 pages) addressing one of the essay questions distributed at least a week before the due date. Essays should tie book read in this section to other readings. 3 synthesis essays, 150 points each, 450 points maximum.
3. Attendance and participation: 4 points max per class period: 1 for showing up, 1 for respectful attention/general comments, 2 for pertinent comments on readings. 8 bonus points for perfect attendance. 100 points max.
4. Analytical Experiential Essays: Analyzing personal experiences related to course concepts, specific reference to at least one reading. 2-4 pages, 50 points each, 100 points max. May be turned in any time during the semester before the last class.
Grading: 910 total maximum points
A= 860+ points AB= 810-859 B= 760-809 BC=710-759 C=660-709
CD=600-659 D=540-599 F= less than 539 points
Week 1. Introduction: course process, requirements, key concepts
Race Awareness exercises
Video: “Blue Eyed”
Book
for this section of course: bell hooks, Class Matters
Week 2. Differences among Women: Gender and Other Systems of Power and Dominance
Readings:
Brush, Paula Stewart. “Problematizing the Race Consciousness of Women of Color,”
Signs, 27:1 (2001) 171-198. EBSCO
Burnham, Linda. “Race and Gender: The Limits of Analogy,” in
Challenging Racism
and Sexism, ed. Tobach and Rosoff (NY:Feminist Press, 1994), pp.143-62.
King, Deborah K. “Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of Black
Feminist Ideology.” Signs 14:1 (1988), 42-72.
Lorde, Audre. “Age, Race, Class, Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” and “The Master’s
Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” in Sister Outsider (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1984), 110-123.
McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege and
Male Privilege,” in Women’s Voices, Feminist
Visions, Shaw & Lee, eds. (Mt. View, CA: Mayfield, 2001), 78-86.
Zinn, Maxine Baca and
Bonnie Thornton Dill. “Theorizing Difference from Multiracial
Feminism.” Feminist Studies, 22:2 (Summer 1996),
321-333. EBSCO
Week 3. Feminism and
Racism:
a. History: Interracial relationships among women
b. Women of Color critique racism within 1st and 2nd wave feminism
Readings:
Carby, Hazel. “White Woman Listen!: Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood,”
in Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference and Women’s Lives, Hennessy and Ingraham, eds., (NY: Routledge, 1997), pp. 110-128.
Chow, Esther Ngan-Ling.
“The Feminist Movement: Where Are All the Asian American
Women,” in Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings By and About Asian American Women, ed. by Asian Women United of California. Boston: Beacon, 1989, 362-377.
Pesquera, Beatriz M. and Denise A. Segura, “With Quill and Torch: A Chicana Perspective
Week 4. Problematizing Whiteness
a. Marking the unmarked, making privilege visible
b. White women’s Relationships to Feminism
Readings:
Frankenberg, Ruth. “`When We Are Capable of Stopping, We Begin to See’: Being White,
Seeing Whiteness,” in Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity, Thompson and Tyagi, eds. (NY:Routledge, 1996), 33-17.
Frye, Marilyn. “White
Woman Feminist,” in Willful Virgin: Essays in Feminism.
Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1992, pp. 147-169.
Hurtado, Aida and Abigail J. Stewart. “Through the Looking Glass: Implications of
Studying Whiteness for Feminist Methods,” in Off White: Readings on Race, Power, and Society (NY: Routledge, 1997), 297-311.
O’Grady,
Carolyn. “Seeing Things As They Are,”
in Becoming and Unbecoming White:
Owning and Disowning a Racial Identity, Clark and O”Donnell, eds. (Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1999), 122-136.
Week 5. Problematizing Class
a. More than economics: power, culture
b. Issues of Intersection and Mobility among women
Readings:
hooks, bell. Where We Stand: Class Matters. NY: Routledge, 2000. (entire book)
Maclean, Nancy. “The Hidden History of Affirmative Action: Working Women’s Struggles in
the 1970s and the Gender of Class.” Feminist Studies 25:1 (Spring 1999), 42-79.
First Synthesis Essay Due.
Book for this section: Maracle, I Am Woman;
Week 6: African American Women
a. Diversities of culture, class, color, region, sexual orientation
b. “Womanism” and Black Feminist Thought
Readings: selections from
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought. NY: Routledge, 1990. selections
King, Deborah K.,“Unraveling Fabric, Missing the Beat: Class and Gender in Afro-American
Social Issues.” TheBlack Scholar, Summer 1992, Vol. 22:3, p36-44 EBSCO
Williams, Rhonda M. “Being Queer, Being Black: Living Out in Afro-American Studies,” in
Is Academic Feminism Dead: Theory in Practice, Social Justice Group, Center for Feminist Studies, U Minn. (NY: NYU Press, 2000) 266-282.
