Corrected verstion 1/23/06

Office Hours:
Mon. 3-4 pm &  Wed. 3-5:30 pm (and by arrangement)
Office: 837  22nd St. NW
202-994-7438  deitch@gwu.edu

Required Books
Feminist Theory: A Reader (2nd edition), edited by Wendy Kolmar and Frances Bartkowski
Be sure to get the 2nd ed. of the text so that you have all the required readings and the page and chapter numbers correspond to the syllabus! Ordered through the University Bookstore.
The Handmaid's Tale, a novel by Margaret Atwood[Not ordered by the bookstore]

Additional Readings:
There are some additional required readings available on line through links from the class web page, through Blackboard, or as handouts.  Other web links provide supplemental information on some authors and topics.  Use of Blackboard is required for this course.

Underlined authors or titles indicate web links to images and additional information about the authors and topics, short readings and images through the web page for this class:www.gwu.edu/~wstu/125/syl_125.html
New links will be added during the semester (and problem links will be fixed).

Focus and Goals of the Course:
As the course title suggests, there are many varieties of feminist theory.  This semester we will sample a selection of  primarily -- though not exclusively --Western feminist social and political thinkers from the 19th century to the present.  Some of the questions we will ask include:

• What is the intellectual history of feminist theory? How have ideas of the Enlightenment, Marxist, Psychoanalytic, Poststructuralist and Postcolonial theories, to name a few, influenced the development of feminist theory over the past two centuries? How have feminists critiqued, challenged, and contributed to these theories?
• As feminist theory in the academy becomes increasingly intellectually sophisticated and abstract, how can it remain useful in developing strategies for social change and providing insight into the daily life experience of diverse groups of women around the globe?
• Are there too many varieties of feminist theory today?  Can theory help feminists of very different intellectual persuasions, not to mention differing racial, ethnic, class, sexual,  national and religious identities find common ground for working together for change while recognizing and respecting their differences?

Schedule, Topics, and Readings:

Jan. 23 What is Feminist Theory?  Why Study Feminist Theory?
            Required: ch. 3, 7

• Charlotte Bunch, "Not By Degrees:  Feminist Theory and Education (3)
• bell hooks, "Theory as Liberatory Practice" (7)
• Optional:  other chapters in Part I (ch. 1, 2, 4, 5) and bell hooks (85)
• Come to class prepared to read aloud a short paragraph that you write, in some way using the above readings to respond to someone who might ask: "Why do you need a theory course for women's studies, it's not a 'real' intellectual field; and  isn't feminism just how each person feels?"  OR "The problem with feminism today is that it is too academic and distant from 'real' women's lives; we need more action not more theory."  This is a required but ungraded assignment that will count toward class participation.

Required: ch. 9, 12, 15

• Mary Wollstonecraft, (9), from A Vindication of the Rights of Women plus at least one chapter from the on-line full text version of  Vindication
• Harriet Taylor (12)  "Enfranchisement of Women"
• John Stuart Mill (15) from The Subjection of Women  (optional: read more online)
• Learn more about  Wollstonecraft, Taylor and Mill
• Come to class with at least one quote to share from Wollstonecraft's Vindication  or from Mill/Taylor, and be prepared to say why you chose the quote.
• Optional:  If you have studied Wollstonecraft and/or Mill/Taylor in previous courses and prefer to try something new, read Josephine Butler (16)
• For those who have not previously read this material, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (11) Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions  from  the Seneca Falls Convention
• Recommended for those who have never studied U.S. women's history:  Film: One Woman, One Vote  on the U.S. Woman's Suffrage Movement (available in Gelman basement) Clips from this video might be shown in class on Jan 23.

                Required:  Cooper plus at least one other

• Sojourner Truth,  (13) "Ain't I a Woman"  speech AND "Keeping the Thing Going While Things are Stirring" (14)
• Sarah Grimke, (10) from Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women.
• Frederick Douglas (19) "Why I Became a Women's-Rights Man"
• Anna Julia Cooper (21), from A Voice of the South (also read some additional sections such as "Woman vs. the Indian" chapter from the full text online)
• Mary Church Terrell (24), from The Progress of Colored Women  (another excerpt of Terrell's 1898 speech to the National American Women's Suffrage Association and: a 1916 memoir of hearing Terrell speak)
• Ida B. Welss-Barnett, (25) "Lynching and the Excuse for It"
• Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender (Lexicon p. 49-50)
• Come to class with a passage from Cooper’s “Woman vs the Indian” essay that interests or puzzles you.

