Make it all alive!

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click image for source

DYNAMICS IN OUR FIELD OF WOMEN’S STUDIES: NOTHING STAYS STILL

Tuesday 6 Nov – Coming together and pulling apart, which is which? Why care? 

• Hewitt: Part II: pick 4 of 7 

Coalitions happen on the ground with activists, how do activists work with other activisms? What are the difficulties involved? 

Thursday 8 Nov – What is connected and how? Think complexly about people and our worlds 

• Berger: Part III: pick 2 of 5 from the section on methodological innovations

Come with ideas and questions that look ahead to our workshop. 

HOW DO WE THINK OF EACH OF THESE COLLECTIONS AS A "COLLECTIVE"? IN WHAT WAYS ARE THEY LIKE AND UNLIKE THE BWHC? How do they use, understand, take for granted, or demonstrate "feminist generations"? Why could this matter? 

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EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROJECT OF EACH COLLECTIVE, HEWITT & BERGER?
how does each essay enter into this project as a member of this collective?
how do you enter into coalition yourself with this project?

from Davis:


"As a feminist epistemological project, the aim of OBOS is to create critical knowledge and knowledge practices that can empower women individually and collectively" (Davis, p. 142.)

"How does OBOS--which is, after all, just a book--produce readers who are prepared to become embodied, critical, epistemic agents able to participate in a feminist politics of health? In other words, how does OBOS transform its readers into feminist subjects?" (Davis, p. 142.)

"OBOS creates readers who are prepared to use their embodied experiences as a knowledge resource in the process of gathering and critically assess information about their bodies and health. . . .this politics of knowledge, mutually enacted in the interactions between the text and its readers that accounts not only for the broad appeal of OBOS but also for its capacity to transform its readers into critical feminist subjects" (Davis, p. 165.)

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Browse Feminist Studies  journal home  history  editors  
=Volume 28 > Issue 2 (Summer 2002) 
=Volume 35 > Issue 2 (Summer 2009)  
=Volume 25 > Issue 1 (Spring 1999)  
=Volume 26 > Issue 1 (Spring 2000) 

=BWA 2002 
=W&SM 13/1 2009 (links to Vol 16) 
=Meridians 8/1 2008  journal home  editorial collectives  

=FS: Volume 9 > Issue 1 (Spring 1983)  
=EJWS: 13/3 2006  

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Tuesday 30 Oct – Make it all alive! These are people! How do you come to care about them?
• Hewitt: Part I: pick 3 of the 5 chapters in this section to read, be prepared to discuss why you chose the ones you did

How does Hewitt talk about traveling knowledges? How does travel across time compare to travel across space and geopolitical location? How can you compare what Hewitt does with what Davis does? With what Berger and Guidroz do? How are these epistemological projects similar and different?

Thursday 1 Nov – Not just words on a page! People live in worlds! Connect yours here too!
• Berger: Part II: pick 2 of the 4 chapters in this section to read, be prepared to discuss why you chose the ones you did

Although you pick only 2 of these, look at all of them enough to compare the approaches they take, and to consider the disciplines they come from. How might that matter? 

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4: "Activists thus highlight their distinctiveness from -- and often superiority to -- previous feminist movements in the process of constituting themselves as the next wave." 

[KK: yes, but it should also be said that generational hierarchies of supposedly knowing things better exist as well!] 

How do "waves" and "generations" compare, converge, or divide? 

Look at Wikipedia's timeline of key events in the second wave (scroll down to see it). 

Wikipedia on the third wave.  

Wikipedia on the first wave. 

Which parts of the world are centered in these?

Wikipedia's Portal: Feminism  

Wikipedia's Feminism by country   

What about feminist generations? 

From Young Feminist Wire 

Symposium on inter- and transgenerational feminisms 

Call for papers by Feminist Memory    

Nancy Whittier's book & KK's handout on generations  

All six volumes of Stanton and Anthony's History of Woman Suffrage are available free as ebooks online. See Google books and Project Gutenberg. 

