Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

This course will examine the works of major feminist thinkers and the problems of developing feminist theory. Students with credit for POL 416 may not take this course for further credit. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

Feminist thinkers have long issued powerful and necessary challenges to the dominant modes of producing social and political knowledge in the West. From Simone de Beauvoir to Judith Butler and beyond, they have persistently interrogated the limitations and exclusions of our collective political imaginary and its organizing categories. In the process, feminists have de-naturalized existing social relations and political realities, insisting that a different future is possible. Today, feminist theory is perhaps the key discourse of emancipatory political thought. At a time when neo-liberal capitalism is considered by many to be the only viable option, and amidst the frightening resurgence of sexism and misogyny, feminists continue to imagine new realities and chart alternative, more egalitarian social and political possibilities. This course is concerned with these possibilities.

This course is text-driven and requires students to engage in close readings of some of the most influential and important writings in feminist social and political theory. It is both reading and writing intensive and places emphasis on the different, often conflicting modes of feminist theory. We will discuss some of the major debates and concepts in the field.

There will be one 4-hour seminar each week.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: