French Feminisms

Catalog description

Feminism has a long history in France, from the work of Christine de Pizan (1364-1431), which instigated the centuries-long discussion of women's rights and women's status known as the Querelle des femmes (the Quarrel about women), through Louise Labé and Marie de Gournay in the sixteenth century and Olympe de Gouges in the eighteenth, to modern and postmodern feminists such as Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Monique Wittig, and more recently, Mona Chollet. The work of these authors will be seen in the light of premodern and modern misogyny, witchcraft theory, queer theory, (Foucault and Judith Butler) and political theory (theories of sovereignty from Jean Bodin to the present). This course will be conducted in French.