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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Next two weeks! Transformations & work on your own...

NOTICE THAT WE WILL MEET ALL THIS WEEK, BUT NOT ON TUESDAY THE 25TH. CLASS WILL MEET THURSDAY THE 27TH TOGETHER, WITHOUT KATIE: YOU ALL WILL BE RUNNING THE SHOW!

Tuesday 18 Sept – Sharing is Daring: when knowledge travels what happens? 

• Zandt, ch 5 and the rest of it; • Davis, ch 2 (Notice what you need to do for Thursday. Maybe do it now?)

• HOW TO MAKE LOGBOOK AND KEEP YOUR SCHOLARLY RECORDS 

Global feminism? one or many? what are the goals of feminist practice? Who is going to share what, where and how? 

And how does web research itself figure into all of this? What does web research add to what we can know ABOUT Zandt and Davis themselves? To what we can know about their projects as we see them in these book objects? To what we can know about HOW they think as well as WHAT they think?

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• How do you locate Zandt's website? Davis'? How current are they? What does this tell you? Consider:

• What is this information on the web?  
• Who made it?
• What is it for?
• Who is using it and why?
• What this all means! What do Zandt and Davis have to tell us that helps us understand what we have found?

• What does all this tell you about the work of both Zandt and Davis?

• How does doing web work help you think about what it might mean to look at Zandt’s work through Davis’ eyes, or Davis’ work through Zandt’s eyes?

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WHAT SORTS OF RECORDS DO YOU NEED TO KEEP?

=what goes in the logbook? what will help you most? what will allow you and Katie to be on the same page? what will help you plan and read ahead?

=taking notes from the web: websites, wikipedia, hyperlinks, vids and other media: How is this the same as reading? how is it different?  

With a partner make some notes on the following:

• What kinds of records will help you keep track of what you need to do for class: each class, each week, for each project, for graded assignments, over the course of the term? 

• What kinds of records will help you keep track of web research?

• What kinds of records will help you keep track of library research? How are these two the same? different?

• What kinds of records will make it impossible for you to inadvertently (or deliberately) commit plagiarism? What ensures that? 

Why do we use footnotes? How do they place us in networks of trust and of 

sharing knowledges? What might feminists in particular think about when they look deeply into citation and its record-keeping? Some thoughts we want to consider as we consider how feminists share trust and knowledge:

From a scholarly collective blog on doing history, a contributor post: "On Footnotes and Doing History" by Lisa Clark Diller: [bold emphasis is mine, for your particular attention] "Who we think it important to cite, what range of sources were important (or available) at the time, and the family of historiographical ancestors we choose for ourselves all reveal our location in time and situate us on an ideological map.

"Footnotes reveal our technical proficiency, but they do so within a particular context. While in grad school, I can remember discounting entire volumes of historical research because the footnotes were so 'thin.' And one of my advisors at the University of Chicago would warn us to look with grave suspicion on any early modernist who cited too many printed sources. I’m less puritanical in my standards now. And [Anthony] Grafton [1999. The Footnote: A curious history. Harvard] has reminded me that: 'No accumulation of footnotes can prove that every statement in the text rests on an unassailable mountain of attested facts. Footnotes exist, rather, to perform two other functions. First, they persuade: they convince the reader that the historian has done an acceptable amount of work . . . . Second, they indicate the chief sources that the historian has actually used” (22). [in other words, create trust and authority.]

"We sometimes still operate under the assumption that if we have all the 'original sources' our argument will be solid. But what makes history interesting is all the various interpretations that we can develop from the same sources. It is part of why we revisit the same problems over and over again. Interpretation as well as sources give each of us our originality. This is decidedly not the same thing as saying that any interpretation of the documents is as good as another, but it is what keeps me from reading a scholarly tome and thinking that because the footnotes took up 37% of each page I read, no one need any longer do research on that subject. Grafton also reminded me to be careful in judging the scholarship of an earlier generation by the type or quantity of footnotes.

"As I sweat through proper citation of digital works and decide how much to include or exclude from my own footnotes, I am glad to remember that this process isn’t simply about showing off my guild credentials. It’s also a way to 'out' myself regarding my priorities and methods. The evidence I use won’t be considered equally sufficient for all time; but then again, I don’t expect to answer historical questions and decide their significance once and for all.