            Required:  20, 23, 26, 72 

• Charlotte Perkins Gilman (23), from Women and Economics
• Optional:  Read more of Women and Economics (full online text)
• Emma Goldman (26), "The Traffic in Women,"  a radical anarchist feminist (see biographical info. and other writings online)
• Optional: Crystal Eastman,  "Now We Can Begin" (29), and Mother Jones (27)
• Reaction posting #1 due 2/1: Thoughts about Gilman and/or Goldman reading (if you choose just one author, then do a little additional reading online).
• Frederick Engels (20) from The  Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (follow link for background on Engels and full text of Origin) 
• Read at least parts (intro., 1st section) of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
• Sexual Division of Labor  pp. 55-56 (lexicon)
• Heidi Hartmann (72), "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism..."

• Required:  Sigmund Freud, "Femininity" (on Blackboard)
• recommended: short online explanation of Freud by Mary Klages (also browse the Freud online archives for info. on Freud)
• Required: Nancy Chodorow (66), from The Reproduction of Mothering
• Required: Laura Mulvey (61) "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
• Psychoanalysis in/and Feminism  pp. 53-55 (Lexicon)
• Supplemental: Karen Horney (25), Gayle Rubin (59)

Required : de Beauvoir,  from the Introduction to The Second Sex (40)
           Recommended:  additional sections of The Second Sex available online
            Links to biographical and other background information on de Beauvoir

Feb  20    Holiday, no class

Feb22In class exam (covering Wollstonecraft through de Beauvoir)

Feb 27Early Second Wave:  Statements from the Women's Liberation Movement
Ideas of Radical Feminism  (1960's, early 1970s)
Required: ch. 49, 52, plus two others listed below

• Shulamith Firestone (49) from The Dialectic of Sex, for an early statement of radical feminist thought,
• Radicalesbians (52), "The Woman Identified Woman" for an early statement of lesbian feminist theory.
• At least two of the following for sense of other early Second Wave manifestos and ideas: Liberal Feminism: Friedan (42), NOW (44) /  Black feminism:  Weathers (48), Murray (51) / Radical Feminism and other emerging perspectives: Millett (46), Redstockings (47), Koedt (50)
• Browse (optional) the Duke Archive collection of WLM  (Women's Liberation Movement) documents from the 1960s and 1970s for other writings of this period.
• Reaction posting #2 (due 2/27): Discuss your reactions to what you read.  This might be overall reactions to the early 2nd wave manifestos as well as responses to specific pieces.  To what extent do these writings still seem "radical" today or are the ideas now fairly mainstream?  Be sure to indicate the titles and authors you discuss.
• We will break into small groups in class.  These same groups will meet several times during the semester

Mar. 1 Second Wave African American & Asian American Feminists on Race
                Required: 64, 69, 73

• Combahee River Collective, "A Black Feminist Statement," (64)
• Audre Lorde, "Age, Race, Class, and Sex..."  (69)
• Mitsuye Yamada, "Asian pacific American Women and Feminism" (73)
• Recommended: Lorde “Poetry is Not a Luxury” (15)
• Review: Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender  pp. 49-50 (Lexicon)
• Possible selections from film on Audre Lorde

• Required: (60) Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence"
• Required: Audre Lorde "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power"  (Blackboard)
• Recommended: Fry (68)
• Sexualities, p. 56-58  (lexicon)
• Reaction posting #3 (due 3/6) respond Rich's idea of a continuum.and Lorde on the erotic.
• Small group discussion in class.

Mar. 13-18 Spring Break, no class

Mar  20More on sexuality, power, social control and resistance

• Catharine MacKinnon, "Sexuality" (87)  [required]
• Power (pp. 52-53 of lexicon) and Language (pp. 49-52).
• Mary Daly (67), The Metapatriarchal Journey of Exorcism and Ecstasy" from Gyn/Ecology
• Optional: Audre Lorde, "Open letter to Mary Daly" (on Blackboard)
• Browse the about face web site  (to discuss in class)
• Supplemental:  Andrea Dworkin for additional feminist critique of pornography
• Come to class prepared to discuss the "about face" website, especially the gallery of images, and how their work relates to today's reading, especially MacKinnon.