Hewitt, Thompson, Taylor, Chávez, Fernandes

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Recall Yuval-Davis' point: (54): “social divisions, such as those relating to membership in particular castes or status as indigenous or refugee  people, tend to affect fewer people globally. At the same time, for those who are affected by these and other social divisions not mentioned here, such social  divisions are crucial and necessitate struggle to render them visible. This is, therefore, a case where recognition - of social power axes, not of social identities - is of crucial political importance.”

power: macro-, meso-, micro-political (fr structure to interpersonal interaction) [Foucault, biopower]

structure: longer term, more stable, affect most, mostly at macro-political levels and layers [Marx, social structure]

Keating, Luft, Caldwell, Sherwood 

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University Open on Wednesday, October 31, 2012

DETAILS ON OPENING HERE.

The University was closed on Monday & Tuesday, October 29 & 30, 2012.

BE UP TO DATE WITH SYLLABUS BY THURSDAY! READ AND PREPARE BOTH TUESDAY AND THURSDAY, READY TO DISCUSS ALL OF IT! 

TerpWeather on facebook said DURING THE STORM: "We may all be happy because we don't have classes tomorrow BUT it emphasizes how severe this will be. DO NOT go outside tomorrow unless absolutely necessary. We will be experiencing sustained tropical storm conditions tomorrow escalating potentially to hurricane force gusts by nightfall."

Metro will restore bus and rail service Tuesday afternoon on modified schedules, and expects to resume normal service levels (i.e. rush hour service) for Wednesday morning's commute. Metro service was suspended on Monday and part of Tuesday, details HERE.

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Hi Folks! You should also have gotten an email with this same information! 

Noting that next week's classes and events could be affected by storms and weather? How will this affect our class?

What if the campus is closed? What if you cannot make it to class just yourself? What if your power goes out and you cannot do various internet related things? 

FIRST! CARE FOR YOURSELF AND OTHERS! Do not do anything dangerous, AND do do what work you can, PLEASE! 

It is not a vacation, but one can only do what it is possible to do! 

Continue with the work on the syllabus! Do all the reading even if we do not meet and no matter how long we do not meet! Keep up with the syllabus, and we do on the day we return every thing we missed as well as what is due that day! We will smoosh it together! WE WILL KEEP UP WITH THE SYLLABUS AS IT IS NOW.

Doing it this way will mean we will not be required by the state to "make up" missed time -- extend our semester, or otherwise have to add more time and work into our syllabus. I assure you that this way is easier in the end. YOU WILL BE GLAD!

And actually it can be good to continue on even if you have to use a local library or whatever. Keeping to a routine can be very important when events have disruptive aspects. I have experienced doing this during hurricanes, 9/11, tornadoes, blizzards, and other big things, with and without power for as long (for me) as 10 days. It gets old really fast and the second round of disruptions trying to get back on track can be worse than the first round. 

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF AND OTHERS!! This matters the most! Keep on track as much as is humanly possible. Do everything on our syllabus WHETHER WE MEET OR NOT! Check our class website if possible. Help class buddies. 

Be well! Best wishes to us all!

WeatherBug forecasts here.

UMD Campus weather emergency information here.

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Click pic for link to washingtonpost.com article
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Workshop 1

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COME EARLY! IF LATE YOU MAY BE UNABLE TO SHARE YOUR WORK! 

SIGN IN FIRST THING!!! -- EITHER FOR POSTERS OR PAPERS!

Posters go first: when you first come in, set up your poster station. Bring tape to put on walls or sit on desks along the walls or prep a laptop for showing an electronic slide (no powerpoint presentations: one slide at most). Bring any cables you need for laptops. 

We start at 11:05 exactly. If you are late you may have to recreate the entire event with class buddies later on. It is possible but will be harder on you and everyone else.

GO FOR INTERACTION – COMMUNICATE BACK AND FORTH, NOT IN PRESENTATION MODE!

Use posters and handouts for quick appreciation of what a person is doing. Ask them questions, and do brief back and forth conversations and comparisons with your own project.

After the class make notes on the most exciting things that came up and be prepared to continue those discussions on thursday. You will need to be active and create that conversation too. 

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Tuesday 23 Oct – WORKSHOP #1 – Power, Movements, Worlds 
Today we will share our work poster session style: divide in two groups, and all move around talking to each other about work during the class time.  