Week 7: American Indian Women
a. Diversities of culture, reservation/urban, blood quantum, sexual orientation
b. American Indian feminism: traditional and contemporary
Readings:
Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth. “The Big Pipe Case,” in Why I Can’t Read
Wallace Stegner and
Other Essays: A Tribal Voice
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 110-125.
*Maracle, Lee. I Am Woman: A
Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism.
Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1996.
Klein, Laura F. and Lillian A. Ackerman, Women and Power in Native North America.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. selections
Shanley, Kathryn. “Blood Ties and Blasphemy: American Indian Women and the Problem
of History,” in Is Academic Feminism Dead: Theory in Practice, ed. by Social Justice Group, Center for Feminist Studies, U Minn. (NY: NYU Press, 2000), 204-232.
Roscoe, Will. “Warrior Women and Women Chiefs: Alternative Identities and Genders for
Native Women,” in Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 67-98.
Week 8: Asian American Women
a. Diversities of culture, region, class, immigrant generation, sexual orientation
b. Asian American feminism
Readings:
Chan, Suchen. “You’re Short, Besides!” in Making Face, Making Soul,
ed. Gloria Anzaldua
(San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1990), 162-168. (also in Woman That I Am)
*Mazumdar, Sucheta. “General
Introduction: A Woman-Centered Perspective on Asian
American History,” in Making Waves: An Anthology of
Writings By and About Asian
American Women, ed. by Asian Women United of California. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989, 1-22.
Kibria, Nazli, "Power, Patriarchy, and Gender: Conflict in the
Vietnamese Immigrant
Community," Gender and Society, March 1990.
Espiritu, Yen Le. “`Americans Have a Different Attitude’: Family, Sexuality and Gender in
Filipina American Lives, in Gender Through the Prism of Difference, Zinn et al., eds.
(Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2nd ed., 2000) 222-231.
Week 9. Chicanas and Latinas
a. Diversities of culture, class, region, immigrant generation, bilingualism, sexual orientation, mestizaje
b. Chicana and Latina feminism
Readings:
*Anzaldua, Gloria. “La conciencia de la mestiza/Towards
a New Consciousness,” in Borderland/
LaFrontera: The New Mestiza. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Press, 1999, 99-113.
Gonzalez, Deena. “Chicana
Identity Matters,” in Culture and Difference: Critical Perspectives
on the Bicultural Experience in the United States, Ed. by Antonia Darder. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1995, pp. 41-53.
Moraga, Cherrie. “A Long Line of Vendidas,”. in Loving in the War Years Boston: South End
Press, 1983) 90-142.
Sandoval, Chela.
“Mestizaje as Method: Feminists of Color Challenge the Canon,” in Living
Segura, Denise A. and Beatriz M. Pesquera. “Beyond Indifference and Antipathy: The Chicana
Movement and Chicana Feminist Discourse,” in Multicultural Experiences, Multicultural Theories, ed. Mary F. Rogers. (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1996), 395-409
Week 10. “Third World” Feminism Internationally
a. cultural differences and authentic voices
b. UN initiatives: Global Women’s Conferences
a. Globalization and development: Maquiladoras
Readings:
Fernandez-Kelly, Maria Patricia. “Maquiladoras: The View
from Inside,” in Women’s
Lives:Multicultural Perspectives, 2nd ed., Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, eds. (Mountain View, CA:Mayfield, 2001), 279-287.
Fort, Lucia, Mona Danner, and Gay Young, “Gender Inequality Around the World:
Comparing Fifteen Nations in Five World Regions,” in Color,Class and Country: Experiences of Gender, ed. by Gay Young and Bette J. Dickerson Atlantic Highlands: Zed Books, 1994, 131-151.
Lim, Shirley Geok-lin. “The Center Can(not) hold: American Studies and Global
Feminism.” American Studies Internaitonal 38:3 (October 2000), 25-36.
Louie, Miriam "Breaking the Cycle: Women Workers Confront Corporate Greed Globally,"
In Dragon Ladies, ed. Sonia Shah (Boston: South End Press, 1997), 121-131.
Book for this section: Thompson, A Hunger So Wide and So Deep; continue hooks.
