WGS.640
Topics in Transnational and Multicultural Feminisms
<p class="p1">An examination of topics in transnational and multicultural feminisms. Topics vary<p class="p1">from term to term. Limited to 10.
Fall 2014 · Gender, Race, and the Construction of the American West
Topics
- Theoretical Overview: Construction Gender, Race-Ethnicity and “The West”
- The Great Plains and the Farm Frontier
- The Farm Frontier—Literary Perspectives
- The Borderlands
- Immigration, Migration, and Farm Labor on the West Coast
- Cultural Brokers and Moral Reform
- Cultural Brokers via the “Empire of the Lens.”
- Representations of the West: Writers, Artists, and Mythmakers
Readings
- Cather, Willa. My Antonia. Edited by Joseph R. Urgo. Broadview Press, 2003. ISBN: 9781551114910.
- Limerick, Patricia. “Region and Reason.” In All Over the Map: Rethinking American Regions. Edited by Edward L. Ayers et al. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, pp. 83–104. ISBN: 9780801852060.
- Rich, Adrienne. “Notes toward a Politics of Location.” In Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979–1985. W.W. Norton, 1986, pp. 210–31. ISBN: 9780393023763.
- Anzaldua, Gloria. “La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness.” Borderlands / La Frontera . Aunt Lute Books, 1987. pp. 77–91.
- Cather, Willa. My Antonia. Edited by Joseph R. Urgo. Broadview Literary Texts, 2009. ISBN: 9781551114910.
- Scharff, Virginia. “So Many Miles to a Person: Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Makes New Mexico.” In Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement and the West . University of California Press, 2002, pp. 115–135. ISBN: 9780520237773.
- Zitkala–Sa. Impressions of an Indian Childhood. Dodo Press, 2008, pp. 7–47. ISBN: 9781409910312.
- Lemke–Santangelo, Gretchen. Chapters 3 and 4 in Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community. University of the North Carolina Press, 1996.
- Zamir, Shamoon. “Literature in a ‘National Sacrifice Area’: Leslie Silko’s ‘Ceremony.’” In New Voices in Native American Literature. Edited by Arnold Krupat. Smithsonian, 1993. ISBN: 9781560982265.
- WEEK #: 13 · TOPICS: Student Presentations on Term Projects & Professor Rudnick’s Slide show on O’Keeffe · READINGS: No readings.
Spring 2014 · Screen Women: Body Narratives in Popular American Film
Topics
- The Women’s Film and Makeover Narratives
- Body Makeovers
- Adolescent Bodies / Teen Sexuality
- Extreme Body Mastery: Discipline and Surveillance
- Transgender Bodies
- Unruly Bodies, Part One
- Unruly Bodies, Part Two
- Student Project Presentations
Readings
- Thornham, Sue, ed. Feminist Film Theory: A Reader . NYU Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780814782446.
- [FFT] = Thornham, Sue, ed. Feminist Film Theory: A Reader . NYU Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780814782446.
- LaPlace, Maria. “Producing and Consuming the Woman’s Film: Discursive Struggle in Now, Voyager.” In Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film . Edited by Christine Gledhill. British Film Institute, 1987. ISBN: 9780851702001.
- Valentine, Catherine. “Tiny, Tattooed, and Tough as Nails: Representations of Lisbeth Salander’s Body.” In Men Who Hate Women and Women Who Kick Their Asses: Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy in Feminist Perspective . Edited by Donna King and Carrie Lee Smith. Vanderbilt University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780826518507.
- Murphy, Caryn Murphy. “Feminist Avenger or Male Fantasy?: Reading the Reception of the Millennium Trilogy.” In Men Who Hate Women and Women Who Kick Their Asses: Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy in Feminist Perspective . Edited by Donna King and Carrie Lee Smith. Vanderbilt University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780826518507.
- Harris, Anita. “The ‘Can Do’ Girl Versus the ‘At Risk’ Girl.” In Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century . Routledge, 2003. ISBN: 9780415947022.
- Tolman, Deborah. “Daring to Desire: Culture and the Bodies of Adolescent Girls.” In The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior. Edited by Rose Weitz and Samantha Kwan. Oxford University Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780199343799.
- Maher, Jane Maree. “Eggs in Many Baskets”: Juno (2007), Baby Mama (2008) and the New Intimacies of Reproduction." In Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema . Edited by Hilary Radner and Rebecca Stringer. Routledge, 2011. ISBN: 9780415895880.
- Karlyn, Kathleen Rowe. “Trouble in Paradise: American Beauty and the Incest Motif” and “The Motherline and a Wicked Powerful Feminism.” Chapters 2 and 8 in Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers: Redefining Feminism on Screen . University of Texas Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780292737549.
- Leonard, Suzanne. “‘I Hate My Job, I Hate Everybody Here’: Adultery, Boredom and the Working Girl in Twenty-First Century American Cinema.” In Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture . Edited by Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker. Duke University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780822340324.
Fall 2007 · Studies in Women's Life Narratives: Interrogating Marriage: Case Studies in American Law and Culture
Is marriage a patriarchal institution? Much feminist scholarship has characterized it that way, but now in the context of the recent Massachusetts Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage, the meaning of marriage itself demands serious re-examination. This course will discuss history, literature, film, and legal scholarship, making use of cross-cultural, sociological, anthropological, and many other theoretical approaches to the marriage question from 1630 to the present. As it turns out, sex, marriage, and the family have never been stable institutions; to the contrary, they have continued to function as flash points for the very social and cultural questions that are central to gender studies scholarship.
