Spring, 2004

Instructor: Dr. Karen Bojar
Phone: 215-751-8331
E-Mail: kbojar {at} ccp(.)edu

REQUIRED TEXTS: You will be required to purchase Feminist Frontiers, an anthology, which contains a wide range of reading selections. Since this is an introductory course, it is important to explore a range of perspectives; hence, you will read brief selections by many different authors. In addition to required chapters from Feminist Frontiers, you will read several short, xeroxed selections provided by the instructor.

You will also read one of the books on the recommended list or, if the selection in the anthology is an excerpt from a book, you may choose to read the book in its entirety. This will allow you to pursue one issue or theoretical perspective in greater depth. A list of recommended works along with a brief description of each work is included after each course unit; most of these books are available in the College Library and also in local bookstores for those of you who wish to purchase a copy. A selection of recommended readings will be placed on reserve in the College Library.

You are also encouraged to look for newspaper and magazine articles relevant to the issues we will discuss and bring these to class. Whenever feasible, your instructor will make copies of these articles to distribute to other members of the class.

GOALS OF THE COURSE:

- To enable students to develop a deeper understanding of the complexities of gender and the ways in which gender roles have had an impact on the life choices available to women.

- To enable students to more fully understand the diversity of women's experience in a multicultural society.

- To enable students to enter the public conversation about gender roles through discussion of some of the major issues that are the subject of public policy debate.

- To enable students to enter the academic conversation by introduction to some of the major thinkers in the area who have contributed to the growing body of knowledge generally included under the rubric of Women's Studies.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

What scholars have referred to as the "knowledge explosion" in Women's Studies has radically transformed the content of the school curriculum. There has been a virtual explosion of new knowledge, new questions as a generation of feminist scholars have successfully challenged the idea of man as the human norm. Until recently, the notion of the male as the norm had been the generally unexamined assumption in all academic disciplines.

The course will explore the ways in which the field of Women's Studies has raised new questions and brought new perspectives to those areas where the humanities and social and behavioral sciences intersect, material which is interdisciplinary in nature and frequently poses a challenge to conventional disciplinary boundaries. We will read, analyze, and discuss a selection of such these texts that explore the complexities of gender and expand the conception of the human norm to include qualities historically associated with women.

APPROXIMATE TIMETABLE

WEEK ONE:

UNIT I: INTRODUCTORY PRESENTATION: THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT:

The explosion of interest in Women's Studies in the 1970s and the torrent of research of the past thirty years will be placed in historical context. Continuities and ruptures with 1 9th century feminist thought and practice will be discussed.

There are striking parallels between the 19th century "first wave" of the American feminist movement and 'second wave" of the feminist movement dating from the 1960s. "First wave" feminism was influenced by the participation of its leaders in the abolitionist movement and by their subsequent disillusionment with their former comrades who did not place the same value on voting rights for women as they did for African-American males. A similar disillusionment can be found among women veterans of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s as these women discovered that the men they worked with did not share their commitment to gender as well as racial equality.

The anger of female veterans of the Civil Rights Movement was not the only source of "second wave" feminism. The anger of well-educated women confined to suburbia and denied outlets for their talents was an other important current, first voiced by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique.

We will consider the explanations offered for the growth of "second wave" feminism and try to account for the sudden explosion of feminist thinking and activism which occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

NOTE: ALL REQUIRED READING SELECTIONS ARE EITHER IN FEMINIST FRONTIERS OR WILL BE SUPPLIED BY INSTRUCTOR

Required Reading Selections:

Truth, Sojourner, "Ain't I A Woman?," p. 20

"Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton" and "Declaration of Sentiments, HAND-OUT SUPPLIED BY INSTRUCTOR

Verta Taylor, Nancy Whittier, Cynthia Pelak. "The Women's Movement: Persistence through Transformation," pp. 515-528. (We will revisit this article at the end of the semester.)

Also recommended:

Baxandall, Rosalyn and Gordon, Linda. Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women's Liberation Movement. New York: Basic Books, 2000. A collection of documents including posters, poems, songs, cartoons, manifestoes, and leaflets of the Women's Liberation Movement, spanning the late 1960s through 1970s

Dubois, Ellen Carol. Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women s Movement America, 1848-69. Cornell University Press, 1978. An excellent analysis of the 19th century Women's rights movement which focused primarily on the struggle for voting rights for women.