Week 11. Motherhood
a. Challenging a “Naturally” and “Biologically” female role
b. Intersections and differences in race, sexual orientation and class
Readings:
Sparks, Elizabeth.
“Against All Odds: Resistance and Resilience in African American Welfare Mothers,” in Mothering Against
the Odds: Diverse Voices of Contemporary
Mothers, ed. Coll, Surrey and Weingarten (NY: Guilford Press, 1998), 215-237.
*Collins, Patricia Hill. “Shifting the Center: Race, Class and Feminist Theorizing About
Motherhood.” Representations of Motherhood, Bassin, Honey & Kaplan, eds (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 56-74.
Fumia, Doreen.
“Marginalized Motherhood and the Mother-Lesbian Subject,” Journal of
the
Association for Research on Mothering, 1: 1 (Spring/Summer 1999), 86-87.
Edwards, Arlene E. “Community Mothering: The Relationship Between Mothering and the
Community Work of Black Women,” Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 2:2 (Fall/Winter 2000), 87-100.
Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette, and Ernestine Avila. “`I’m Here, but I’m There’: The
Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood.” Gender & Society 11(1997), 548-71.
Week 12. Violence Against Women
a. Community, culture, sexuality and class issues in domestic violence
b. Women of color as activists working to end domestic violence.
Readings:
Bhattacharjee, Anannya. “The Public/Private Mirage: Mapping Homes and Undomesticating
Violence Work in the South Asian Immigrant Community,” in Feminist Geneaologies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, Mohanty and Alexander, eds. (NY: Routledge, 1997), 308-329.
Ritchie, Beth E. and Valli Kanuha. “Battered Women of Color in Public Health Care
Systems,” in Gender Through the Prism of Difference, Zinn et. al., eds. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000), 129-137.
Waldron, Charlene M. “Lesbians of Color and the Domestic
Violence Movement.” Journal of
Gay and Lesbian Social Services 4:1 (1/31/1996), 41-. Full text via Gender Watch.
*Narayan, Uma. “"Male-Order" Brides: Immigrant Women, Domestic Violence and
Immigration Law,” Hypatia (1995) 104—Full text via Gender Watch.
Week 13. Body Images and Health
a. Women of color Responses to racist/sexist beauty standards
b. Cultural factors involved in eating disorders
Readings: selections from:
*Becky Thompson, A Hunger So Wide and So Deep:A
Multiracial View of Women’s Eating
Problems (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
Bowen, Deborah J., Naomi Tomoyasu and Ana Mari Cauce, “The Triple Threat: A
Discussion of Gender, Class, and Race Differences in Weight,” in Gender, Culture and Ethnicity: Current Research about Women and Men, Peplau et. Al,eds. (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1999) 291-306.
Hurst, Charlice. “Sizing Up the Problem: The Politics of Body Image for Women of Color,”
Third Force 5:2 (6/30/1997), full text in Diversity Folio, Gender Watch.
Atkins, Dawn, ed. Looking
Queer: Body Image and Identity in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
Transgender Communities (Haworth, 1998)
DuCille, Ann. “Toy Theory: Black Barbie and the Deep Play of Difference,” in Skin Trade
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996) 8-59.
Week 14. Feminist Anti-Racism
Readings:
Connolly, Medria L. and Debra Noumair. “The White Girl in Me, the Colored Girl in
You, annd the Lesbian in Us: Crossing Boundaries,” in Off White: Readings on Race, Power, and Society, ed. Fine, Weis, Powell, and Wong (NY: Routledge, 1997), 322-32.
*hooks, bell. “Beloved Community: A World Without Racism,”
in Killing Rage: Ending
Racism (Boston: Henry Holt, 1995), 251-262.
Lorde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” in
Sister Outsider (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1984), 110-123.
Thompson, Becky. “Subverting Racism from Within: Linking White Identity to
Activism,” in Becoming and Unbecoming White, Clark and O’Donnell, eds. (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1999) 64-77.
Willie, Sarah. “Playing the Devil’s Advocate: Defending a Multiracial Identity in
Fractured Community,” in Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity, ed. Thompson and Tyagi, eds. (NY: Routledge, 1996), 274-281.
Third Synthesis Essay Due.
NOTE: This is a preliminary syllabus. When I find the most inclusive anthology—there are several possibilities--I will change the article assignments to focus mainly on that book rather than placing so many articles on reserve. We will still read two additional books. The articles included in this syllabus will still inform my presentations and be the focus of graduate student reading assignments.