American Feminist Theory 4219-SB147
This course examines closely a selection from the rich tradition of American feminist theory, asking about the way various authors defined women’s position in society and how they proposed to change it. What philosophical traditions has feminism drawn on? How has it responded to specifically American ideologies, especially liberalism and individualism? To cultural forces such as religion, psychoanalysis, and the sexual revolution? We start in the 19th century with essays and speeches by E.C. Stanton, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, S.B. Anthony, Margaret Fuller, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells. Next, the course explores a few key early 20th century texts: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger. The third and longest part is focused on modern feminism, the so called second wave. We will read Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, Ann Koedt, Gayle Rubin, Marilyn Frye, Mary Daly, Ellen Willis, Adrienne Rich, Catharine MacKinnon, Susan Brownmiller, Andrea Dworkin, Carole Pateman, Patricia Hill Collins, Michele Wallace, Gloria Anzaldua. We will conclude with some recent texts (from the nineties onwards), with focus on feminism’s response to postmodernism, as well as new currents and theories: intersectionality, decolonial feminism and queer-trans feminism (bell hooks, Crenshaw, Joan Scott, Judith Butler, J. Halberstam).
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Bibliography
Bornstein, K. (1994). Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. New York: Routledge.
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 140: 139–168.
Echols, A. (1989). Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
hooks, b. (2000). Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. Cambridge: South End Press.
Kolmar, W.K. and Bartkowski, F. (2005). Feminist Theory: A Reader, 2e. Boston: McGraw Hill.
Millett, K. (1969). Sexual Politics. London: Granada Publishing.
Namaste, V. (2009). Undoing theory: the ‘transgender question’ and the epistemic violence of Anglo-American feminist theory. Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 24 (3): 11–32.
Rich, A. (1980). Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5 (4): 631–660.
Rossi, A. (1973) The Feminist Papers. New York, Columbia UP.
Rubin, G. (1975). The traffic in women: notes on the ‘political economy’ of sex. In: Toward an Anthropology of Women (ed. R.R. Reiter), 157–210. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Schneir, M. (1993) Feminism. The Essential Historical Writings. New York, Vintage.
Schneir, M. (1995) Vintage Boook of Feminism. New York, Vintage.
Sanz, V. (2017). No way out of the binary: a critical history of the scientific production of sex. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 43 (1): 1–27.
Stryker, S. (2006). (De)Subjugated knowledges: an introduction to transgender studies. In: The Transgender Studies Reader (ed. S. Stryker and S. Whittle), 1–18. New York: Routledge.
WILLIS, E. (1992). Feminism Without Freedom. In No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (NED-New edition, pp. 151–158). University of Minnesota Press.
Additional information
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