Feminism, Disability, and Life Writing
WGS/DST 370, ENG 310A
TR 9:30-10:45
Frida Kahlo
Self-Portrait with the Portrait of Doctor Farill
1951
Oil on Masonite
16 1/2 x 19 3/4 in
Private collection, Mexico City
Cindy Lewiecki-Wilson
Office: 365 Bachelor Hall
Office Hours: T and W, 12-2
Phone: 9-7106, 9-5221
Email:
Course information on course Niihka website
Overview:
This course will explore feminism and disability through a study of life writing. Life writing “is more than a tool for salvaging memories,” as ethnographer Gela Frank declares.It can lead us into the lived realities and complexities of cultures, identities, and embodied experiences. Yet “storytelling is a survival tool” as well, as Harriet McBryde Johnson affirms at the start of her memoir. Storytelling through words or pictures—such the one above painted by Frida Kahlo just before her death—offer complex portraits of competing tensions and powers in the formation of identity.
Learning Goals:
I expect you to engage intellectually with the course reading through discussion and writing about texts written by others. I will ask students to take turns leading discussion. Importantly, this course also asks you to developyour own life writing—by giving you tools and space to reflect, analyze, and experiment with voice, style, genres and forms, including digital forms. We will also reflect on the ethics of representation, and explore different modes of production and delivery of your writing.
At the end of this course, you should be able to--
Identify and use critical concepts from gender/sexuality and disability studies to analyze texts.
Investigate intersecting forces of identity formation (e.g. race, class, gender/sexuality, nation, ability/disability) in texts you read or that you yourself produce.
Reflect on and critique ideologies of embodiment (whether based on gender and/or ableism) and use these intellectual tools in understanding your own life, position, and goals for the future.
Communicate across differences and represent your own and others’ experiences ethically.
Use critical gender and DS concepts to generate questions for your own lifelong learning and writing development.
Accommodations: I will strive to provide an environment that is equitable and conducive to achievement and learning for all students. I ask that we all be respectful of diverse opinions and of all class members. I encourage persons with disabilities or particular needs to meet with me to co-design accommodations, if necessary. I ask that we all use inclusive language in written and oral work. Students with disabilities may also want to register with the Office of Disability Resources, 19 Campus Ave. Bldg.
Texts to buy:
Frank, Gela. Venus on Wheels: Two Decades of Dialogue on Disability, Biography, and
Being Female
Johnson, Harriet McBryde. Too Late to Die Young: Nearly True Tales from a Life.
Lorde, Audre. The Cancer Journals.
Optional Text, either to buy or on Reserve at King Library:
Lewiecki-Wilson, Cynthia and Jen Cellio, eds. Disability and Mothering: Liminal Spaces of
Embodied Knowledge
Franits, “Mothers as Storytellers”
Robertson, “Sharing Stories: Motherhood, Autism, and Culture”
Jones-Garcia, “My Mother’s Mental Illness”
Maybee, “The Political is Personal: Mothering at the Intersections of Acquired
Disability, Gender, and Race”
Hughes-Tafen, “Intersecting Postcolonial Mothering and Disability”
Cassiman, “Mothering, Disability, and Poverty”
Electronic pdfs on Niihka:
Asch, Adrienne, “Critical Race Theory, Feminism, and Disability”
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie, “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory”
Greeley, Robin A., “Disability, Gender, and National Identity in the Painting of Frida
Kahlo”
Lindgren, Kristen, “Bodies in Trouble: Identity, Embodiment, and Disability”
Lorde, Audre, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” from Sister
Outsider
Various selections on life writing, interviewing, and ethnographic research
Course Work:
• Electronic reading/writing journal: Complete an informal reading response for each reading assignment of at least two typed pages. Your response should include some summary and reflection on the content and some notes and/or questions on the writing and/or inquiry style of the piece itself. That is, comment on the what it says and the how it says it. You can send me these via email or Dropbox in Niihka; you might also consider creating a WordPress blog and posting your responses on it (you are not required to do this, but you might enjoy making your writing more public). Will be graded on number of entries completed.
• Life Writing #1, “What It Feels Like to Be Me, or ‘Nearly True Tales from a Life’” (with a bow to Harriet McBryde Johnson): This 6-8 page personal narrative should creatively explore some aspect of your own identity and reflect on your relation to disability in some way, tell a story using scenes and dialogue, and weave in at least three references and snippets from our reading. Traditional letter grades.
• Life Writing #2, “Thinking Through our Real and Metaphorical Sister Outsiders”(with a bow to Audre Lorde and Gela Frank): This 6-8 pageethnographic profile of a woman is as much about you as about her. It should be about you and her both. That is, you as participant-observer-interviewer; you as the selector of values to focus on; you as the one who fully sees and develops this person’s significance and her relation to a cultural context. But also try to capture her as interlocutor in dialogue with you, her as “talking back” perhaps to your representation of her. Interviews required. Traditional letter grades.
• Life Writing #3, “Multilayered Cultural Portrait”(with a bow to Frida Kahlo): This project is open in topic and form of delivery. One goal is to capture the intersectional dimensions of several identities such as gender/sexuality, disability, race, nation in a subject that you explore, which could be a place or space, an organization, an event, or a person. I ask that you write a proposal first, and then meet with me to discuss and okay it. Second, I ask that you choose an appropriate form of delivery for this project—for example, you might make a podcast or create a web or blog that makes use of visual images as well as text or that includes multiple voices. This project should be accompanied by a briefly annotated bibliography. Traditional letter grades.
Course Grade:
Participation, Preparation, Group Work, Good Citizenship, Attendance10%
Reading/writing journals20
Paper #120
Paper #230
Paper #320
Letter grade numeric equivalency:
A=94-100
A-=93-90
B+=89-87
B=86-84
B-=83-80
C+=79-77
C=74-76
C-=73-70, etc.
Calendar (subject to change):
Week 1 Jan 10: Peculiar Embodiment
Learning from each other; group dialogue and initial reflection
For Thurs: Garland-Thomson, “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist
Theory”
Week 2 Jan: 17Writing and Living a Life (with Disability)
For Tuesday: Johnson, Too Late to Die Young, 1-132.
On writing: scenes and dialogue
Week 3 Jan 24:Whose Truth(s)?
For Tuesday: Johnson, Too Late to Die Young, 133-end
For Thurs:Jones-Garcia, “My Mother’s Mental Illness”; what to include, what not
Week 4 Jan 31Bodies and Illness
Lindgren “Bodies in Trouble: Identity, Embodiment, and Disability”
Lorde, The Cancer Journals
Week 5 Feb 7Intersectionality: Race
Lorde, “The Master’s Tools and Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining
Difference”
Asch, “Critical Race Theory, Feminism, and Disability”
Maybee, “The Political is Personal: Mothering at the Intersections of Acquired
Disability, Gender, and Race”
Week 6 Feb 14 Intersectionality: Class and Nation
Hughes-Tafen, “Intersecting Postcolonial Mothering and Disability”
Cassiman, “Mothering, Disability, and Poverty”
Greeley, “Disability, Gender, and National Identity in the Painting of Frida
Kahlo”
Drafting Paper #1
Week 7 Feb 21 Life Writing #1 Paper
Peer group workshop of Paper #1
Screening video, When Billy Broke His Head
Paper #1 Due on Thursday
Week 8 Feb 28Disability Culture(s)
Frank, Venus on Wheels 1-59
Screen Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back
Week 9 Spring Break: Finish Venus on Wheels
Week 10 March 13 Ethnographic methods
The life interview, research, the ethnographic self, “socio-narratology”
Finish discussing Venus
Week 11 March 20Depicting Cultures: The Ethnographic I (Eye)
Franits, “Mothers as Storytellers”
Robertson, “Sharing Stories: Motherhood, Autism, and Culture”
Week 12 March 27 Ethics of Representation
Planning paper #2 and conducting interviews
Developing interview questions, taping interviews, transcribing
Drafting Paper #2
Week 13 April 3
Draft of Paper #2 for peer group workshop
Paper #2 Due
Discussion of final projects—media, forms of delivery. For Tues. A written one-
page project proposal
Possible class visitor from local organization
Week 14 April 10
Class conferences and workshop on final projects
Possible class visitor
Week 15 April 17
Class workshop on final projects
No class April 19: I’ll be at a Disability and Writing symposium
Complete Final Projects
Week 16 April 24
Project presentations (Paper #3) in class
Course evaluations--No Final Exam
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