"The footnote reminds me of the time-laden nature of my queries and verifications." [1]

[1] Diller, "On Footnotes," The Historical Society.  & 

Dilller, Lisa Clark. 2010. "On Footnotes and Doing History." The Historical Society [Website] 22 December. Retrieved 11 Feb 2011 at http://histsociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-footnotes-and-doing-history.html  

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searching for citation formats on the web? • Google it! • How they do it at The Feminist Press. • How they do it at Feminist Studies.

what about making research posters? • Google it!  

how can citations demonstrate the traveling knowledges of feminists? what sorts of citations would make visible or clarify transnational feminisms on the web? how do citations participate in the sharing of transdisciplinary knowledges? 

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Thursday 20 Sept – Transform yourself and transform others! 

• WMST (Transforming Scholarship: Berger & Radeloff), preface, intro., chs 3 & 4 

• HOW TO MAKE POSTERS, DIGITAL PICTURES, AND USE AND MAKE DATA VISUALIZATIONS 

is this a feminist one?

What elevator speeches (such as those described in Berger & Radeloff) do you already have on hand? Which ones would you like to develop? What brought you into women’s studies? Notice that the class will continue to discuss this book next time you meet on your own! 

How do pictures matter in doing research and in sharing it? What are data visualizations, have you used them before?

• Wikipedia on visualizations 

• Wordle  

• Google data visualizations examples  

Be sure to check out the "Page" on this site: Wondering about posters and handouts? 

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Web Action 3


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Tuesday 25 Sept – NO CLASS: EREV YOM KIPPUR

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

• WMST (Transforming Scholarship: Berger & Radeloff), chs 5 & 6 

• [note for the next class (when Katie gets back): read ahead in Berger's collection The Intersectional Approach, and pick 2 issues 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 (Transforming Scholarship: 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? 

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how to care about it all

click for image source

WHOOPS! did you catch it? 

the syllabus has a mistake in it: I forgot to put Thursday's class this week into it! We will use Thursday as a catch up day -- everything we didn't get to so far in class, and everything you haven't read or done yet get a place on Thursday! Be sure to bring in a list of these very things to share: what we didn't get in class you want to bring back up, and what you did do to catch up! Fair game after Thursday to assume everyone is up and running! 

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1) As you come into the class today, immediately start working with others to figure out: 
• WHO WILL YOU PARTNER WITH FOR THE SEMESTER? 
BEFORE CLASS STARTS EVEN: Begin project #1 today with your partner: freewriting, brainstorming, googling, scheduling time together.

2) What is project 1? What do you need to know to plan for it? 
=descriptions of workshops fr syl: they find and read out loud
=What will you need to have read? Are you caught up on reading already? Use this week to catchup for the best job!

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Tuesday 11 Sept – This is the book I always wanted to write 

• Zandt, ch 4; • Davis ackn., intro, ch 1 (note that it is a lot better to read everything for the whole week together if possible, and then focus on each day for discussion preparation) 

• WHO WILL YOU PARTNER WITH FOR THE SEMESTER? 

Some feminist philosophers talk about what they call “personal care-abouts” in knowledge making. What are Zandt’s and Davis’ personal care-abouts as they reveal them to us? How can you use this class for your personal care-abouts? How can you make the class projects fit into those care-abouts? How will you partner with others to support each other’s care-abouts? 

Begin project #1 today with your partner: freewriting, brainstorming, googling, scheduling time together. 

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Thursday 13 Sept – CATCH UP DAY!! 

• Bring in lists to share: what we should return to, and what you did to catch up now. 

NOTE! By the next class you should have read ALL OF ZANDT!

=let's think about economies of attention (65) and the issues of "flow" in an ecosystem view (67) 

=lottery to determine in which workshop you will do paper or poster. 

Have you carefully read the Good Advice handout? 

=freewriting  

=brainstorming  

=googling  

=making time to share work, ideas, support  

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writerly first drafts
falling in love with writing again  
readerly second drafts  

How to think about with posters? 
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