Women’s Studies 101

Introduction to Women’s Studies

Fall 2001

Elissa Gelfand

H. Garrett-Goodyear

209 Skinner Hall
Ext.2451
hgarrett@mtholyoke.edu
Office Hours:
please call ext. 2377
for appointments

Acknowledgements

We owe much to colleagues in Women’s Studies who offered their syllabi and good counsel as we prepared the present version of “Introduction to Women’s Studies.”  Martha Ackmann, Karen Remmler, and Jean Grossholtz are among former instructors whose syllabi and experiences encouraged and enabled us to teach WOST 101 this year. We also benefited from suggestions by Tamara Burk, director of SAW,  and we are grateful for her help in training us and group facilitators to make good use of discussion groups this semester. Other members of Women’s Studies, as well as other past instructors of WOST 101, also played a constructive role in fashioning this course. Especially, however, do we owe thanks to Mary Renda, who will surely recognize as her own much, perhaps most, of what follows. The responsibility for this syllabus, however, is fully ours. EG and HGG.

Course Description

Women’s Studies began in the 1970s as an academic field committed to uncovering the realities of women’s lives, understanding the nature of women’s oppression, and charting paths to significant social change. Over the course of several decades of interdisciplinary women’s studies scholarship, the scope of the field has both shifted and expanded considerably. Women’s studies scholars working in and across the humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences have traced myriad lines of inquiry from those first questions about women to investigations into the very nature of gender identity; its intersection with other axes of difference such as class, race, and sexuality; and its intimate connection with what at first seemed to be unrelated forms of power, knowledge, and practice. This course introduces the dynamic and still changing field of women’s studies scholarship.

We will consider the value of gender as an analytic category for understanding women’s lives and the worlds they inhabit. But we will also consider the limitations and dangers of an exclusive focus on gender. The intersections among gender, race, class, and sexuality in various contexts, past and present, will be central to our inquiry.. How feminist theory has developed, and how it is practiced in various local and international contexts, are also on our agenda for the semester.

Readings and Films

   The following books may be purchased from the Odyssey Bookshop:

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, Plume/Penguin, 1994 (orig.ed., 1970)

Gloria Anzaldua , Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Aunt Lute Books, 2^nd  ed., 1999 (orig.ed, 1987)

Ann Raimes, Pocket Keys for Writers, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000

All other readings, unless distributed in class, are included in a reading packet available for at the Women’s Studies Office (415 Williston); at cost of reproduction. You will also be expected to view and reflect on three films:  “Mississippi Masala,”, “Safe: Inside A Battered Women’s Shelter,” and “Citizen Ruth.”  Times and places of screenings are included in the schedule of classes below.

Expectations

2.  Everyone in class will be required to do significant writing. You will be asked to submit: a) two brief, informal responses to readings that will serve as preparation for the longer essays that follow. These preliminary written exercises (1-2 pages) will be due on Wednesday, September 26 [in advance of the first essay] and Wednesday, December 5 [in advance of the third essay]; b) three longer, more formal essays, which will be due Monday, October 29 (5 pages); Monday, November 19 (5 pages); and, during the exam period (10 pages).

     Students should take advantage of the resources provided by the Speaking, Arguing, and Writing Program (SAW), including consultations with trained student assistants who can offer feedback on their writing and regular workshops for those wishing to improve particular aspects of their written work.

3. Discussion Groups: Students will meet once a week in small groups with a facilitator. These group meetings have two fundamental objectives:  a) to guarantee each student opportunities actively to explore with colleagues the topics and themes generated by readings and class sessions; and, b) to enable participants to raise questions and express uncertainty or confusion arising from readings and class sessions.

     We do not regard these groups as simply an optional benefit for students but as integral to the exploration that is "Introduction to Women's Studies." To make sure that insights as well as questions articulated within the groups become part of our common project, we will ask that: a) students, in rotation, report from each group to the rest of the course participants weekly, by posting a discussion summary to the course webboard; b) for 10-15 minutes, at the beginning of each Monday class, students from one group (groups will rotate each week) present a major issue or question for consideration by the class as a whole. These oral presentations, to be based on the previous week's group discussion, will be followed by 15-20 minutes of responses from students in other groups. Presentations should not simply summarize the group's discussion; they should instead try to provoke engagement among all course participants in a specific issue or problem confronted within the group, and to stimulate further exploration among members of other groups.

     In addition, for the first ten minutes of each small group discussion, one student (in rotation) will be expected to summarize what happened during the previous week's regular classes. These summaries, which are for the benefit for the facilitator and student colleagues, must be prepared ahead of time in writing and copies submitted to the two course instructors.

Please note that attendance at weekly group discussions is mandatory.

4.  Attendance:  You will be allowed a maximum of three unexcused absences Absences beyond that limit will lower your grade. (Attendance sheet for regular classes and discussion groups will be circulated in class).