Thursday 25 Oct – WORKSHOP #1 – Talking about it all 
• LOGBOOK 2 DUE along with either paper and handout or digital picture of poster, after presentations
Today we will have a conversation about what we learned, noticed, thought about, and draw from the last class presentations. 

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what happens with traveling knowledges?

Tuesday 16 Oct – Transnational Body/Politics 

• Davis Part III, read all of it (ch 6, reread 7); also read Davis’ essay on intersectionality (link for pdf online) 

How is Davis’ analysis of OBOS similar to her analysis of intersectionality? (Don’t get sidetracked by the term “buzzword” in her title for the intersectionality article, or at least not at first. Consider it AFTER you have made your comparisons, and think about what other terms might have been better? boundary object, buzzword, traveling theory) 

• acquiring new body understandings: Davis, p. 173: after translations of OBOS required inventing new words to express emotional care for one's body, one translator said: "I have developed a much greater love for my own body. It is not merely that I have to know it better but that I feel that I have learned new ways of experiencing the world differently."   

individualism from • POV Spanish translation (177, 180); • POV Bulgarian translation (189) :: different contexts, different oppositions; one expresses isolation from community resources & support, different from consumer health care commodified individually. the other expresses resistance to totalitarian structures, impersonal and collectivist in the worst sense, different from self-care and self-assertion needed both personally and socially. THINK NECKER CUBE: first one face, then another

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Thursday 18 Oct – Making Intersectionality Transnational? 

identity
identity politics 

myth? buzzword?

why might popular versions of these terms differ?

why might academic uses of such terms differ?

are such ambiguities to be avoided, understood, assumed, examined? how and why? recall the notion of individualism and make what comparisons seem proper to you here. 

what is a boundary object? 

what is traveling theory? 

•    Foundations Intersectionality, Berger Part I: read Yuval-Davis’ essay carefully. 

Why does Yuval-Davis start off with a little history of intersectionality? “All-inclusive”? Transversal? What can you learn about feminism in 2006 that will help you understand why she is approaching these issues the way she does? What other kinds of articles were being published in the journal European Journal of Women’s Studies in 2006? In other feminist journals in countries other than the US? What other feminist journals were big internationally in 2006? 

sedentism from Wikipedia  

sedentarism in Nomadic Studies 

Wikipedia versions "intersectionality": 

2005; 2007; 2010; 2011 

By 2007: includes line: "Collins' theory is one of particular interest because it represents the sociological crossroads between modern and post-modern feminist thought."  

By 2010: added: "Theories of intersectionality increasingly also address the more than human. Examples of posthuman intersectionality include ecofeminism and are under development in the field of animal studies."

=another line of argument, some including critique of multiculturalism, others centered around legal issues, others around academic disciplinary and other methodologies:

Gordon and Newfield, 1996, Mapping Multiculturalism 

critical race theory from Wikipedia  

Crenshaw on intersectionality, google scholar  1989, 1991, 1994 

Dill essay in FS 1983

Yuval-Davis essay in EJWS 2006 (23 yrs later) 

Davis on intersectionality 2008, bk OBOS 2007

Berger book beginning with Dill, 2009 

=& non-centering critiques of white women's movement from postcolonial, postmodernisms, Chicana feminisms: 

Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed, 2000

postcolonial feminism from Wikipedia  

oppositional consciousness in Sandoval 2000

differential consciousness in Sandoval 2000  

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Collins book first published 1991. Then it was substantially revised in 2000. 

Patricia Hill Collins: Black Feminist Thought (2000):

p. 228: putting black women at the center without privileging their consciousness

• transversal politics: both/and thinking: varying expressions of power, distinctive forms of participation in domination and resistance

• US black women could be both penalized and privileged. So could others be.

boundary object III: some use intersectionality for this "transversal politics"

or even matrix of domination

p. 247: groups only have partial perspective on their own experiences

• and thus need critical self-reflection (think: violated assumptions?)

• groups police each other, making coalition difficulty

p. 248: no absolute oppressors or victims

• groups find some oppression more salient than others

p. 268: Elsa Barkley Brown: everyone can learn to pivot their "center. 

• everyone can learn to center in another experience, and, in this case, to engage "black feminist thought"

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Myths: good, bad, mixed, problematized....

