WMNST 301NSexualities, Gender and Power: Feminist Thought and Politics

3 credits · Women's Studies · Penn State

WMNST 301N Sexualities, Gender and Power: Feminist Thought and Politics (3) (GH;GS;US;) This course is an interdisciplinary survey of historical and contemporary feminist theories in both the United States and international contexts. While attention is given to key historical moments in feminist thought, the course stresses theoretical trends and debates in feminism today. Course themes will include: (1) feminist epistemology and standpoint theory, epistemic privilege and epistemologies of ignorance; (2) postcolonial critiques of western feminism, and contemporary efforts to define a transnational and anti-racist feminism, (3) gender identity and the very viability of the category; (4) the concept of freedom, liberation, and of women's agency in feminist narratives of liberation, (5) theoretical implications for defining productive labor for women that is not exclusively the labor of childbirth, and the subsequent care of children and family; (6) the ongoing search for new paradigms of embodiment and interdependency (such as feminist disability and care studies) that counter patriarchal epistemologic constructions.