CEU Department of Gender Studies
Winter term 2004/2005
Mandatory 2 credits course
Introduction to Feminist Epistemologies
Mona Singer
Course Description
The seminar will involve a critical examination of feminist epistemologies situated at the intersection of philosophical, sociological and cultural investigations of knowledge. We will tackle crucial questions, ideas, and arguments by which feminist approaches can be identified as powerful challenges to mainstream epistemologies. The main themes to be considered are the rethinking of the knowing subject and the insistence on its embodiment; the connections made between knowledge, power and empowerment; the rethinking of truth and objectivity and of the subject-object-relation (especially in relation to technoscientific realities).
We will examine different positions - alongside the changes of perspectives in feminist theory - and shall discuss their implications, perspectives and problems.
Furthermore the scope of this seminar reaches out to situate feminist epistemologies in-between sociological and philosophical perspectives and to make critical and empowering sense of this in-betweeness. The question of empowerment will be in the foreground and thus the accounts of the relations between knowledge and politics.
Feminist Epistemologies provide the context and the tools to start thinking of knowledge from unusual places. They raise crucial questions which are subject to any feminist research. The aim of the course is to provide students with a thorough knowledge of the key concepts, to initiate critical considerations and investigations into the relations between knowers and known and to promote self-reflexivity as a knowledge producer.
Organisation of the seminar
The seminar will meet for four-hour sessions (= 2 units) plus additional discussion time and the course altogether has six sessions.
Each of the units include a lecture on the current topic (which are listed in the following course outline) followed by a discussion of the topic inspired by the proposed texts (for discussion the seminar will be divided into two groups).
The course is divided into six main sections along the following themes
I: Introduction: feminist epistemologies - background, common denominators, starting points and some objections
II: Feminist Standpoint Theory: the classic version - strong connections made between women’s lives, standpoints and a better view from below
III: Feminist Empiricism and Empirical Epistemology: feminist empiricism in comparison to empirical epistemology carried out by the sociology of scientific knowledge
IV: Situated Knowledges and the Science Question: taking postcolonial and postmodernist critique into account
V: The Truth is Not Out There: constructivism vs. realism, rethinking the subject-object-relation, updating situatedness technoscientifically
VI: Science, Objectivity and Engaged Vision: confronting the neutrality ideal, rethinking objectivity, discussing engaged vision
Course Requirements
- Class Participation (40%)
Students are required to attend class regularly and to prepare for the discussions by reading the texts listed below. The texts marked by * are compulsory reading.
2) Seminar paper (60%)
The final seminar paper shall have a minimum of 15 pages.
Topics and reading
I. Introduction
Unit 1: Key concepts and starting points
* Lorraine Code, "Feminist Epistemology", in: Dancy, Jonathan/ Sosa, Ernest (eds.), A Companion to Epistemology, Oxford, UK & Malden, Mass.: Blackwell 1992, pp. 138-142.
* Helen Longino, "Feminist Epistemology", in: Greco, John/ Sosa, Ernest (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, Oxford, UK & Malden, Mass.: Blackwell 1999, pp. 327-354.
Lynn Hankinson Nelson, "Feminist Philosophy of Science", in Peter Machamer/ Michael Silberstein (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science, Oxford, UK & Malden, Mass.: Blackwell 2002, pp. 312-331.
Hilary Rose, "Is a Feminist Science Possible? In Love, Power and Knowledge: Toward a Feminist Transformation of the Sciences, Cambridge & Oxford: Polity Press 1994, pp. 1-27.
Alessandra Tanesini, "Varieties of Epistemology" and "Feminism and ‘Malestream’ Epistemology", in An Introduction to Feminist Epistemologies, Oxford, UK & Malden, Mass.: Blackwell 1999, pp. 3-37 and pp. 38-65.
Evelyn Fox Keller, "The Origin, History, and Politics of the Subject Called ‘Gender and Science’", in: Sheila Jasanoff/ Gerald E. Markle/ James C. Petersen/ Trevor Pinch (eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, Thousand Oaks & London & New Delhi: Sage 1994, pp. 80-94.
