Kirsten Leng Office: Bartlett 11D

WOMENSST 301-01 Office Hours: Th 11:00-12:00

TuTh 1:00-2:15 Email:

Classroom: Bartlett Room 203

THEORIZING GENDER, RACE, AND POWER

Fall 2015

In this course, we will examine an eclectic, by no means comprehensive, set of theoretical textsrelevant to the study of gender, race, and power. The readings assigned over the following twelve weeks specifically address the questions of how power operates in the human world, and how we come to understand how power shapes our worlds and our lived experiences.

Course Goals:

Become familiar with, critically examine, and retain knowledge of diverse theoretical and analytical texts that interrogate gender, race, and power
Identify and explain a theoretical argument
Develop and hone the ability to discuss theoretical, conceptual, and abstract texts, and to lead these discussions
Compare and contrast ideas across diverse texts
Apply ideas from theoretical texts to the world beyond the classroom
Enhance your ability to defend an argument, position, or set of claims
Develop your own approach to analyzing issues pertaining to gender, race, and power from the materials engaged in class
Hone the ability to work collaboratively with others

Course Structure:

Each class will begin with a discussion of the readings, led by two or three students. Student-led discussion will last for one hour. For the remainder of our class meetings, we will engage in a broader discussion of the readings that summarizes main arguments, engages key questions, and, as the term progresses, aim to connect the dots between different readings.

Presenters’ Responsibilities:

In advance of leading discussion, these students will be responsible for preparing questions to guide us through the readings, which they will circulate to the rest of the class at least 24 hours before we meet.
Students leading discussion will also research and present biographical material about the author(s) they are discussing, and information about the texts at hand (where possible).

Everyone’s Responsibility:

Everyone is responsible for doing the readings, consulting the questions, being prepared to discuss them, and participating in class discussion.

Requirements:

The best way for us to understand theoretical text is through discussion. A good discussion includes a plurality of diverse, well-informed voices. To this end, it is absolutely imperative that everyone comes to class having read the texts attentively, making notes along the way. Do not rush or skim the readings.

It is also important to come to class ready to discuss the readings. This means taking notes, marking out passages in the readings that were impactful or perplexing, looking up unfamiliar words and terms, and thinking about the questions raised by your classmates, in addition to questions that the readings provoked for you. Being ready to discuss the readings also means being ready to ask questions. It is okay if you didn’t understand the readings; part of the purpose of discussion is so that we work though our confusion collectively, not perform our supposedly superior knowledge. Learning is a humbling process for everyone; rarely does anyone grasp everything perfectly, especially the first time. Think of our classroom space as a reading group animated by fearless yet respectful discussion of some really fascinating, at times challenging, and potentially transformative ideas.

Finally, to help us all be present in the classroom, ensure meaningful engagement with the readings, and enjoy a rich discussion, laptops, tablets, and smartphones are not to be used in class. If you require these devices, please speak to me. The only exception is when you are leading discussion.

Required Texts:

There is one required text for this course:

***The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, edited by Sandra Harding (London: Routledge, 2003)***

The vast majority of readings is available via UMass libraries’ E-reserves system; they can be accessed via Moodle.

Grade Breakdown:

Attendance and Participation: 30%

Exams and WrittenAssignments: 70%

What Constitutes Attendance and Participation?

Engaged Attendance:

Everyone is expected to:

attend all class meetings with the reading completed and thoughts on questions prepared
bring a printed out, i.e. hard copy, of the readings so that we can discuss particular passages
participate actively in class discussions as much as possible

I believe that our class meetings constitute important sites of learning and intellectual development; consequently, I take preparation for class meetings rather seriously! Attendance will be taken each class; if you have to miss a class, please be sure to email me beforehand. If you miss more than two classes, please arrange to meet with me in order to discuss how to make up the work missed. More than two unexplained absences will negatively affect participation.

Presentations:

Each person will present a week’s worth of readings as part of a group of two or threetwice in the term; that is, you will sign up to present two different weeks’ worth of readings.

Presentation involves:

preparing questions circulated to the class 24 hours in advance of discussion
preparing biographical material and background information on the authors and texts, which will be presented as part of leading discussion.

Narrative Self-Assessment:

At the end of class, you will give yourself a fair and honest grade out of 10 for your performance in class. To supplement the number, you will also offer a paragraph (no more than a page!) regarding why you gave yourself this grade. This assessment will be completed in our last class meeting.

Assignments:

Midterm (20%)

The mid-term will be a take home exam, and will cover material studied in class to that point. Questions will be pre-circulated; further details will be provided closer to the date.

Due Date: Thursday, October 15th at the end of class. Bring printed hard copies of the midterm to class.

Bringing Theory to Bear, or “How X helps me understand Y better”(25%)

For this assignment, you will prepare an analysis of no more than five (5) double-spaced pages of an event from the news (broadly defined) using one or two of the theories/texts we have discussed in class. For example, you could examine the struggle to raise the minimum wage by drawing on Kathi Weeks’ arguments from The Problem with Work. These analyses will be evaluated based onthe depth of analysis, level of engagement with the issue, clarity of writing, and consistency of citation. (It is expected that you will cite all of your sources!)Due Date: Thursday, November 19that the end of class. Bring printed hard copies to class.

My Essential Five (25%)

For this assignment, you will prepare a paper of no more than seven (7) double-spaced pages that identifies the five theorists we have discussed in class whose ideas you think are absolutely essential to the study of power, gender, race, and sexuality. Beyond identifying the work you think is essential, you must make an argument about why you chose these particular thinkers and ideas, and why you think they are essential. Evaluation of these papers will consider the clarity of your understanding of the ideas at hand (and ability to explicate them), precision of writing, and consistency of citation.

Due Date: Monday, December 14thvia email at 5pm.

Statement Regarding Pronouns:

There is a long history of dialogue and activism around how we address one another, with respect to both names and pronouns. Students should be referred to by the name they prefer, and with the proper pronunciation, by faculty and other students. I will gladly honor your request to address you by the name you prefer and gender pronouns that correspond to your gender identity. Please advise me of your name’s proper pronunciation, and any name or pronouns not reflected by the record in Spire early in the semester so that I may make appropriate changes to my records.

Students with Disabilities:

To arrange accommodation, please contact Disability Services

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Academic Dishonesty:

This course follows the university guidelines for academic honesty. According to the Dean of Students Office, academic dishonesty is the attempt to secure unfair advantage for oneself or another in any academic exercise. For our course, this includes plagiarism and facilitating dishonesty. If you have any questions about what constitutes academic dishonesty and require further information regarding the Dean of Students’ policy, please see

Writing Help:

WGSS has a writing tutor! Elise Swinford () will hold drop-in office hours on Wednesday, 11am-2pm, and Thursday, 1-4pm. You can also make an appointment with her between Monday and Thursday. Her office is in Bartlett 102A. She can help you with all stages of your writing assignments; in the past, her interventions have really helped students improve their work!

Schedule of Course Readings

The readings listed for a particular date are those that we will discuss on that date. Please read those texts prior to class.

Week 1: Why Theory?

Tuesday, September 8:Introductions to class and each other

Overview of Class

Thursday, September 10:Jonathan Culler, “What is Theory?” Literary Theory: A Very Short

Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 1-18.

Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” Marx-Engels Reader, 143-145

bell hooks, “Theory as liberatory practice,” Yale Journal of Law and

Feminism 4, no. 1(1991),1-12.

Week 2: Unpacking Overarching Themes

Tuesday, September 15Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement”

Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” Sister Outsider (2007), 53-60

Thursday, September 17Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” Critical Inquiry 8, no. 4

(Summer 1982), 777-795

Gloria Anzaldúa, “La conciencia de la mestiza/Towards a New

Consciousness,” Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Aunt Lute

Books, 1987), 77-91

Week 3: Living in the Material World, Part 1

Tuesday, September 22Jim Stanford, Chapter 1, Economics for Everyone, Second Edition

(economicsforeveryone.ca/about-the-book), 15-30

Karl Marx, Abstract from the Preface of A Contribution to the Critique

of Political Economy (1859):

Karl Marx, First, Second, and Third Observation from Chapter Two of

The Poverty of Philosophy (1847):

philosophy/ch02.htm

Thursday, September 24Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts:

Ideologies of Domination, Common Interests, and the Politics of

Solidarity,” in Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic

Futures, edited by M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty

(New York: Routledge, 1997), 3-29.

Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy,

edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (McMillan,

2002), 1-12

Week 4: Living in the Material World, Part 2

Tuesday, September 29Kathi Weeks, Introduction, The Problem with Work: Feminism,

Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Duke, 2011):

1-36

Thursday, October 1Mark C. J Stoddard, “Ideology, Hegemony, Discourse: A Critical

Review of Theories of Knowledge and Power,” Social Thought &

Research 28 (2007), 191-225

Week 5: Laws and State Powers

Tuesday, October 6Margot Canaday, “Heterosexuality as a Legal Regime,” in Michael

Grossberg and Christopher Tomlins, eds., The Cambridge History of Law

in America, Vol. 3 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 442-

471

Thursday, October 8Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and

Sex,” University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989): 139-167

