Session 1: Introduction: An overview of the course
No readings
Concepts
Session 2: Sex/Gender I
Marian Lowe. 1986. “The Dialectic of Biology and Culture.” In Woman’s Nature: Rationalizations of Inequality, ed. Marian Lowe and Ruth Hubbard, 39–62. New York: Pergamon Press. [View on WorldCat.]
Judith Lorber. 1994. “‘Night to His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender." Excerpts from Paradoxes of Gender (Chapter 1). Yale University Press. [View on WorldCat.]
Session 3: Sex/Gender II
Audre Lorde. 1979. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (PDF). Comments originally delivered at “The Personal and the Political” Panel, Second Sex Conference, October 29, 1979.
Becky Thompson. 2002. “Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism.” Feminist Studies 28(2): 336–360.
Oyeronke Oyewumi. 2002. “Conceptualizing Gender: The Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challenge of African Epistemologies.” Journal of Culture and African Women Studies 2(1).
Sessions 4: Race and the Politics of Race I
Dorothy E. Roberts. 2011. Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Recreate Race in the Twenty-First Century. Introduction. The New Press. ISBN: 978-1595588340. [View on WorldCat.]
Michael Omi and Howard Winant. 1994. “Racial Formation.” In Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd Edition. New York: Routledge, 53–76. ISBN: 978-0415520317. [View on WorldCat.]
Session 5: Race and the Politics of Race II
Angela Davis. 1983.Women, Race & Class. (1–29 and 70–86). Vintage Books. ISBN: 978-0394713519. [View on WorldCat.]
Daria Roithmayr. 2014. Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock In White Advantage. NYU Press. ISBN: 978-0814769331. [View on WorldCat.]
Session 6: Intersectionality/Multiculturalism
Raewyn Connell. 2014. “Rethinking Gender from the South.” Feminist Studies 40(3): 518–539.
Chanda Prescod Weinstein. 2016. “Intersectionality as a Blueprint for Postcolonial Scientific Community Building.” Medium. January 24, 2016.
Avtar Brah and Ann Phoenix. 2004. “Ain’t I A Woman? Revisiting Intersectionality.” Journal of International Women’s Studies, 5(3): 75–86.
Movements
Session 7: Feminist Praxis
bell hooks. 1989. “Feminism: a Transformational Politic.” In Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Routledge.
Shireen Hassim. 2004. “Voices, Hierarchies, and Spaces: Reconfiguring the Women’s Movement in Democratic South Africa.” South African Journal of Political Studies 32(2): 175–193.
Gloria Anzaldua. 2022. Excerpts from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books. ISBN: 978-1951874025. [View on WorldCat.]
Session 8: Women’s Movement in Latin America
Marjorie Agosin. 1987. “A Visit to the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo," Human Rights Quarterly 9(3): 426–435.
Veronica Schild. 2015. “Feminism and Neoliberalism in Latin America.” New Left Review 96: 59–74.
Juan Mandelbaum (director). 2010. Our Disappeared/Nuestros Desaparecidos. [film] New Day Films.
Session 9: Civil Rights Struggle and Black Feminism: Acts of Resistance
Excerpts from The Black Studies Reader. Routledge. 2004. ISBN: 978-0415945547 [View on WorldCat.]
- Rosalyn Terborg-Penn. “Discontented Black Feminists: Prelude and Postscript to the Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.”
- Carol Mueller. “Ella Baker and the Origins of ‘Participatory Democracy.’”
Ronieka Burns. 2016. “Women and the Black Lives Matter Movement: Relevance Past to Present.” In Dissenting Voices. The College at Brockport, State University of New York.
Blackside, Inc. 2021. Eyes on the Prize. [film]
PBS / The American Experience.
Session 10: Black Lives Matter
Ava DuVernay (director). 2016. 13th. [film] Netflix.
Session 11: Black Lives Matter I
Alicia Garza. 2014. “A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement.” The Feminist Wire, October 7, 2014
Barbara Ransby. 2015. “The Class Politics of Black Lives Matter.” Dissent 62: 31–34. DOI: 10.1353/dss.2015.0071.
Bahar Davary. 2017. “#Black Lives Matter.” Ethnic Studies Review 37/38: 11–14.
George Yancy and Judith Butler. 2015. “What’s Wrong with ‘All Lives Matter’?” The New York Times. January 12, 2015.
Session 12: Black Lives Matter II
Kelley, Robin. 2016. Thug Nation: On State Violence and Disposability in Policing the Planet: Why The Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter. Verso Books. [View on WorldCat.]
Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor. 2020. “Until Black Women Are Free, None of Us Will Be Free.” The New Yorker. July 20, 2020.
Jennifer Jee-Lyn Garcı́a and Mienah Zulfacar Sharif. 2015. “Black Lives Matter: A Commentary on Racism and Public Health.” American Journal of Public Health 108(8): e27–34.
Russell Rickford. 2015. “Black Lives Matter: Toward a Modern Practice of Mass Struggle.” New Labor Forum 25(1). December 8, 2015.
Session 13: Black Lives Matter III (Global Response)
Nicholas De Genova. 2018. “The ‘Migrant Crisis’ as Racial Crisis: Do Black Lives Matter in Europe?” Ethnic and Racial Studies 41(10): 1765–1782.
Session 14: Black Lives Matter IV (Global Response)
Articles from press across the globe:
Stein, Marc. 2020. “‘The Better I Got in Sports the Worse the Racism Got’” The New York Times. July 31, 2020.
“‘Indian Racism Towards Black People is Almost Worse Than White Peoples’ Racism” An Interview with Arundhati Roy." Monthly Review Online. June 8, 2020.
Partho Sarothi Ray. 2020. “Indian Science Must Heed the Message of the Black Lives Movement.” The Wire. July 12, 2020.
Jacqui Palumbo. 2020. “The Photographer Using Vivid Symbolism to Celebrate the History of Black Resistance.” CNN. July 13, 2020.
Session 15: Globalization and Women
Films:
Stephanie Black (director). 2001. Life and Debt. [film] New Yorker Films.
Lorraine W. Gray (director). 1986.
The Global Assembly Line. [film] Labournet.
Session 16: Women’s Labor
Barbara Ehrenreich. 2001. “Down and Out in America: Barbara Ehrenreich Talks about Life as a Minimum Wage Employee,” The Women’s Review of Books 18(10/11): 6–7.
Cynthia Enloe. 2004. “The Globetrotting Sneaker.” In The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire. University of California Press. [Read an excerpt (PDF)] ISBN: 978-0520243811.
Arlie Russell Hochschild. 2002. “Love and Gold” In Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (eds.), Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy. Henry Holt and Company. 15–30. ISBN: 978-0805075090 [View on WorldCat.]
Session 17: The Beauty Industry
Evelyn Nakano Glenn. 2008. “Yearning for Lightness: Transnational Circuits in the Marketing and Consumption of Skin Lighteners.” Gender & Society 22(3): 281–302.
Gary Xu and Susan Feiner. 2007. “Meinü Jingji/China’s Beauty Economy: Buying Looks, Shifting Value, and Changing Place.” Feminist Economics 13(3–4): 307–323.
Barbara E. Hopkins. 2007. “Western Cosmetics in the Gendered Development of Consumer Culture in China.” Feminist Economics 13(3–4): 287–306.
Session 18: The Me Too Movement
Angela Onwuachi-Willig. 2018. “What About #UsToo?: The Invisibility of Race in the #MeToo Movement.” 128 Yale Law Journal Forum 105.
Vasundhara Prasad. 2018. “If Anyone Is Listening, #MeToo: Breaking the Culture of Silence Around Sexual Abuse Through Regulating Non-Disclosure Agreements and Secret Settlements”, 59 Boston College Law Review 2507.
Session 19: The Environmental Movement
Wangari Maathai. 2004. “Trees for Democracy.” The New York Times. December 10, 2004.
Sherilyn MacGregor. 2010. “A Stranger Silence Still: The Need for Feminist Social Research on Climate Change.” The Sociological Review. March 12, 2010.
John Bellamy Foster. 1999. The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment. Monthly Review Press. [View on WorldCat.]
Lisa Merton and Alan Dater (directors). 2008. Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai. [film]
New Day Films.
Session 20: Engendering Gay and Lesbian Rights
Taylor Flynn. 2001. “‘Transforming’ the Debate: Why We Need to Include Transgender Rights in the Struggles for Sex and Sexual Orientation Equality.” Columbia Law Review: 392–420.
Jacklyn Cock. 2003. “Engendering Gay and Lesbian Rights: the Equality Clause in the South African Constitution,” Women’s Studies International Forum 26(1): 35–45.
Session 21: Reproductive Rights: Sex Selection
Ashley Bumgarner. 2007. “A Right to Choose: Sex Selection in the International Context.” Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy 14: 1289.
Session 22: Reproductive Rights: Surrogacy
Sharmila Rudrappa and Caitlyn Collins. 2015. “Altruistic Agencies and Compassionate Consumers: Moral Framing of Transnational Surrogacy.” Gender & Society 29(6): 937–959, DOI: 10.1177/0891243215602922.
Amrita Banerjee. 2014. “Race and a Transnational Reproductive Caste System: Indian Transnational Surrogacy.” Hypatia 29: 113–128. doi:10.1111/hypa.12056.
Yasmine Ergas. 2013. “Babies Without Borders: Human Rights, Human Dignity, and the Regulation of International Commercial Surrogacy”(PDF). Emory International Law Review 27(1).
Session 23: Right to Water Film
Sam Bozzo (director). 2008. Blue Gold: World Water Wars. [film] PBS / Purple Turtle Films.
Session 24: Right to Water
Farhana Sultana and Alex Loftus. 2015. “The Human Right to Water: Critiques and Condition of Possibility.” WIREs Water 2: 97–105.
Karen Piper. 2012. “Revolution of the Thirsty,” Places Journal, July 2012.
Session 25–26: Student Presentations
No readings