Unit 2: Feminist Epistemology – an oxymoron?
* Sylvia Walby, "Against Epistemological Chasms: The Science Question in Feminism Revisited", Signs 26, 2001, 2: 485-509.
Sandra Harding, "Comment on Walby’s ‚Against Epistemological Chasms: The Science Question in Feminism Revisited‘: Can Democratic Values and Interests Ever Play a Rationally Justifiable Role in the Evaluation of Scientific Work?", Signs 26, 2001, 2: 511-525.
Margareta Halberg, "Feminist Epistemology - An Impossible Project?", Radical Philosophy 53, 1989: 3-7.
Paul Gross/Norman Levitt, "Auspicating Gender", in Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrells with Science, Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press 1994, pp. 107-148.
II. Feminist Standpoint Theory:
Starting off Research from Women’s Lives
Unit 3: A better view from below: doing feminist science
* Nancy Hartsock, "The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism", in The Feminist Standpoint Revisited and Other Essays, Boulder & Oxford: Westview Press 1998, pp. 105-132.
* Sandra Harding, "Feminist Standpoint Theory", in Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives, Ithaca & New York: Cornell University Press 1991, pp. 119-163.
Hilary Rose, "Hand, Brain and Heart: A Feminist Epistemology for the Natural Sciences", Signs 9, 1983, 1: 73-96.
Hilary Rose, "Thinking and Caring: Feminism’s Construction of a Responsible Rationality", in Love, Power and Knowledge, pp. 28-50.
Georg Lukács, "III: The Standpoint of the Proletariat", in History and Class Consciousness, London 1983, source:
Unit 4: Standpoint theory revisited: critique and reply
* Susan Hekman, "Truth and Method: Standpoint Theory Revisited", Signs 22, 1997, 21: 341-365,
and the comments by
Nancy Hartsock (pp. 367-374)
Patricia Hill Collins (pp. 375-381)
Sandra Harding (pp. 382-391) and
Dorothy Smith (pp. 392-398)
Alison Wylie, "Why Standpoint Matters", in: Figueroa, Robert/Harding, Sandra (eds), Science and Other Cultures: Issues in Philosophies of Science and Technology, London & New York: Routledge 2003, pp. 26-48.
Sandra Harding, "Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is 'Strong Objectivity'?" in: Alcoff, Linda/ Potter, Elizabeth (eds.), Feminist Epistemologies, London & New York: Routledge 1993, pp. 49- 82.
Rosemary Hennessy, "Feminist Standpoint, Discourse, and Authority: From Women’s Lives to Ideology Critique", in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse, London & New York: Routledge 1993, pp. 67-99.
Dick Pels, "Strange Standpoints: Or, How to Define the Situation for Situated Knowledge", Telos 108, 1996: 65- 92.
Sandra Harding, The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, London & New York: Routledge 2003.
III. Feminist Empiricism and Empirical Epistemology
Unit 5: Feminist empiricism: doing science as a feminist
* Alessandra Tanesini, "Feminist Empiricism", in An Introduction to Feminist Epistemologies, pp. 95-113.
Richmond Campell, "The Virtues of Feminist Empiricism", Hypatia 9, 1994, 1: 89-115.
Lynn Hankinson Nelson, "Empiricism and Feminist Science Criticism" and "Who Knows", in Who Knows: From Quine to a Feminist Empiricism, Philadelphia: Temple University Press1990, pp. 3-42 and pp. 255-299.
Lynn Hankinson Nelson, Empiricism without Dogmas, in: Lynn Hankinson Nelson/ Jack Nelson (eds.), Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy of Science, Dordrecht & Boston & London: Kluwer Academic Publishers 1996, pp. 95-120.
Helen Longino, "Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Values in Science: Rethinking Dichotomy", in Nelson/Nelson (eds.), Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy of Science, pp. 39-58.
Helen Longino, "Subjects, Power and Knowledge: Description and Prescription in Feminist Philosophies of Science", in: Alcoff/ Potter (eds.): Feminist Epistemologies, pp. 101-120.
