I. Sept. 3 Introduction [Issues and Dimensions of Women’s Power and Oppression]II. Sept. 10 Marx and Engels: Dialectical Materialism [The Mode of Production, Dialectical Materialist Theory of History]III. Sept. 17 Marxist Theories of Class and Gender [Classes as Relations and Processes, Gender and the Sexual Division of Labor]STUDENT SHORT PAPERS DUE WITH COPIES FOR ALLX. Nov. 5 Student Short Paper DiscussionsNo seminar Nov. 12: Tuesday class schedule followedSyllabus WOST 591E Advanced Introduction to Feminist Theory Fall 2008 Bartlett 3 Professor Ann Ferguson Office: Bartlett 7-C Hours: Tues. 6-7, Weds. 1:30-3 and by arrangement Office Phone: 545-5354 [email protected] Texts (on sale at Food for Thought books in downtown Amherst) Jude Browne, ed. The Future of Gender (2007, Cambridge University). Ellen Feder Family Bonds: Genealogies of Race and Gender (2007, Oxford University). Michel Foucault The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 ( 1978, Vintage Press) Richard Schmitt Introduction to Marx and Engels (1997, Westview Press) Optional Rachel Alsop, Annette Fitzsimmons and Kathleen Lennon Theorizing Gender (2002, Polity Press) Charles W. Mills and Carole Pateman Contract and Domination (2007, Polity Press) Juliet Mitchell Women’s Estate (1973, Vintage), available from Amazonbooks.com as a used book. Ann Ferguson Blood at the Root: Motherhood, Sexuality and Male Domination (1989, Pandora/Unwin and Hyman), available from Amazonbooks.com as a used book. COURSE DESCRIPTION & REQUIREMENTS This seminar is designed to act as an advanced introduction to feminist theory to advanced undergraduates and to graduate students. It provides a background of the key paradigms of social theory that are assumed as starting points by contemporary feminist theorists and examples of feminist theoretical applications and developments from these different paradigms. Marxism, Freudian Psychoanalysis, Foucaultian approaches, Intersectional Feminism, and Critical Race Theory are the core paradigms. Queer Poststructualism and Postcolonial Theory will be presented as offshoots of the deconstructive aspects of these earlier paradigms. Radical feminism is considered as it feeds into a branch of materialist feminist theory coming from Marxism and (in some versions) Freudian theory. Liberal feminism is not dealt with directly but connects to aspects of Intersectional and Critical Race Theory. The course will begin from a historical base in the debates in the U.S. women’s movement, and move into contemporary debates. Texts for the course are listed above. All of the texts, plus the optional readings listed, will be on 3 day course reserve at the University library. Other required readings will be available online at the UMass Spark website for the course, and a hard copy will be available for overnight reserve at the WOST office, 208 Bartlett through 1Nancy Patteson, the Graduate Certificate Program Coordinator. Some of the texts and optional readings will be available there as well. GRADING COMPONENTS: There will be three main components on which student grades will be based: Class Participation, Short Paper, and the Term Paper. Class Participation (25 % of grade): This component will be based on attendance, short homework and class presentation assignments. There will be a weekly one page thought question due to the course online list serve on the readings the night before the seminar, and a sign up sheet for a brief 5 minute summary class presentation of one of the required readings for the course. Short Paper (35% of grade): There will be a short paper of 5-8 pages due at the seminar October 29. Students will be expected to bring copies of their paper for all the other members of the seminar, and the seminar will read and discuss them in class November 5. These papers should deal with some issues raised by the required readings in the seminar up to that date. They should be thought papers which outline the line of thought of an author or authors on an issue in one or more of the required readings we have read for the seminar, and which provide critical questions and/or support for their position. Term Paper (40% of grade): The term paper should be from 10- 15 or so pages on some theoretical line of thought or issue raised in the required and optional readings for the course (or some related issue and readings). It can be either a thought or a research paper, and can develop some aspect of your short paper. Students should turn in an outline and/or abstract of their term paper topic by the December 3 seminar, listing their likely references, and will receive comments and suggestions back to guide their writing of the paper by the final seminar December 10. Term Paper due Monday, Dec. 15 by 5 pm in hard copy at the WOST office, Bartlett 208. READINGS I. Sept. 3 Introduction [Issues and Dimensions of Women’s Power and Oppression] Readings: Juliet Mitchell Women’s Estate, ch. 5 “The Position of Women” Valerie Bryson “Perspectives on Gender Inequality” in Jude Browne text. II. Sept. 10 Marx and Engels: Dialectical Materialism [The Mode of Production, Dialectical Materialist Theory of History] Readings: Selections from Schmitt Introduction to Marx and Engels , 1997 chs. 5, 7-9, 12 [If you have the 1987 edition, read chs. 4, 6-8, 12]. Class Handouts on Dialectical Materialism Optional: John Brentlinger “Notes on Feuerbach and the German Ideology” (WOST office reserve) 2Markar Melkonian Marxism: a Post-Cold War Primer, ch.3-5. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Selections from The Communist Manifesto, The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, The German Ideology and the Grundrisse in Robert Tucker, ed. The Marx-Engels Reader III. Sept. 17 Marxist Theories of Class and Gender [Classes as Relations and Processes, Gender and the Sexual Division of Labor] Readings: Michael Zweig “The Class Structure of the United States” in The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret Richard Schmitt text, 1997, ch. 13 [1987 edition ch. 13,14] Selections from Friedrich Engels The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State Handout on Class Optional: Mark Melkonian Marxism: A Post-Cold War Primer, ch. 2 Jane Flax “Do Feminists Need Marxism?” (WOST office reserve) IV. Sept 24 Materialist Feminism/Marxist Feminism [Mode of Production and Reproduction, Re-interpretations of Marxism from a feminist perspective] Readings: