WMST 781 Eileen Boris Spring 1999 221 Minor Hall Wed. 6-8:30 p.m. 982-2926 331 Cabell Hall ecb4d@virginia.edu Office Hours: T: 3:30-5; Th: 10-12 And by appointment Gender, Race, and Class in Feminist Thought Course Description This colloquium investigates recent research on the categories of 'gender,' 'race,' and 'class,' as re-imagined in feminist thought. What are the implications of shifting analysis from women to gender? How does race transform the meanings of gender and how does gender distinguish the experience of racial otherness? Can women and men share the same class position? How do race and gender destablize understandings of class? After focusing on each concept separately, we will consider the idea of intersectionality or how gender, race, and class work together in culture and society. We will critique specific applications. The format serves to bring graduate students from disciplines across the university together to explore the difference that women's studies makes on the structure of knowledge and to work toward greater interdisciplinary understanding. Organized with core readings initially chosen by the instructor and then with readings worked out with the class to meet specific needs, it offers a place for students to rethink their own specialties and the usefulness of 'gender,' 'race,' and 'class' in scholarly inquiry. Course Requirements Students will write three short papers (3-5 pages) and one long paper/project. Each short paper is worth 20% of the grade and the long paper is worth 40%. Short Papers One paper will analyze the readings on 'gender,' one will consider those on 'race,' and the third will critique those on 'class.' Students may wish to compare and contrast the readings or critique monographs in light of the articles. Since elements of race or class may be present in the assignments under gender and vice versa, students may wish to consider such intersections or their lack in the readings. Long Paper/Project This paper/project will be tailored to the individual student and her or his needs at the current stage of his or her graduate career. Papers may take the form of a historiography or review of the literature, a research design, a reworking of a chapter of a longer work, or other appropriate project. Books for Purchase There is a packet of readings to purchase at the Copy Shop, 5-B Elliewood Ave. I will place a copy of the packet and of the books on reserve at Clemons Library. The following are available for purchase in the University of Virginia Bookstore: Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, University of Chicago Press, paperback 1996 Chilla Bulbeck, Re-Orienting Western Feminisms: Women's Diversity in a Postcolonial World, Cambridge University Press, 1998 Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1993 Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, Vintage, 1999 Carolyn Kay Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives, Rutgers, 1987 Agenda (Subject to Change) January 20 Introductions and Organization 27 Gender (Reader) Bem, Scott, Butler, Nicholson, Hawkesworth and comments February 3 Gender (Monograph) Bederman 10 Gender Paper Due 17 Race (Reader) duCille, Stanford Friedman, Frank, Lowe, Pascoe 24 Race (Monograph) Frankenberg March 3 Race Paper Due 10 Class (Reader) Hartmann, Brodkin Sacks, Collins, Rose, Fraser 24 Class (Monograph) Steedman 31 Class Paper Due April 7 Intersectionality Roberts 14 Western/Postcolonial Bulbeck Individual Conferences Long Paper/Project Presentation Paper/Projects due May 7. ******* Table of Contents: Women Studies 781: Gender, Race, and Class in Feminist Thought Eileen Boris Table of Contents Gender Sandra Lipsitz Bem, "Gender Polarization," "The Construction of Gender Identity," from The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality (Yale, 1993), 80-175, 202-37 Joan Wallach Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," from Gender and the Politics of History (Columbia, 1988), 28-50, 206-11 Judith Butler, "Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire," from Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge, 1990), 1-34, 150-57 Linda Nicholson, "Interpreting Gender," Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20 (Autumn 1994), 79-105 Mary Hawkesworth, "Confounding Gender," with comments and reply, Signs 22 (Spring 1997), 649-713 Race Ann duCille, "The Occult of True Black Womanhood: Critical Demeanor and Black Feminist Studies," Signs 19 (Spring 1994), 591-629 Susan Stanford Friedman, "Beyond White and Other: Relationality and Narratives of Race in Feminist Discourse," Signs (Autumn 1995), 1-49 Dana Frank, "White Working-Class Women and the Race Question," International Labor and Working-Class History, n.54 (Fall 1998), 80-102 Lisa Lowe, "Immigration, Citizenship, Racialization: Asian American Critique," "Work, Immigration, Gender: Asian 'American' Women," from Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Duke, 1997), 1-36, 154-73, 177-98 Peggy Pascoe, "Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of 'Race' in Twentieth-Century America," Journal of American History 83 (June 1996), 44-69 Class Heidi Hartmann, "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union," in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, ed. Linda Nicholson (Routledge, 1997), 97-122 Karen Brodkin Sacks, "Toward a unified theory of class, race, and gender," Amerian Ethnologist 16 (August 1989), 534-50 Randall Collins, "Women and the Production of Status Cultures," in Cultivating differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality, ed. Michele Lamont and Marcel Fournier (Chicago, 1992), 213-31 Sonya O. Rose, "Class Formation and the Quintessential Worker," Reworking Class, ed. John R. Hall (Cornell 1997), 133-66 Nancy Fraser, "From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a "Postsocialist" Age," "After the Family Wage: A Postindustrial Thought Experiment," from Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the"Postsocialist" Condition (Routledge, 1997), 11-66