Professor Claudia Klaver Office: 427 Hall of Languages
Department of English Office phone: 443-2074
Syracuse University e-mail: ccklaver@syr.edu
Office hours:
Tuesdays 11:30 – 1:00, Thursdays 9:00 – 10:00,
and by appointment
ETS 491-2/WSP 491-2 Studies in Feminism:
Third World and Transnational Feminist Theory
Course description:
This course grows directly out of an earlier course that I taught in contemporary feminist and gender theory. In the process of teaching that course, I and a number of my students grew frustrated with mainstream academic feminist theory’s continued reliance upon Western European philosophical and theoretical paradigms. Even though such paradigms were always revised and critiqued, they were also almost always the epistemological starting point. This course, then, is designed as a way to look “outside of the box” in feminist theorizing. It is a new course and in many ways a new field for me. Thus I see the primary instructors in the course as the books and essays that we will be reading. I have selected and loosely organized these readings, and I will facilitate our discussions of them, but for the most part I see my role here as that of embarking on an exciting collective learning project with you.
We will begin by reading three major statements/voices by American women of color who some call “U. S. Third World feminists,” though they do not describe themselves as such. We will then examine various formulations of and challenges to the concept of third world feminism and the third world feminist. In the latter section of the course, we will examine a range of writings by third world and transnational feminists that theorize issues of nation, globalization, postmodernity, and postcoloniality, while at the same time rearticulating feminist theory itself in new forms. These readings will by no means exhaust the rich field of third world and transnational feminist theory, but they do represent major contributions to and interventions in this emergent body of theoretical knowledge.
Texts:
(all texts available at Folletts Orange Bookstore, Marshall Square Mall)
bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
Gloria Anzuldua, Borderlands/La Frontera
Paula Gunn Allen, Off the Reservation
Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other
eds. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres,
Third World Women and the
Politics
of Feminism
Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed
eds. Caren Kaplan, Norma Alarcon, and M. Moalem, Between Woman and Nation
Saskia Sasson, Globalization and Its Discontents
eds. Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and
Gayatri Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason
Sara Ahmed, Strange Encounters Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality
Photocopy course packet—available at Campus Copies at some unknown point in the future
Preliminary Schedule of Readings:
Jan. 14 Course introduction; feminism: waves, strands, and debates
Jan. 16 Thornham, “Second Wave Feminism” (handout)
This Bridge Called My Back, selections (handout)
Jan. 21 hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
Jan. 23 hooks, Feminist Theory, cont.
hooks, selections from Yearning and Killing Rage (handout)
Jan. 28 Anzuldua, Borderlands/La Frontera
Jan. 30 Anzuldua, cont.
Feb. 4 Allen, selections from The Sacred Hoop (cp)
Off the Reservation
Feb. 6 Allen, cont.
Feb. 11 Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other
Feb. 13 Minh-ha, cont.
Feb. 18 Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (cp)
Feb. 20 No class
Feb. 25 eds. Mohanty, Russo, & Torres, Third World Women and the Politics of
Feminism
Feb. 27 Third World Women, cont.
March 4 Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed
March 6 Sandoval, cont.
March 11 Spring break
March 13 Spring break
March 18 eds. Kaplan, Alarcon, & Moalem, Between Woman and Nation
March 20 Between Woman and Nation, cont.
March 25 Sasson, Globalization and Its Discontents
March 27 Sasson, cont.
Possibly other selected readings on gender and globalization
April 1 eds. Grewal and Kaplan, Scattered Hegemonies
April 3 Scattered Hegemonies, cont.
April 8 Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason
April 10 Spivak, cont.
April 16 Spivak, cont.
April 17 Spivak, cont.
April 22 Ahmed,
Strange Encounters
April 24 Ahmed, cont.
April 29 Course summary and review
Course requirements:
Attendance and participation: Come, come regularly, come prepared, and come prepared to speak; once “here,” speak, listen, and ask questions. Get to know your classmates names, think,…and have fun!
Critical response essays: Nine 3-page analytical reading essays. These essays will help you engage with the often challenging theoretical material for this course for yourself, before the class as a whole has discussed them. They are due on the first day we discuss each text and constitute one of the major requirements for this course. You may choose which of the texts you want to write on from the schedule of readings.
Oral presentation: In pairs, you will do some independent research and “present” on of the texts for the course. Rather than summarizing the texts, these presentations will provide your classmates with important background, framing, and bibliographical material related to the text for which you are responsible. Presenters should meet with me in preparation for their presentation.
Outside lectures: To broaden our inquiry and create links to others examining similar issues, I will ask you to attend at least three outside lectures (university and/or community) relevant to our course material. I will ask you to informally report on these lectures in class and turn in to me a brief summary of the lecture and an indication of its links to the issues we are exploring.
Final paper: In this paper, you will have the opportunity to synthesize what you have learned during the course of the semester. Rather than making an original argument, in this paper you will develop a road map through or chart of at least five of the texts or theorists we read during the course of the semester.