WGS 301

History of Feminist Thought

3 units

Fall 2025

Topics

To build an understanding of the ways that feminist histories are produced & constructed
To identify and assess recurring themes in feminist and proto-feminist thought
To discern persistent gaps in feminist history and historiography
To practice close critical analysis of primary texts
To assess the treatment of race, class, and sexuality and other categories of experience and oppression in early feminist thought

Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies 1405 Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 1792 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics 1898 Ida B. Wells, The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Cases of Lynching in the US 1895 Rokeya Hossain, Sultana’s Dream & Padmarag 1905 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas 1929, 1938 Shulamith Firestone, Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution 1970 Gloria Anzaldua & Cherrie Moraga, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Fortieth Anniversary Edition) 1981/2021
unspecified

Fall 2024

To build an understanding of the ways that feminist histories are produced & constructed
To identify and assess recurring themes in feminist and proto-feminist thought
To discern persistent gaps in feminist history and historiography
To practice close critical analysis of primary texts
To assess the treatment of race, class, and sexuality and other categories of experience and oppression in early feminist thought

Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies 1405 Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 1792 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics 1898 Ida B. Wells, The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Cases of Lynching in the US 1895 Rokeya Hossain, Sultana’s Dream & Padmarag 1905 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas 1929, 1938 Shulamith Firestone, Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution 1970 Gloria Anzaldua & Cherrie Moraga, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Fortieth Anniversary Edition) 1981/2021
unspecified

Sources