Unit 6: Feminist epistemologies and sociology of scientific knowledge – similarities and differences
* Helen Longino, "Taking Social Studies of Science Seriously", in The Fate of Knowledge, Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press 2002, pp. 11-41.
* Joseph Rouse, "Feminism and the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge", in: Nelson/ Nelson (eds.), Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy of Science, pp. 195-215.
Hilary Rose, "My Enemy‘s Enemy Is– Only Perhaps – My Friend", in: Andrew Ross (ed.), Science Wars, Durham & London: Duke University Press 1996, pp. 80-101.
Karin Knorr-Cetina and Michael Mulkay, "Introduction: Emerging Principles in Social Studies of Science", in Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Studies of Science, London & Beverly Hills & New Delhi: Sage 1983, pp. 1-18.
Karin Knorr-Cetina, "Laboratory Studies: The Cultural Approach to The Study of Science", in: Sheila Jasanoff/ Gerald E. Markle/ James C.Petersen/ Trevor Pinch (eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, London & New York: Routledge 1994, pp.140–166.
Meera Nanda, "The Epistemic Charity of Social Constructivist Critics of Science and Why the Third World Should Refuse the Offer", in: Koertge, Noretta (ed.), A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science, Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press 1998, S. 296-312.
IV: Situated Knowledges and the Science Question
Unit 7: Situated knowledges
* Donna Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective", in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, London: Free Associations Books 1991, pp. 183-201.
* Patricia Hill Collins, "The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought", Signs 14, 1989, 41: 745-773.
Sandra Harding, "Postcolonial Feminist Science Studies: Resources, Challenges, Dialogues", in Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1998, pp. 73-88.
Alessandra Tanesini, " Feminism and Postmodernism", in An Introduction to Feminist Epistemologies, pp. 237-269.
Ann E. Cudd, "Multiculturalism as a Cognitive Value of Scientific Practice", in: Uma Narayan/ Sandra Harding (eds.), Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 2000, pp 299-317.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty: Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, in: Williams, Patrick/ Chrisman Laura (eds.), Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory.A Reader, New York/London/Toronto/Sydney /Tokyo/Singapore 1994, pp. 196-220.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty: "Under Western Eyes" Revisited: Feminist Solidarity througj Anticapitalist Struggles, in: Feminism Without Borders, Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Durham & London: Duke University Press 2003, pp. 221-251.
Sandra Harding, "Introduction: Eurocentric Scientific Illiteracy – A Challenge for World Community", in The "Racial" Economy of Science. Toward a Democratic Future, edited by Sandra Harding, Bloomington/ Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1993, pp. 1-29.
David Wade Chambers/ Richard Gillespie, "Locality in the History of Science: Colonial Science, Technoscience, and Indigenous Knowledge", in: Osiris 15, 2000: 221-240.
Unit 8: Starting research from marginal lives
* Paula M. L. Moya, "Postmodernism, ‘Realism’, and the Politics of Identity", in: Alexander, Jacqui/ Mohanty, Chandra Talpade (eds.), Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, New York & London: Routledge 1997, pp. 125-150.
* Sandoval, Chela: U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Oppositional Consciousness in the Postmodern World (1991), in: Reina Lewis (ed.), Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, London & New York: Routledge 2003, 75–102.
Bat-Ami Bar On, "Marginality and Epistemic Privilege", in Alcoff/ Potter (eds.), Feminist Epistemologies, pp. 83-100.
Norma Alarcón: The Theoretical Subject(s) of This Bridge Called My Back and Anglo-American Feminism, in: Calderón, Hector/Saldívar, José David (eds.): Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano Literature, Culture, and Ideology, Durham, N.C., 1990, pp. 28-39.
Jane Duran, "Beginnings: Knowledges/Foci", in Worlds of Knowing: Global Feminist Epistemologies, New York & London: Routledge 2001, pp. 3-22.
Lorraine Code, "How to Think Globally: Stretching the Limits of Imagination", in: Narayan/ Harding (eds.), Decentering the Center, pp. 67-79.
Henrietta Moore, "Divided We Stand: Sex, Gender and Sexual Difference", in: Feminist Review, 47 (1994): 78-95.