Readings
- WEEK #: 1 · PROFESSORS: RB, LB/STB · TOPICS: Welcome/Introduction: What are we talking about? · READINGS: (no readings)
- Godbeer, Richard. Sexual Revolution In Early America . Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780801868009. (Focus on part one.)
- Fessenden, Tracy, Nicholas Radel, and Magdalena Zaborowska. “Introduction.” In The Puritan Origins of American Sex . New York, NY: Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 9780415926409.
- Dillon, Elizabeth Maddock. “Nursing Fathers and Brides of Christ: The Feminized Body of the Puritan Convert.” In A Centre of Wonders: The Body in Early America . Edited by Janet Moore Lindman and Michele Lise Tarter. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780801487392.
- Foucault, Michel. Introduction to the History of Sexuality . New York, NY: Vintage, 1990. ISBN: 9780679724698.
- *Cott, Nancy. Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002 [2000]. ISBN: 9780674008755.
- Hertog, Hendrick. Man and Wife in America: A History . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002 [2000]. ISBN: 9780674008113.
- *Rowson, Susanah. Charlotte Temple . Edited by Cathy N. Davidson. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780195042382.
- *Pagan, John Ruston. Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Love in Early Virginia . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780195144796.
- Ulrich, Laurel Thacher. “The Serpent Beguiled Me.” In Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 . New York, NY: Vintage, 1991. ISBN: 9780679732570.
- Armstrong. “Why Daughters Die: The Racial Logic of American Sentimentalism.” Yale Journal of Criticism 7, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 1-25.
- Tennenhouse, Leonard. “The Americanization of Clarissa.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 11, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 177-196.
- Kelly, Linda. “Republican Mothers, Bastards’ Fathers, and Good Victims: discarding Citizens and Equal Protection Through the Failures of Legal Images.” Hastings Law Journal 51 (March 2000): 557.
- Davis, Martha F. “Male Coverture: Law and the Illegitimate Family.” Rutgers Law Review 56 (Fall 2003).
- Kiernan, Kathleen. “Unmarried Cohabitation and Parenthood in Britain and Europe.” Law and Policy 26, no. 1: 33-55.
- Seltzer, Judith. “Families Formed Outside of Marriage.” Journal of Marriage and Family 62, no. 4 (2000).
- Choose one of the following to read
- Sollors, Werner. Interracialism: Black-White Intermarriage in American History, Literature, and Law . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780195128574.
- Romano, Renee. Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Post-War America . Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006. ISBN: 9780813029801.
- *Williams, Patricia. The Rooster’s Egg: On the Persistence of Prejudice . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997 [1995]. ISBN: 9780674779433.
- “Preserving Racial Identity: Population Patterns and the Application of Anti-Miscegenation Statutes to Asian Americans, 1910-1950.” Asian Law Journal 9 (2002).
- Kiernan, Kathleen. “Redrawing the boundaries of Marriage.” Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (2004): 980-987.
- *Stack, Carol: All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Back Community . New York, NY: Basic Books, 1997 [1974]. ISBN: 9780061319822.
- Luxon, Thomas. “Introduction.” In Single Imperfection: Milton, Marriage and Friendship . Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2005, pp. 1-20. ISBN: 9780820703732.
- Schweitzer, Ivy. “Smoke and Mirrors.” In Perfecting Friendship: Politics and Affiliation in Early American Literature . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006, pp. 27-71. ISBN: 9780807857786.
- Rosenberg, Carroll Smith. “The Female World of Love and Ritual.” In Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN: 9780195040395.
- Vicinus, Martha. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women , 1776-1928. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780226855646.
- Marcus, Sharon. Between Women, Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780691128351.
- Castle, Terry. “James and the specter of Lesbianism.” In The Apparitional Lesbian . New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780231076531.
- Faderman, Lillian. “Acting ‘Women’ and Thinking ‘Man’: The Ploys of Famous Female Inverts.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 5, no. 3 (1999): 315-329.
- McColley, Kathleen. “Claiming Center Stage: Speaking Out for Homoerotic Empowerment in the Bostonians.” The Henry James Review 21, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 151-169.
- *Gerstman, Evan. Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780521709132.
- *Chauncey, George. Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today’s Debate Over Gay Equality . New York, NY: Basic Books, 2004. ISBN: 9780465009572.
- Pinello, Daniel. America’s Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780521848565.
- Koppelman, Andrew. Same Sex, Different States: When Same Sex Marriages Cross State Lines . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780300113402.
- Eskridge, William. Gay Marriage: For Better or for Worse: What We’ve Learned from the Evidence . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780195187519.
- *Rosenfeld, Michael J. The Age of Independence: Interracial Unions, Same-Sex Unions, and the Changing American Family . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780674024977.
- Polikoff, Nancy. Beyond Straight or Gay: Marriage, Valuing All Marriages Under the Law . Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780807044322.
- Cherlin, Andrew. “The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage.” Journal of Marriage and Family 66, no. 4 (November 2004).
- Schneider, Elizabeth M. “Part 3: Implementing Feminist Lawmaking” and “Part 4: Aspirations, Limits, and Possibilities.” In Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780300094114.
- Stacey, Judith. Brave New Families: Stories of Domestic Upheaval in Late Twentieth Century America . New York, NY: Basic Books, 1990. ISBN: 9780465007462.
- WEEK #: 13 · PROFESSORS: RB, LB/STB · TOPICS: Course wrap-up · READINGS: Alsanea, Rajaa. Girls of Riyadh . New York, NY: Penguin, 2007. ISBN: 9781594201219.
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: Must apply to the Graduate Consortium in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality G (Spring) 3-0-9 units Can be repeated for credit.
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2014
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Spring 2014
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2007
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.