Critical & Reflective Inquiry: Feminisms

Theme: Feminisms

Concerned primarily with issues of power, oppression and justice, feminist theories have historically emerged out of movements for collective liberation. Among these are decolonization, abolition and anti-imperialist movements, as well as movements for sexual, racial, economic, and gender justice. Deeply concerned with the politics of knowledge, feminist theories aim to begin with the everyday experiences of marginalized communities in an effort to analyze--and radically transform--the unequal relations of power that shape our worlds.
Informed by the field's historical imperatives towards justice, this introductory course exposes students to the critical study of feminist theories as both an interdisciplinary intellectual endeavor and a political intervention into dominant knowledge practices. Anchored in multiple "waves" of struggles for social transformation, we will explore the tangled threads of power that work to make "gender," and which take form in our own lives and worlds in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. Particular attention will be paid to questions of social location, solidarity, accountability and movement building, both historically and at present. Ultimately, a major goal of the course is for students to begin interrogating their own relationships to different genealogies of struggle, raising questions about their own potential as agents for social transformation in the classroom and in their lives.