Mar 29 Cyberfeminism, science, technology, and the future
               Required: 76

• Required: Donna Haraway, (76) "A Cyborg Manifesto"
• Rosi Braidotti (103)  "Meta(l)morphoses: The becoming Machine"
• Sandra Harding, (78) "From the Woman Question in Science to the Science Question in Feminism."
• Evelyn Fox Keller (92) "Making Gender Visible in the Pursuit of Nature's Secrets"
• Epistemologies, pp. 37-38 (lexicon)
• Optional: Feb. '97  interview with Haraway.
• Reaction posting # 4 due 3/29 (on Haraway)

                Critiques of Essentialism, French Feminist Theorists

• Rquired: Essentialism/Social Construction/Difference   pp. 47-48 and; Language, pp. 49-52 (lexicon)
• Recommended:  Diana Fuss (84)
• Required:  Monique Wittig, "One is Not Born A Woman"  (70)
• Required:  Luce Irigary, "The Sex which is not One," (65)
• Optional:  Those interested in the debates about essentialism and deconstruction  might read Scott (83) and Alcoff (81).  For another French Feminist, read Cixous (56)

Apr  10    Theories of Intersectionality (race, class, gender and sexuality)
                Required: 90, 96 plus "Bridge" poem

• Patricia Hill Collins, from Black Feminist Thought (90)
• Kimberle Crenshaw, "Intersectionality and Identity Politics..." (96)
• bell hooks, "Feminism: A Transformational Politic" (85)
• Angela Davis, "Outcast Mothers and Surrogates: Racism and Reproductive Politics in the Nineties" (91)
• Bridge poem (link)  Donna Kate Rushin
• Reaction posting #5 due 3/10 (on the poem & readings)

        Required: 77, 79, 80, plus "Borderlands" poem

• Gloria Anzaldua, "La Consciencia del la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness" (80) and  Borderlands poem (on Blackboard),
• Browse: Definitions of Chicana feminism by Anzaldua, Moraga, and Sandoval; explore the Chicana feminist site and links
• Anna NietoGomez "Chicana Feminism" (62)
• Paula Gunn Allen, "Kochinnenako in Academe: Three Approaches to Interpreting a Keres India Tale" (77)
• Judith Plaskow, "Jewish Memory From a Feminist Perspective" (79)
• Sonia Shah, "The Co-optation of Asian American Feminism"
• Optional: Check out the Women of Color web, resources on Arab American Feminists, Asian American Feminists and Jewish Feminist resources (Bridges journal)
• Reaction posting #6 (due 4/12):  Thoughts on the "Borderlands" poem and how it relates to other readings for today and/or relate your own experiences to some of the readings
• Small group discussions in class

                I.  Gender, Race, Sexuality in the Legacy of Colonialism
Film: Life and Times of Sara Baartman The 'Hottentot Venus' (55 min)  in class

Apr.  19   Postcolonial Feminist Theory, Global and Transnational  Feminisms
                II. Beyond western borders 

• "Third World"/Global Feminisms  pp. 50-51 (lexicon)
• Fatima Mernissi, from Beyond the Veil  (58)
• Required: Chandra Mohanty, "Under Western Eyes" (75) and "Under Western Eyes Revisited" (Blackboard)
• Required: Uma Narayan, "Contesting Cultures," (97)
• Optional: "Dissonances" © 1996 by Monisha Das Gupta
• Reaction posting #7 respond to the film viewed on 4/17 and/or readings for 4/19

• The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (93)
• Amrita Basu "Women's Movements and the Challenge of Transnationalism"  (online)
• "Talking About African Feminism" Interview with Amina Mana From Agenda, African Feminisms I, no.50 (2001), pp. 58-63 (online)
• Cynthia Enloe (99) from Maneuvers
• Inderpal Grewaland Caren Kaplan (101) "Global Identities: Theorizing Transnational Studies of Sexuality"
• Possible Film in class

• Bikini Kill, "Riot Grrl Philosophy"  (95)
• Rebecca Walker, "Becoming the Third Wave"
• Jennifer Baumgardner and AMy Richards, (100)  from Manifesta
• Other links to explore:  3rd WWWave   Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture      Guerrilla Girls 
• Required: Rosemarie Garland-Thomson. (102)  “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory”
• Come prepared to discuss the readings and what Third Wave Feminism means to you.  Do you believe your generation is the third wave?
• Film: Grrlyshow,  to be shown in class  (18 minutes)

Reaction posting #8 (due 5/1):  Specific topic/question related to Atwood to be assigned.

