Comparative Feminisms 01:988:303, Section 2
RACE, GENDER, AND NATION
Imperialisms: Difference, Pathology, and Terror
Fall 2013, 01:988:329
Mon/Thurs, 10:55 am -12:15 pm, RAB 208
Professor:Julie Rajan,
Office Hours:Thursday 9:30 to 10:30 am
Ruth Dill Johnson Crockett, Room 201
Description:
Race, Gender, Nation explores how imperial constructions of race, gender, class, sexuality, and other variables affect present imaginaries of Otherness in the “nation.” We will explore some of these imaginaries of “otherness” through the following contexts/variables: indigenous and minority rights, including those of Native Americans in the US and Dalits in South Asia; trafficking in Europe and Saudi Arabia; genocide in Rwanda; violence against women both in terms of reproductive rights and rape in war in the former Yugoslavia and in the partition of India; and iterations of the “nation,” as forged by the Global Christian Right within the US and Al Qaeda globally.
Requirements
Attendance and Participation25%
Bi-Weekly Response Papers (2 pages)25%
Oral presentation25%
Final Paper, 10 pages25%
All papers must be turned in hard copy.
*NO RESPONSE PAPERS DUE ON WEEK OF PRESENTATION
*LATE PAPERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.
*PRESENTATIONS CANNOT BE RESCHEDULED.
Absences and Lateness:
No more than two full absences from class will be allowed. These two absences include illness. Note that more than two absences will have a profound affect on your grade. For example, if you have a borderline A/B+ but have been absent 3 times, you will likely get the B+ or even lower, depending on your participation and effort. Continuous lateness and lack of participation/preparation will have a similar affect on your grade. If you are late for a class or miss a class, you are responsible for making up the material on your own time.
Prolonged illnesses should be discussed with the instructor right away.
Rules on Respect:
It is highly critical that you treat your classmates and their beliefs/opinions, however contrary to your own, with respect. Disparaging comments toward any individual, religion, or culture will not be tolerated. Anyone failing to follow these rules will be asked to leave the class immediately and will receive an absence for that day.
Do not talk over your classmates and do not interrupt them. If you have something to say, raise your hand.
Turn off all cell phones, beepers, etc., in class.
Academic Integrity:
The following paragraphs are excerpted from Rutgers University’s policy on academic integrity.
“Academic integrity requires that all academic work be wholly the product of an individual or individuals. Joint efforts are legitimate only when the assistance of others is explicitly acknowledged. Ethical conduct is the obligation of every member of the university community and breaches of academic integrity constitute serious offences.”
There are four (4) levels of violations of Academic Integrity. Examples of these violations are:
Level One:“Improper footnoting or unauthorized assistance on academic work.”
Level Two:“Quoting directly or paraphrasing without proper acknowledgement on a moderate portion of the assignment, failure to acknowledge all sources of information and contributors who helped with an assignment, or submission of the same work for more than one course without the permission of the instructor.”
Level Three:“Copying from or giving others assistance on an hourly or final examination, plagiarizing major portions of an assignment, using forbidden material on an hourly or final, using a purchased term paper, presenting the work of another as one’s own, altering a graded examination for the purposes of regrading.”
Level Four:Forgery of grade change forms, theft of examinations, having a substitute take an examination, dishonesty relating to a senior thesis, master’s thesis, or doctoral dissertation, sabotaging another’s work, the violation of the ethical code of the profession, or all infractions committed after the return from suspension for a previous violation.”
Sanctions for these violations range from attending a required workshop on ethics to expulsion from the university with a permanent notation on the student’s transcript.
(taken from the Undergraduate Catalogue, 1995-1997, p. 476)
See handout on Rutgers University Honor Code.
Refer to website http://techx.rutgers.edu/integrity/policy.html
WEEKLY ASSIGNMENTS
September 5 Introduction and Logistics
Thurs 5
Logistics
January 9 and 12 Imperial Postulations of Race and Gender:
Difference as Pathology
PAPERS GROUP A
Mon 9
Ann McClintock. “The Lay of the Land: Genealogies of Imperialism.”
Imperial Leather. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Thurs 12
David Brakke, “Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, Volume 10, Number 3 and 4 (July/October 2001): 501-535.
September 16 and 19 Sexual Deviance and Imperial Stability
PAPERS GROUP B
Mon 16
Sander Gilman. “The Hottentot and the Prostitute.” Difference and Pathology.
Cornell, NY: Cornell UP, 1985.
Thurs, 19
Siobhan Somerville. “Scientific Racism and the Invention of the Homosexual Body.” Sexology in Culture: Labeling Bodies and Desires. Lucy Bland and Laura Doan, eds. London: Polity, 1998: 60-76.
September 23 and 26 Imperial Roots: The Nation and Nationalism
PAPERS GROUP A
Mon 23
Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 1983: 1-46, 141-85.
Lloyd Kramer. “Historical Narratives and the Meaning of Nationalism.” Journal of the History of Ideas 58.3 (1997) 525-545.
PRESENTATIONS
Thurs 26
Daniel K. Williams. “The Christian Right's Partisan Commitment.” Historically Speaking, Volume 12, Number 2 (April 2011): 7-9.
Documentary: Jesus Camp
September 30 and October 3 Genocide as Nation Building
PAPERS GROUP B
Mon 30
Richard Mullender. “Nazi Law and the Concept of Community.” University of Toronto Law Journal, Volume 58, Number 3 (Summer 2008): 377-387.
Mohammed M. Hafez. “Takfir and Violence against Muslims.” Assaf Moghadam and Brian Fishman, eds. Fault Lines in Global Jihad (Routledge, 2011).
PRESENTATIONS
Thurs 3
Fred Grünfeld and Wessel Vermeulen. “Failures to Prevent Genocide in Rwanda (1994), Srebrenica (1995), and Darfur (since 2003).” Genocide Studies and Prevention, Volume 4, Number 2 (Summer 2009): 221-237.
START Documentary: Ghosts of Rwanda
October 7 and 10 Genocide as Nation Building
PAPERS GROUP A
Mon 7
Finish Documentary: Ghosts of Rwanda
Thurs 10
James T. Carroll. “The Smell of the White Man Is Killing Us: Education and Assimilation among Indigenous Peoples.” U.S. Catholic Historian, Volume 27, Number 1, Winter 2009: 21-48.
PRESENTATION
October 14 and 17 Gendercide: National Borders and Sexual Honor
PAPERS GROUP B
Mon 14
Rosalind Petchesky. “Beyond a Woman’s Right to Choose: Feminist Ideas about Reproductive Rights.” Abortion and Women’s Choices: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom (1990).
Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin. “Honorably Dead: Permissible Violence Against Women” and “Borders and Bodies.” Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition. New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1998.
Thurs 17
Todd A. Salzman. “Rape Camps as a Means of Ethnic Cleansing: Religious, Cultural, and Ethical Responses to Rape Victims in the Former Yugoslavia.” Bert B. Lockwood, ed., Women’s Rights: A Human Rights Quarterly Reader (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2006).
Anna Maedl, “Rape as Weapon of War in the Eastern DRC?: The Victims’ Perspective.” Human Rights Quarterly, Volume 33, Number 1, February 2011: 128-147.
Documentary: “I Came to Testify”
October 21 and 24 National Anxieties about Sexual “Otherness”
PAPERS GROUP A
Mon 21
Ingrid Banks. “Hair Still Matters.” Barbara Balliet, ed. Women, Culture, and Society Reader. Kendall, 2002.
Paul B. Franklin. “Jew Boys, Queer Boys: Rhetorics of Anti-Semitism and Homophobia in the Trial of Nathan ‘Babe’ Leopold Jr. and Richard ‘Dickie’ Loeb.” Lillian Fadarman and Larry Gross, eds. Between-Men, Between-Women: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Studies (New York: Columbia UP, 2003).
PRESENTATIONS
Thurs 24
Yen Le Espiretu. “All Men Are Not Created Equal: Asian Men in US History.” Michael S. Kimmel and Michael A. Messner, eds. Men's Lives (fourth edition) (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997), 35-44.
Alfredo Mirande. “Macho”: Contemporary Conceptions.” Hombres y Machos: Masculinity and Latino Culture. (Westview Press, 1997), 26-36.
PRESENTATIONS
October 28 and 31 Minorities and Diasporas
PAPERS GROUP B
Mon 28
Walda Katz-Fishman and Jerome Scott. “The Increasing Significance of
Class: Black-Jewish Conflict in the Post-Industrial Global Era.” V. P., Franklin, Nancy L. Grant, Harold M. Kletnick, and Genna Rae McNeil, eds., African Americans and Jews in the Twentieth Century (Missouri, 1998).
