Woman*, Life, Freedom: Global Feminist Liberation Movements

This course puts its keywords—woman*, life, freedom—in conversation to explore how an avowal of woman and life has been and will remain prerequisites to liberation, particularly in our tumultuous present. We start by looking at the roots of the revolutionary slogan of the uprising that overtook Iran following the 2022 death of Jina (Mahsa) Amini while in state custody, to understand its indebtedness to Kurdish women’s struggle against authoritarianism in Turkey; ISIS extremism in Iraq/Syria; and now, resistance to patriarchal fundamentalism and military oppression in Iran. In studying the slogan’s centering of women/counter-hegemonic bodies and desires, and broadening our scope to the global stage, we will ask: Which genealogies of feminist, queer, and liberationist thought/practice does this slogan allow us to ascertain? What are the throughlines of our contemporary sociopolitical practices of liberation, particularly among Global South, women*-led movements?