Small group discussion in class.  Come prepared to discuss the novel.

May  3    Last Class -- Wrap up, last words, evaluations

Look over the syllabus and select the 2-3 readings that you personally found most memorable (might be most meaningful, most interesting, most maddening, etc.).  Come prepared to say something in class about your choices.  In case, when it comes to your turn, several other students have already spoken about your first choice, have a back-up or two.

Course Requirements

Class participation:    (10 points)

• You must earn the grade.
• If you are not in class, you can't very well contribute, so poor attendance lowers your class participation grade.  I am most likely to take attendance at the beginning of the term to learn names, on small group discussion days, and if I notice dwindling numbers.
• Participation is more than just showing up.  It is contributing to the class, responding to other students, helping to keep discussion on track, demonstrating that you have come to class prepared, and most important, learning to articulate ideas, finding a voice and listening.
• Sometimes I may call on students to respond to a pre-assigned discussion question. If you are not prepared, just say “pass,” but if this happens more than once, it will negatively affect your class participation grade.
• For occasional small group discussions (listed on syllabus) each person will, at least once, serve as a facilitator, oral reporter, or written reporter (to be explained more in class), which counts toward participation.

• These are short –350-400 words, posted under the appropriate discussion forum on Blackboard.
• They are due BEFORE CLASS on the due date. The point is to write something before you come to class.
• Say something substantive, engaging with the readings, but do NOT simply summarize the readings. For some topics, I will suggest a question.
• There are 8 assigned but only 6 are required.
• If you do more than 6,  the 6 highest grades will count.
• They will be graded "outstanding/exceptional" (1.66 pts or A+.),  "good" (1.5 pts. o A-), "partial credit" (1.0), or "no credit."
• Most people will probably get "good" (1.5) much of the time; "outstanding" (1.66) will be reserved for papers which demonstrate something extra special.
• Late papers will have a 50% grade penalty. Anything posted after class starts (12:30 pm) on the due date is late.
• Please NO emailed papers- they will NOT be accepted.

First Paper  (25 points)  Due Mar. 27
A specific assignment will be handed-out in class and posted on Blackboard.  The paper involves using assigned readings.  The length is 5-6 typed, double spaced pages.  IMPORTANT:   If you don't follow directions carefully you may get a low grade, possibly an F.   If you are not clear about what is expected, be sure to ask.  You will need written permission (via email) if you want to change the assignment in any way.  Please NO email or faxed papers -- they will NOT be accepted.

Final Paper  (30 points)  Due May 10
A specific assignment and instructions will be handed-out in class and posted on Blackboard.  Read directions carefully!  If you don't follow directions carefully you may get a low grade, possibly an F.   If you are not clear about what is expected, be sure to ask.  You will need written permission (via email) if you want to change the assignment in any way.  Please NO email or faxed papers -- they will NOT be accepted.  7-8 typed, double-spaced pages.

Academic Integrity and Plagiarism
Students are expected to adhere to the University Academic Integrity Code.  Be careful to be sure to fully cite all sources.  Ask for help and/or consult a style manual if you are not sure how, when, or  whether to include a citation.
All papers must be written in your own words.  Read online: What is plagiarism and how to avoid it.  Papers that fail to address the specific topics and questions assigned for this class risk an F.

Some grading considerations for both first and final papers:

• Careful writing, proofreading, spell checking, etc. required.
• Poor writing or poor organization will lead to a poor grade.
• I will look for original, critical thinking, in depth analysis, demonstration of good grasp of the reading assignments discussed
• Avoid unsupported generalizations as well as trite or superficial comments.
• Full citation of all sources required, including course readings for this course and internet sources
• Your selection of  theorists and topic should fit well together to make a coherent paper.
• If you don't follow instructions and your paper does not fit the specific requirements of this assignment, you will get a low or failing grade.
• If you are not sure if your topic or choice of readings fit, be sure to consult with me ahead of time.
• The most important factor in the grade is how well you discuss the theorists and apply them to your topic.
• You may not submit a paper you have written for another course, or a paper anyone else has written.
• Warning, academic integrity means, among other things, that if the paper is not written in your own words you could be charged with plagiarism and receive an F.