Dean Spade, “Keynote Address: Trans Law and Politics on a Neoliberal

Landscape,” Temple Political and Civil Rights Law Review, 18, no. 2

(Spring 2009), 353-373

Week 6: Power Beyond the State and Economy: From Laws to Norms and Knowledge

Tuesday, October 13: MONDAY SCHEDULE

Thursday, October 15Michel Foucault, “Two Lectures,” in Nicholas Dirks, Geoff Eley, and

Sherry Ortner, eds. Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary

Social Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 200-221

**MIDTERM DUE AT END OF CLASS ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15TH**

Week 7: Borders and Boundary Maintenance

Tuesday, October 20Benedict Anderson, “Introduction,”Imagined Communities: Reflections

onthe Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991), 1-10

Edward Said, “Introduction,”Orientalism, 25th Anniversary Edition

(NewYork: Vintage Books, 2003), 1-30

Thursday, October 22Susan Pedersen, “National Bodies, Unspeakable Acts: The Sexual

Politics of Colonial Policy Making,” Journal of Modern History 63, no. 4

(December 1991): 647-680.

Week 8: Constructing and Maintaining Difference, Part 1

Tuesday, October 27Simone de Beauvoir, Introduction, The Second Sex, trans. Constance

Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevalier (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

2010), 3-17

Monique Wittig, “The Straight Mind,” in The Straight Mind and Other

Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 21-32

Robert McRuer, “Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled

Existence,” in The Disability Studies Reader (New York: Routledge,

2006), 88-99.

Thursday, October 29A. Finn Enke, “The Education of Little Cis: Cisgender and the

Discipline of Opposing Bodies,” in Transfeminist Perspectives in and

Beyond Transgender and Gender Studies, edited by A. Enke (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012), 60-80.

Riki Lane, “Trans as Bodily Becoming: Rethinking the Biological as Diversity, Not Dichotomy,” Hypatia 24, no. 3 (Summer 2009): 136-157

Week 9:Constructing and Maintaining Difference, Part 2

Tuesday, November 3Evelyn Smith Higginbotham, “African-American Women’s History and

the Metalanguage of Race,” Signs 17, no. 2 (Winter 1992), 251-274

Thursday, November 5Saba Mahmood, “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent:

Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival,” Cultural

Anthropology 16 (2001): 202-236.

Week 8:Limits on Knowledge: Frames of Vision

Tuesday, November 10John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972; 1977), 1-64

Thursday, November 12Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in

Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” in Sandra Harding,

ed., The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political

Controversies (New York: Routledge, 2004), 81-102.

Week 9: Does Who We Are Determine What and How We Know?

Tuesday, November 17Nancy C. M. Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpint: Developing the Ground

for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism,” in The Feminist

Standpoint Theory Reader, 35-55

Patricia Hill Collins, “Learning from the Outsider Within: The

Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought,” in The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader, 103-126

bell hooks, “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness,” in

The Feminist Standpoint Theory, 153-160

Thursday, November 19Uma Narayan, “The Project of Feminist Epistemology: Perspectives

from a Nonwestern Feminist,”The FeministStandpoint Theory Reader, 213-224

Dick Pels, “Strange Standpoints, or How to Define the Situation for

Situated Knowledge,”The Feminist StandpointTheory Reader, 273-290

Audre Lorde, An Open Letter to Mary Daly, Sister Outsider: Essays and

Speeches (2007): 66-71

**BRINGING THEORY TO BEAR ASSIGNMENT DUE NOVEMBER 19TH AT END OF CLASS**

Week 10:Power and Affect

Tuesday, November 24Ann Cvetkovich, Introduction, Part II/Chapter 2, Depression: A Public

Feeling (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 1-26, 115-153

Thursday, November 26 THANKSGIVING

Week 11: Relating to Others? Unpacking Desire and Domination

Tuesday, December 1Sara Ahmed, “Introduction and Chapter 2,”Queer Phenomenology

(Durham: DukeUniversity Press, 2006), 1-24, 65-108.

Thursday, December 3Sharon Holland, “Introduction and Chapter 2,”The Erotic Life of Racism

(DukeUniversity Press, 2012), 1-16, 41-64

Week 12: What is to be done?

Tuesday, December 8Wendy Brown, “Wounded Attachments,” Political Theory 21, no. 3

(August1993): 390-410

Susan Bickford, “Anti-Anti-Identity Politics: Feminism, Democracy, and

The Complexities of Citizenship,” Hypatia 12, no. 4 (Fall 1997): 111-131

Thursday, December 10Linda Zerilli, Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom (Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 2005), 1-31

Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s

House,”in Sister Outsider, 110-113

**MONDAY, DECEMBER 14th: MY ESSENTIAL FIVE DUE VIA EMAIL AT 5PM**