PIVOTAL PRAXIS: EXPERIMENTS IN ACTIONABLE FEMINISM      3 Credit Hours

Catalog description

This course engages students at the pumping heart of the whole feminist story: its actual work. For feminists on the ground, pivotal praxis is feminism: getting the vote, demanding equality, wrangling through contentious issues, women’s marches and campaigns. In a word: practice. Experiments in practical, actional feminism. Our study probes ideas that hit streets as well as ideas born of “done things.” Under scrutiny are scenes: socio-political, cultural spaces wherein women enact change, determine outcomes recognized as feminist. These include but are not limited to the realpolitik of suffrage vs. anti-suffrage, consciousness-raising, the famed national women’s convention in Houston, internet activism, transversal coalition-building across boundaries/borders. The course provides opportunity for students’ own experiments and exercises in feminist praxis.