Alison Bailey, "Locating Traitorous Identities: Toward a View of Privileged-Cognizant White Character", in Narayan/ Harding (eds.), Decentering the Center, pp. 283-298.
Linda Martín Alcoff, "What Should White People Do?", in Narayan/ Harding (eds.), Decentering the Center, pp. 262-282.
Audre Lord, "The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, in Bhavnani, Kum-Kum (ed.), Feminism and ‚Race‘, Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press 2001, pp. 89-92.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Epistemology of the Closet", in Henry Abelove et al. (eds): The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, London: Routledge 1993, pp. 45-61.
V. The Truth is Not Out There
Unit 9: Situatedness in the context of technoscience
* Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the late Twentieth Century", in: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, London: Free Associations Books 1991, pp. 149-82.
* Nina Lykke, "Between Monsters, Goddesses and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science", in Nina Lykke/Rosi Braidotti (eds.), Between Monsters, Goddesses and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine and Cyberspace, London & New Jersey: Zed Books 1996, pp. 13-29.
Donna Haraway, "A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies", Configurations, 1994, 1: 59–71.
Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, How Like a Leaf: An Interview with Donna Haraway, New York & London: Routledge 1999, chap. V, pp. 119-170.
Chris Hables Gray /Heidi Figueroa-Sarriera /Steven Mentor (eds.), The Cyborg Handbook, New York & London: Routledge 1995.
Unit 10: Rethinking the subject-object-relation
* Karen Barad, "Agential Realism: Feminists Interventions in Understanding Scientific Practices," in: Biagioli, Mario (ed.), The Science Studies Reader, London & New York: Routledge 1999, pp. 1-11.
Karen Barad, "Meeting the Universe Halfway: Realism and Social Constructivism Without Contradiction", in: Nelson/ Nelson (eds.), Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy of Science, pp. 161-194.
Donna Haraway, "FemaleMan©MeetsOncoMouse™,in ModestWitness @SecondMillennium. FemaleMan©MeetsOncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience, New York & London: Routledge 1997, pp. 49-121.
Bruno Latour, "One More Turn After the Social Turn...", in: Biagioli (ed.), The Science Studies Reader, pp. 276-289.
An Interview with Bruno Latour (by T. Hugh Crawford), Configurations 1,1993, 2: 247-268.
David Bloor, "Anti-Latour", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30, 1999, 1: 81-112.
Donna Haraway, The Haraway Reader, New York & London: Routledge 2004.
VI: Science, Objectivity and Engaged Vision
Unit 11: Rethinking objectivity
*Sandra Harding, "After the Neutrality Ideal: Science, Politics, and Strong Objectivity‘", in: Social Research, 59, 1992, 3: 567–588.
* Lorraine Daston, "Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective", Social Studies of Science 22, 1992, 4: 597 - 618.
Sandra Harding, "Recovering Epistemological Resources: Strong Objectivity", in Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies, pp. 124-145.
Lorraine Daston, "Objectivity versus Truth", in: Hans Erich Bödeker/ Peter Hanns Reill / Jürgen Schlumbohm (eds.), Wissenschaft als kulturelle Praxis, 1750-1900, Göttingen 1999, pp. 17-32.
Elisabeth A. Lloyd, "Science and Anti-Science: Objectivity and Its Real Enemies", in: Nelson /Nelson (eds.), Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy of Science, pp. 217-259.
Kum-Kum Bhavnani, "Tracing the Contours: Feminist Research and Feminist Objectivity", Women's Studies International Forum 16, 1993, 2: 95-117.
Allan Megill, "Four Senses of Objectivity", Introduction to Megill (ed.), Rethinking Objectivity, Durham & London 1994, pp. 1-20.
Linda Martín Alcoff, "Immanent Truth", Science in Context 10, 1997, 1: 97-112.
Unit 12: Science and engaged vision
* Richard Levins, "Ten Propositions on Science and Anti-Science", in: Andrew Ross (ed.), Science Wars, Durham & London: Duke University Press 1996, pp. 180-191.