Contemporary Feminist Thought

Contemporary Feminist Thought provides an introduction to themes, issues and conflicts in contemporary feminist theory. The course pays particular attention to the shift from the unifying themes of earlier feminist theorizing to the destabilizing influences of recent social theory upon feminism. Readings and discussion address the conflicts within feminism in debates about the category of woman, the politics of difference, the basis of feminist knowledge, the conception of power, the body, performances of gender, the stability of sexed and sexual identity and feminist engagements with mainstream politics. The course takes an interdisciplinary and transnational approach to feminist thought and brings the theories to bear upon literature, film, and scenes of everyday life.

Course Requirements:

All students are required to attend class meetings and take part actively in class discussions. Written work will require students to synthesize as well as analyze material. Seminar participants must also read and assimilate assigned readings, and be prepared to discuss the readings on the schedule listed below. Students will submit all assignments on time; late assignments will only be accepted by prior arrangement with the professor.

A Note About Academic Integrity: Integrity is fundamental to the academic enterprise. The sources from which one derives one's ideas, statements, terms, and data must be fully and specifically acknowledged in the appropriate form; failure to do so, intentionally or unintentionally, constitutes plagiarism. Violations of academic integrity may result in failure in the course and in disciplinary actions with penalties such as suspension or dismissal from the University.

Contact Information:

We are both available for office hours by appointment. Professor Goldner’s email is goldner@mail.csi.cuny.edu, and her office phone is 718-982-3682. Professor Lavender’s email is lavender@mail.csi.cuny.edu and her office phone is 718-982-2869. Our mailbox is in the Women's Studies office, Room 5401.

This course is listed under both the Women's Studies Certificate and the Liberal Studies Programs.

Readings:

• Sandra Kemp and Judith Squires, eds., Feminisms (Oxford, 1998)-- ON RESERVE

•Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi, ed., Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose (1993) -- ON RESERVE

•Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography (1928) -- ON RESERVE

•Ruth Behar, Translated Woman: Crossing the Border With Esperanza's Story (1993) -- ON RESERVE

•Herbert J. Biberman, The Salt of the Earth (1953)

•Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

• Jonathan Demme (Director) and Oprah Winfrey (Producer), Beloved (1998)

• Julie Taymor (Director) and Salma Hayek (Producer), Frida (2002)

• Additional articles (listed below) will be made available on reserve at the Mina Rees Library at the CUNY Graduate Center and will also be distributed as photocopies to the class.

Assignments:

1) Please come to class ready to discuss the texts assigned for that meeting (This requires you to take part in active reading; some kinds of questions you may ask yourself as you read: Are there themes which run through several of the texts? What are they? Why do they seem to matter? Does anything in any particular essay seem unusual, interesting, troubling? Why? Are there issues which seem important whose meanings are unclear to you? What questions do you want to raise about the texts?).

2) Each week you will be asked to write a brief, paragraph-long summary of themes addressed in the theory readings assigned for that week. This will not be graded; the point of these will be to allow you to examine the disparate readings.

3) You will write two essays in the course, both of approximately ten to fifteen pages. The first will be due on April 21st, and the second on May 26th.

Course Topics and Schedule:

Week One (2/4):

Week Two (2/11): Reading Feminist

Readings: • Laurie Finke, "The Rhetoric of Marginality: Why I do Feminist Theory" in Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Fall 1986): 251-72. • Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres, “On Writing Feminist Academic Prose” in Signs, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Summer 1992): 701-04. • Jane Tompkins "Pedagogy of the Distressed," College English, Vol. 52, No. 6 (October 1990): 653-60. • bell hooks, "Theory as Liberatory Practice," Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Fall 1991): 1-12. • Linda Alcoff, "Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory," Signs, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Spring 1988): 405-36. • Robyn Warhol, "Why Don't Feminists `Do' Narratology?" in Gendered Interventions: Narrative Discourse in the Victorian Novel (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), pp. 3-24.

NOTE: 2/18, CUNY on Monday Schedule, No class meeting

Week Three (2/25): Constructing a History of Feminist Thought

Readings: • Josephine Donovan, “Cultural Feminism,” in Feminist Theory: The Intellectual Traditions of American Feminism (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1985), pp. 31-63. • Josephine Donovan, “Feminism and Freudianism,” in Feminist Theory: The Intellectual Traditions of American Feminism (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1985), pp. 91-116. • Karen Offen, "Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach," Signs, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1988): 119-57. • Valerie Bryson, "Feminist Theories Today," in Feminist Debates: Issues of Theory and Political Practice (New York: New York University Press, 1999), pp. 8-44.

Week Four (3/3): Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi, ed., Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose (1993)

Readings: • Rich’s poetry, pp. 277-321, and 342-426 in Gelpi, ed., Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose (1993). • Sandra Harding, “Is There a Feminist Method?,” in Feminisms • Mary Evans, “In Praise of Theory,” in Feminisms • bell hooks, “Feminism,” in Feminisms • Cora Kaplan, “Speaking/Writing/Feminism,” in Feminisms • Anne Philips, “Paradoxes of Participation,” in Feminisms • Michele Barret, “Words and Things,” in Feminisms • Iris Young, “Ideal of Impartiality,” in Feminisms

Weeks Five-Six (3/10-17): Ruth Behar, Translated Woman: Crossing the Border With Esperanza's Story (1993)
	Readings: • Translated Woman • "Epistemologies” chapter, in Feminisms • Sneja Gunew, “Authenticity and the Writing Cure,” in Feminisms • Chandra Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes,” in Feminisms

Weeks Seven-Eight (3/24-31): Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography (1928)

Readings: • Orlando • Monique Wittig, “One Is Not Born a Woman,” in Feminisms • Julia Kristeva, “Psychoanalysis and the Polis,” in Feminisms • Helene Cixous, “Sorties,” in Feminisms • Denise Riley, “‘Am I That Name?’,” in Feminisms • Toril Moi, “Feminist, Female, Feminine,” in Feminisms • Judith Butler, “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire,” Feminisms • Rachel Bowlby, “Still Crazy After All These Years,” Feminisms • Morag Shiach, “Their ‘Symbolic’ Exists,” in Feminisms • Luce Irigaray, “The Other,” in Feminisms • Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick, “Sexual Politics and Sexual Meanings,” in Feminisms • Elizabeth Wilson, “Is Transgression Transgressive?,” in Feminisms • Susan M. Sturgis, “Bisexual Feminism,” in Feminisms • Rita Felski, “The Dialectic of ‘Feminism’ and ‘Aesthetics,’” in Feminisms

NOTE: 4/7, CUNY on Spring Break, No Class Meeting.

Week Nine (4/14): Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi, ed., Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose (1993)

Readings: • Review Rich’s poetry, pp. 322-342 in Gelpi, ed., Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose (1993) • Adrienne Rich, “For the Record” (1983) and “For the Album” (1987), in J. D. McClatchy, ed., The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry (New York: Vintage, 1990), pp. 370-371. • Barbara Smith, “The Truth That Never Hurts,” Feminisms • Mary McIntosh, “Queer Theory and the War of the Sexes,” Feminisms • Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality,” Feminisms • Cherry Smyth, “Queer Notions,” Feminisms

Weeks Ten-Eleven (4/21-28): Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987) -- PAPER #1 DUE 4/21

Readings: • Toni Morrison, Beloved • Audre Lord, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1984). • Helene Cixous, Sorties, selections • Julia Kristeva and Susan Sellers, "A Question of Subjectivity – An Interview,” Women's Review 12 (1986): 19-21. • Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York: Vintage, 1990), selections. • Toni Morrison, “Introduction: Friday on the Potomac,” from Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality (New York: Pantheon, 1992). • Patricia Hill Collins, “Toward an Afrocentric Feminist Epistemology,” in Feminisms • Elaine Showalter, “A Criticism of Our Own,” in Feminisms • Helena Michie, “Not One of the Family,” in Feminisms • bell hooks, “Black Women and Feminism,” in Feminisms • Diana Fuss, “The ‘Risk’ of Essence,” in Feminisms • Elizabeth Grosz, “Psychoanalysis and the Imaginary Body,” in Feminisms • Kadiatu Kanneh, “Love, Mourning, and Metaphor,” in Feminisms

Week Twelve (5/5): Herbert J. Biberman (Director), The Salt of the Earth (1953)

Readings/Viewing: • View Salt of the Earth • Alison Light, “‘Returning to Manderley’,” in Feminisms • Liz Kelly, “A Central Issue: Sexual Violence and Feminist Theory,” in Feminisms • Chandra Mohanty, "Under Western Eyes," in Feminisms • Seyla Benhabib, “The Generalized and the Concrete Other,” in Feminisms • Rita Felski, “The Dialectic of ‘Feminism’ and ‘Aesthetics,’” in Feminisms • Griselda Pollock, “Missing Women,” in Feminisms

Week Thirteen (5/12): Julie Taymor (Director) and Salma Hayek (Producer), Frida (2002) and Jonathan Demme (Director) and Oprah Winfrey (Producer), Beloved (1998)
	Readings/Viewings: • View Frida and Beloved • Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “Just Like a Woman,” in Feminisms • Shane Phelan, “Broken Symmetries,” in Feminisms • Kate Chedgzoy, “Frida Kahlo’s ‘Grotesque Bodies’,” in Feminisms • Annette Kuhn, “The Body and Cinema,” in Feminisms

Week Fourteen (5/19): Debates in Contemporary Feminist Thought
	Readings: • “Technologies” chapter in Feminisms

Week Fifteen (5/26): PAPER #2 DUE (No Class Meeting)

EXTRA (OPTIONAL) EVENTS SPONSORED BY THE WOMEN’S STUDIES PROGRAM (Info: 212.817.8895 or web.gc.cuny.edu/womenstudies/ or web.gc.cuny.edu/womencenter/):

Thursday, 2/26, 6:00-8:00 pm, Skylight Room 9100, Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor, Department of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley (cosponsored by the Center for the Humanities).

Friday, 3/12, All Day Conference, Proshansky Auditorium and Concourse Level, “Black Feminisms,” with keynote speaker Ann DuCille, Chair, African American Studies/Director, Center for African American Studies, Wesleyan University (cosponsored by the Africana Studies Groups).

Friday, 3/26, 1:00-4:00 pm, Rooms 9204 & 9205: “Feminist Theories, Feminist Teaching,” an interdisciplinary round-table of theorists from CUNY, NYU, and other organizations discuss feminist theories: histories and current practices (cosponsored by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, and the CUNY Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies).