WMST 245 - Making Waves: Topics in Feminist Activism

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

This course is a study of feminist activism in all its forms. Topics vary from year to year and may include the examination of first-, second-, or third-wave feminism, as well as feminist moments that offer alternatives to the “wave” model, including pre-modern and non-western challenges to the legal, social, and economic restrictions on women. May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed. Ms. Blumenfeld.

Topic for 2014/15a: Queer and Trans of Color Interventions. What are the foundational objects, questions, and debates within transgender theory, art, and activism? How do trans theory, art, and activism interface in our contemporary moment? This course offers an in-depth exploration of the emerging intellectual, artistic, and activist work that mobilizes under the rubric of “trans.” We read major milestones of the field, and interweave these readings with listenings, viewings, and performances. Our texts are interdisciplinary; we watch films, listen to music recordings, have guest speakers, perform lite ethnography, read memoir, history, ethnography, manifesto, and critical theory, and watch and (optionally) engage in live performance. Taking our cue from third world feminisms and Black feminist theory, the seminar foregrounds the intersections between sex, gender, sexuality, race, class, ability, and national belonging, in works that center transgender as their focus topic and frame. The course privileges voices living at the intersections of these claims, and trans authors take center stage. We consider how trans activism enacts liberatory effects, and, as a mode of doing ethical scholarly work ourselves, continually ask who or what is potentially left out of these conversations. For example, we ask how and to what effects “trans” is exported globally. Along these lines, we challenge ourselves to think trans activism in relation to and alongside other historical and current social justice movements within and outside the U.S. Ultimately, the course examines how theory informs our engagement with artistic and activist aims, and, conversely, how art and activism speak back to trans studies. Mr. Krell.

Prerequisite:WMST 130 or permission of the instructor.

Two 75-minute periods.