Course Description
Seminar covering topics of scholarly interest in advanced feminist theory.
Athena Title
Feminist Theories
Prerequisite
Permission of department
Semester Course Offered
Not offered on a regular basis.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
1. Graduate students will apply analytic strategies to gain a greater depth of understanding of feminist theory. 2. Graduate students will conduct an in-depth, nterdisciplinary investigation of key issues in contemporary scholarship and will study discrete topics which reflect state-of-the-art research in women's studies. 3. Graduate students will produce one in-depth, journal-length research paper.
Topical Outline
Possible course topics: I. Feminist Pedagogy - see syllabus II. Ecological Feminism: This seminar unites traditional approaches to ethical theory, feminist theory and environmentalism. It will examine traditional approaches to ethical theory from various feminist perspectives and examine ecological feminism from a philosophical, environental and feminist point of view. Students will be encouraged to syunthesize materials from traditional ethics and ecology to construct their own approaches to environmental issues. III. Women's Personal Narratives: This seminar examines women's personal narratives from an interdisciplinary perspective in order to systematically examine the centrality of personal narratives and the individual's life and experiences to women's studies. The term "personal narratives" includes diaries, memoirs, letters, oral histories and life stories (personal accounts written down by another), as well as traditional autobiographies. The thematic emphasis will be on how women experience and overcome discrimination and oppression due to their race, class, sexual orientation, ethnicity and gender. In addition to primary texts, advances doctoral students will analyze the substantial body of critical literature and critique historical and contemporary personal narratives. IV. Feminism, Marxism, Postmodernism: This seminar is a study of the confluence of anti-ideological critical practices from their twentieth century roots in early-century feminist theory and Marxist theory to feminist, Marxist and postmodernist theory in the present in order to examine both theory and practice across disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.
Syllabus