PRESENTATIONS
Thurs 31
Dinesh D’Souza. “Uncle Tom’s Dilemma.” The End of Racism (Free Press, 1996).
PRESENTATIONS
November 4 and 7 Indigenous/Caste
PAPERS GROUP A
Mon 4
Sesha Kethineni and Gail Diane Humiston. “Dalits, the ‘Oppressed People’ of India: How are Their Social, Economic, and Human Rights Addressed?” War Crimes, Genocide, & Crimes against Humanity, Volume 4 (2010): 99-140.
Bama, “Sangati.”
Documentary: Untouchable Country: The Black Dalits of India
Thurs 7
Angela Kocze. “Ethnicity and Gender in the Politics of Roma Identity in Post
Communist Countries.” Violence and Gender in the Globalized World: The Intimate and the Extimate, ed. Sanja Bahun-Radunović and V.G. Julie Rajan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).
Yifat Susskind. “Indigenous Women’s Anti-Violence Strategies.” In Sanja Bahun-Radunović and V.G. Julie Rajan, eds. Violence and Gender in the Globalized World: The Intimate and the Extimate, eds. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2008.
PRESENTATIONS
November 11 and 14 A Matter of Class: The Homeless,
Trafficked, and Welfare Queens
PAPERS GROUP B
Mon 11
Graham Riches. “Hunger, Welfare and Food Security: Emerging Strategies.”
Graham Riches, ed., First World Hunger: Food Security and Welfare Politic. London: MacMillan, 1997.
Julilly Kohler-Hausmann. “The Crime of Survival”: Fraud Prosecutions, Community Surveillance and the Original “Welfare Queen.” Journal of Social History, Volume 41, Number 2 (Winter 2007): 329-354.
PRESENTATIONS
Thurs 14
Human Rights Watch. "’Bad Dreams’: Exploitation and Abuse of Migrant Workers in Saudi Arabia.” July 2004
Annegret Staiger. “The Economics of Sex Trafficking Since the Legalization of Prostitution in Germany 2002.” The Protection Project Journal of Human Rights and Civil Society, 2, (2009): 103-119.
PRESENTATIONS
******NOV 18 AND 21 THANKSGIVING RECESS – NO CLASSES******
November 25 and 28 The Other as Terror: U.S. Borders Post-9/11
FINAL PAPER ABSTRACT DUE
PAPERS GROUP A
Mon 25
Jasbir Puar and Amit Rai. “Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism
and the Production of Docile Patriots.” Social Text 72, Vol. 20, No. 3, Fall 2002.
Rachel Ida Buff. “Deportation Terror.” American Quarterly, Volume 60, Number 3 (September 2008): 523-551.
Julie Rajan. “Re-Assessing Identity: A Post 9/11 Detainee Offers a New Perspective on Rights.” The Subcontinental. Washington, D.C. Summer 2003.
PRESENTATIONS
Thurs 28
Anne McClintock. “Paranoid Empire: Specters from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.” Small Axe, Number 28, Volume 13, Number 1 (March 2009): 50-74.
Kelly Oliver. “Women: The Secret Weapon of Modern Warfare?” Hypatia vol. 23, no. 2 (April–June 2008).
Documentary: The Invisible War
December 2 and 5 Imperial Legacies:
The Case of Israel-Palestine
PAPERS GROUP B
Mon 2
Rose Shomali Musleh. When the Abnormal Becomes the Normal: The Case of Palestine.” Special Issue: Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies
WEBSITE TO BE ANNOUNCED
BEGIN Documentary: “To Die in Jerusalem”
Thurs 5
FINISH Documentary: “To Die in Jerusalem”
December 9 Imperial Legacies:
Islamist Al Qaeda v. The Christian West
Mon 9
Ray Takeyh and Nikolas K. Gvosdev. “Do Terrorist Networks Need a Home?” The Washington Quarterly, Volume 25, Number 3 (Summer 2002): 97-108.
Derek Gregory. “The Land Where the Red Tulips Grew.” The Colonial Present. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).
FINAL PAPER DUE WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11 IN MY MAILBOX RDJC, SECOND FLOOR BY 2 PM