Schedule of Classes and Assignments

September 10 and 12

I. “Women”: Identities, Relationships, Representations

September 17

Minnie Bruce Pratt, “Identity: Skin, Blood, Heart,” from Pratt, Elly Bulkin, and Barbara Smith, Yours  in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism (1984), 9-64  Please give closest attention to pages 11-41).

September 19

Continuation of discussion of Pratt, and also Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Defining Genealogies: Feminist Reflections on Being South Asian in North America,” from Our Feet Walk the Sky: Women of the South Asian Diaspora, ed. by The Women of South Asian Descent Collective (1993), 351-358.

September 24

Patricia J. Williams, “Owning the Self in a Disowned World,” The Alchemy of Race and Rights (1991), 181-201  Also, selections to be distributed in class: Mary Renda, Taking Haiti (2001), 24-25; Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory, ed. I. Makaryk (1993), 535-536; and Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction (1987), 1-5

For Sept. 26

Please write a brief, informal response to the first three readings (Pratt, Mohanty, Williams) by thinking in terms of the following question: According to each author, how do people inhabit the category “women”?  (Be sure to consider how, if at all, race, class, and sexuality shape each author’s account.)

September 26 and October 1

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

October 3

Gloria. Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, pp. 23-86.

October 8

October Break

October 10

Anzaldua, 86-113.

October 15

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. by Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (1991), 51-88.

October 17

Homa Hoodfar, “The Veil in Their Minds and On Our Heads: The Persistence of Colonial Images of Muslim Women,” The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital, ed. By Lisa Lowe and David Lloyd (1997), 248-79.

October 22

Kathy Peiss, “Making Faces: the Cosmetics Industry and the Cultural Construction of Gender, 1890-1930,” Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History, ed. by Vicki Ruiz and Ellen Dubois (2000), 324-345.

October 24

Discussion of “Mississippi Masala” (1992), directed by Mira Nair, 117 min., showings scheduled for Mon. Oct. 22,  4:00 .p.m. in 301 Shattuck, and Tues., Oct. 23, 7:00 p.m. in 202 Skinner Hall.

October 29

Reflections on “Identities, Relationships, Representations”: An opportunity to review issues and themes to date. 

Also for October 29

Your first 5 page essay is due in class. Directions will be distributed in advance

II. “Women,” “Sex,” “Gender”: Problematic Categories

October 31

Rosemarie Tong, “Introduction: The Varieties of Feminist Thinking,” Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction , and Denise Riley, “Does A Sex Have a History?” Feminism and History, ed. by Joan Wallach Scott (1996), 17-33 (please pay closest attention to pages 17-21).

November 5

Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” , with special attention to pages. 311-317; and  Anne Fausto-Sterling, “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough,” The Sciences (March/April 1993)

November 7

Linda Nicholson, “Gender,” A Companion to Feminist Philosophy, ed. by Alison M. Jaggar and Iris Marion Young (1998), 289-97;  Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,” Feminism and History, 105-51 (with special attention to pages 105-110, 114-117, 124-125, 131-37).

November 12

Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” Feminism and History, 152-80. Mary Renda may join us for this class.

November 14

Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” Inside/Outside: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, ed. by Diana Fuss (1991), 13-31, with special attention to pages 18-21.

November 19

Second 5-page essay due.  Directions will be distributed in advance.

III. Violence, Power and Resistance

November 19

“Safe: Inside a Battered Women’s Shelter,” (c.2000), directed by Brad Lichtenstein, 49 min., showings scheduled for Thurs., Nov. 5, 7:00 p.m., in 202 Skinner, and Fri., Nov. 16, 4:00 p.m., also in 202 Skinner.  Carmen Nieves, from WomanShelter/Companeras, Holyoke, may join our discussion of “Safe.”

November 21

Thanksgiving Break

On Nov. 26

We would like once again your observations on how discussions groups and the class are working. Please bring to class a brief assessment, commenting again on what you, your facilitator, and your instructor might do to make discussions and classes more effective.

November 26

J.K. Gibson-Graham, “Beyond Patriarchy and Capitalism: Reflections on Political Subjectivity,” Transitions: New Australian Feminism, ed. by Barbara Caine and Rosemary Pringle (1995), 172-83

November 28

Anne Fausto-Sterling, “Putting Woman in Her (Evolutionary) Place,” Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men (1992)

December 3

Sharon Marcus, “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention,” Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. by Judith Butler and Joan Wallach Scott (1992)

December 5

Carol Cohn, “Wars, Wimps, and Women: Talking Gender and Thinking War,” Gendering War Talk, ed. by Miriam Cooke and Angela Woollacott (1993), 227-46.

Also for
December 5

Short paper, or prospectus for 3^rd essay, due in class.

December 10

Dorothy Allison, “The Meanest Woman Ever Left Tennessee, “ “Mama,” and “Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Know,” in Trash (1988).

December 12

Discussion of “Citizen Ruth.” 1997, directed by Alexander Payne, 105 min., showings scheduled for Mon., Dec. 10, 4:00.p.m., in Shattuck 301.  and Tuesday, Dec. 11, 7:00.p.m.

Exam period

3^rd Essay due. Guidelines will be discussed and distributed in advance.