Doing Feminism: Theory and Practice

Catalog description

Advanced analysis of feminist theory and the nature of its integration (sometimes uneasily) within feminist movements and practices. WMNST 401 Feminist Perspectives on Research and Teaching (3)The course explores current themes organizing debates and discussions within feminist discussions of teaching and research. Students will become familiar with various research perspectives that feminist researchers use including interviews, ethnography, and action research. The course will examine debates within feminist research and teaching including power, difference, and race. Key themes will include questions around the politics of representation, the relationship of research to colonialism, the authority of the researcher, researcher-researched relations, and power/knowledge relations in research, classrooms, and knowledge production broadly defined. The aim is not to identify a feminist orthodoxy but rather: 1) to identify and understand the varieties of feminism existing today; 2) to become knowledgeable about a range of themes currently emerging in feminist debates on teaching and research; and 3) to arrive at an appreciation of the transformative effect upon teaching and research these new paradigms, debates, and themes have meant across a range of disciplinary boundaries.