As you come into class today, please sit with your class partner/s (not necessarily your workshop 1 team, although perhaps these are the same people). We will begin with an exercise with your class partner/s. 


POWER, MOVEMENTS, WORLDS: FEMINISMS IN THE PLURAL, FEMINISTS IN MOVEMENT



 – Feminist Myths: Davis Part II
 – Foundations Intersectionality, Berger Part I: Dill
 – Transnational Body: Davis Part III
 – Foundations Intersectionality, Berger Part I: Yuval-Davis [& Guidroz] 



Tuesday 23 Oct – WORKSHOP #1
Thursday 25 Oct – WORKSHOP #1 : LOGBOOK 2 DUE

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So you see here the shape of the next section of the course, and how it culminates in our first workshop. We have already finished Zandt (yes, you should have read all of it by now), and we will be finishing up Davis, while reading ahead in Berger for tools to use for projects for workshop 1. Remember what it is about?

•    Workshop 1: Power, Movements, Worlds

For our first workshop you will create either a paper or poster  in order to explore how feminists analyze how power structures our worlds. (Whether you are doing a paper or a poster has already been determined by lot; if you don't know which one you are doing, talk to Katie asap!) 

You will explore two class texts carefully, and chose EITHER 

• to analyze Zandt’s book through the analysis (eyes, lens) of Davis’ The Making of Our Bodies, Our Selves; OR 
• to analyze Davis’ book through the analysis (eyes, lens) of Zandt’s Share This! 

Davis’ book explores power in transnational and transdisciplinary frames. NOTICE what it demonstrates and assumes about what counts as power, which social movements matter, and how worlds are connected across differences. 

Zandt’s book explores accessibility and the currency of social media today. NOTICE who is addressed in this book, and why? 

No matter which of these approaches you take, also NOTICE that you will need to do some additional research. 

You will need to find out more about the various editions of the book Our Bodies, Our Selves, and you will need to play around with social media yourself, and do some web research checking out both Our Bodies, Our Selves and also how feminists today are using social media, as well as how social media and marketing are interconnected. Always make a point of connecting projects to class readings and lectures.

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Tuesday 4 Oct – Feminist Myths in a Feminist Politics of Knowledge
•    Davis Part II, read all of it (chs 3, 4, 5)

Why does Davis connect “empowerment” and “bewitchment”? What’s her point here? And why might a “colonialist trope” be contrasted with something called a “critical epistemology?” What are feminist subjects and why do they need to be created? How does Davis make us aware of the time periods involved?

Davis, 85-6: the feminist myth in action:

• "make sense of their history"
• "an origin story"
• "become agents of historical change"
• "heroic tale with plucky female protagonists who bravely take on a series of powerful adversaries...and come out victorious."
•"a family saga about a group of women who created an enduring personal bond that enabled their political project to survive and thrive for more than three decades."
• "constructing a history that made sense in different and sometimes contradictory ways."
• "understand their individual and collective experiences at different periods"
• "provided the motor for the group's activism."
• "generated a powerful symbolic imagery" that allowed for global impact
•"a shadow side": "deny or gloss over events in the present that did not fit their collective sense of who they were or what their project was about"
• "an impediment to a more historically informed and self-reflexive understanding of themselves and their project"

From the Wikipedia on "myth":
"The term 'myth' is often used colloquially to refer to a false story, but academic use of the term does not pass judgment on truth or falsity. In the study of folklore, a myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind came to be in their present form. Many scholars in other fields use the term 'myth' in somewhat different ways. In a
very broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story."

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Thursday 6 Oct – Intersectionality’s Foundations
•    Berger Part I: Dill’s essay Why would Dill start off with the notion of sisterhood? “All-inclusive”? What does that mean? What can you learn about feminism in 1983 that will help you understand why she is approaching these issues the way she does? 

DOWNLOAD DAVIS ON INTERSECTIONALITY FOR NEXT CLASS! PDF HERE.

What IS a buzzword?
Wikipedia says (what do you think? compare to "myth" as Davis also uses?)

"A buzzword (also fashion word) is a term of art, salesmanship, politics, or technical jargon[1] that is used in the media and wider society outside of its originally narrow technical context, often in an inaccurate manner, or for purposes other than the conveying of information.

"Buzzwords differ from jargon in that jargon is esoteric but precisely defined terminology used for ease of communication between specialists in a given field, whereas a buzzword (which often develops from the appropriation of technical jargon) is often used in a more general way, inaccurately or inappropriately. 

"A person who chooses to use buzzwords may have one or more of the following objectives:

• Intentional vagueness. In management or politics, opaque words of unclear meaning may be used: their positive connotations prevents questioning of intent. The most notable essay on this theme is George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" [2] (See newspeak)
• A desire to impress a judge, an examiner, an audience, or a readership, or to win an argument, through name-dropping of esoteric and poorly understood terms in an attempt to inflate trivial ideas to something of importance.

Therefore a phrase is not in itself a buzzword: it becomes one in the context of inappropriate usage or usage with an ulterior motive."
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problematize, criticize, critique, debunk 
socialist feminism   
bourgeois individualism 

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

• using privileges of class and race to get into public sphere despite the disadvantages of gender 

• calling into question the politics of personal experience as decentering experiential differences (of power by race and class) that are structural 

• "sisterhood" as feminist myth, usable by some more than others, with its shadow side. 

• women of color, inside, rejecting, along side, pushed outside, uninterested in, accomplishing other justice goals.... 

earning "sisterhood" -- not given, but part a shared struggle -- whose struggles shared with who else? standpoint and shared struggle -- what about anger and power?

salience and intersections: intersectionality   

oppositional consciousness and chicana theories and mythologies of malinche   

how many "intersections"? should any be "centered"? when about all women of color and when about particular groups of women of color? why might it be important to center particular women of color, when and for what reasons? can intersectionality itself be critiqued? what does that entail?

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history, memory, iconicity. 

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make research fun: web-wise and more!

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okay, maybe it wasn't quite like that....

I AM EXCITED TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR DAY TOGETHER! PLEASE BE READY TO REVIEW WHAT YOU DISCUSSED WITH SOME EXAMPLES TO SHARE! I will share a bit about my conference and the paper I presented. 

Thursday 27 Sept – CLASS ON ITS OWN: KATIE AT SLSA CONFERENCE 

• WMST (Berger & Radeloff), chs 5 & 6 

• [note for the next class (when Katie gets back): read ahead in Berger, and pick 2 things to do serious web research about. Be sure you spend at least as much time doing all this as you ordinarily do reading for class.] 

Today as a class you get to run the show: decide what in WMST (Berger & Radeloff) helps you think through where you are in women’s studies now. What are your plans? How does women’s studies help you as you reflect on your life and your future? What will you be doing next? 

Tuesday 2 Oct – Social media web research: beyond google and the Wikipedia, where do you go?  How to do this seriously? 

• HOW TO WRITE PAPERS, CREATE HANDOUTS, USE CITATIONS, AND FIND CITATION STYLES ON THE WEB

•  (Notice what you need to do for Thursday too – plan out how to get it all done for the week)

=What did you choose in Berger to research on the web and why? what were your results? 

=bring in the results of your serious web research!
=be prepared to talk with each other about why this information is on the web, who made it, what it is for, who is using it and why, and what that all means. 

=How did you get your web research results? 
=what records did you need to keep to demonstrate both the results and the methods for us? 
=Did you come across pictures that mattered in this research? 
=What about data visualizations and did you come across any in this research? 

COME PREPARED TO TELL US WHAT YOU FOUND IN THE INTERSECTIONAL APPROACH TO DO RESEARCH ON THE WEB ABOUT! 

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Thursday 4 Oct – Feminist Successes and Success Stories? 

• find out everything you can about the different editions of Our Bodies, Our Selves. Look BOTH on the web and GO TO THE LIBRARY TOO! 

• LOGBOOK #1 DUE

Okay! You now have many tools for projects for our class! Make sure your plans to accomplish it all are in order! Show them off in logbook #1. Be sure you and your partner have ways of helping each other stay on track and work with care. What have Davis and Zandt already taught you about feminist reading and research? What does each one teach you about the other? What does the web add to it all? What does working and being physically present in the library add? Let’s get onto moving feminisms! 

Our Bodies Our Blog!!! 
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