INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN’S STUDIES: TRADITIONS, TRAJECTORIES, TROUBLES

Catalog description

The course introduces students to Women's Studies - what it studies, how it came into being, what happened next. In focus are its traditions, its consequential contexts of struggle and protest, its pioneers, the multiple fields from which they came to this fresh-born academic hub. The course examines worldwide spread of WMST programs, their variant, evolving interests and work, the hounding, keenly felt disruptions and conflicts. We sample key scholarship with staying power; we peruse pieces across an interdisciplinary range; we visit early ideas now fallen out of favor, relegated to archives and/or bins. We also, importantly, consider how rifts and various troubles led to crucial metamorphoses as well as new fields.