Evans, Sara. Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left. Knopf, 1979. Evans explores the extent to which the Civil Rights movement was an inspiration to women activists and also how their experiences with male activists led to growing feminist consciousness.

Evans, Sara. Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century's End. New York: The Free Press, 2003. Evans traces the evolution of second wave feminism of the 60s and 70s through the third wave of the 90s and explores generational, class and racial differences among feminists.

Freedman, Estelle. No Turning Back: The History of feminism and the Future of Women. Ballantine Books, 2002. An excellent introduction to the history of the feminist movement. Much of the material (time period covered and issues explored) overlap with topics in this course.

Friedan, Betty. "The Problem That Has No Name," The Feminine Mystique. Norton, 1963. This is generally considered a book which launched the movement and led to the founding of the National Organization for Women.

Olson, Lynne. Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970. Scribner, 2001. Although male leaders gained the recognition and grabbed the headlines, women provided not just the not just the backbone but frequently the leadership of the civil rights movement,

Painter, Nell Irvin. Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol. Norton, 1996. Painter contrasts what historians know about Sojourner Truth with the many myths about her and explores what Sojourner Truth has come to represent to later generations.

Rosen, Ruth. The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America. New York: Viking, 2000. A well-documented, thoughtful history of recent decades of the feminist movement, written by one of the pioneers of second wave feminism.

Springer, Kimberly, editor. Still Lifting, Still Climbing: African American Women's Activism. New York University Press, 1999. A collection of critical essays that examines the broad range of African American Women's political activities over the past four decades, including their involvement and leadership in civil rights, Black nationalist and feminist organizations.

Stimpson, Catharine. "'Thy Neighbor's Wife, Thy Neighbor's Servants' Women's Liberation and Black Civil Rights," Where the Meanings Are: Feminism and Cultural Space. New York: Methuen. 1971. Stimpson explores historical connections between the struggle for gender equality and the struggle for racial equality in both "first wave" and "second wave" feminist movements.

WEEKS TWO THROUGH FIVE

UNIT II: FAULTLINES IN WOMEN'S STUDIES:

Although Women's Studies as a field is united by its focus on women's lives and commitment to gender equality, it is characterized by a multiplicity of perspectives and by deep theoretical divisions. Although most of the writers\scholars\teachers in the field consider themselves feminist, the term "feminist" has itself become problematic and many contemporary writers refer to "feminisms" rather than a unitary "feminism."

Sameness/ Difference Divide:

The major theoretical divide is usually considered to be the division between those who focus on gender difference and those who stress sameness\equality. A helpful way to characterize the sameness/difference split is to conceive of the divide in terms of "minimizers" versus "maximizes" As Ann Snitow has put it: "A common divide keeps forming in both feminist thought and action between the need to build and identify 'woman' and give it solid political meaning [the maximizers] and the need to tear down the very category 'woman' and dismantle its all to solid history [minimizers]".

Both strands of "second wave" feminist thought have challenged the notion of the male as the human norm, the unexamined assumption in all academic disciplines, but have drawn very different conclusions.

Those on the Minimizer end of the spectrum challenge the popular notion that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Minimizers contend that the differences between men and women have been greatly exaggerated and argue for public policies that treat men and women in the same way. Those on the Maximizer end of the spectrum argue that there are real differences that must be taken into account by public policymakers if women are to achieve true equality.

There is disagreement on the extent of the differences existing between men and women and disagreement on the cause of such differences. Are differences between men and women culturally or biologically determined? Is it possible to disentangle biological and social causes? (Gender difference is the term usually used to refer to differences rooted in culture. Sex difference is the term usually used to refer to differences rooted in biology.)

Students will be asked to take a preliminary position and try to locate themselves along the minimizer/maximizer continuum. This position will be rethought in the light of the range of readings/issues explored during the course.

Required Reading Selections:

Snitow, Ann. "A Gender Diary." In Hirsch, Marianne and Keller, Evelyn Fox (Eds.). Conflicts in Feminism. New York: Routledge, NY. Snitow provides a useful overview of theoretical divide between those who focus on gender difference ("maximizers") and those who stress sameness/equality ("minimizers"). THIS SELECTION IS NOT IN THE ANTHOLOGY AND WILL BE SUPPLIED BY INSTRUCTOR

Judith Lorber. "Night to his Day." The Social Construction of Gender. pp. 33-34.

Ann Fausto-Sterling. "Hormonal Hurricanes: Menstruation, Menopause and Female Behavior," pp. 334-47.

Gloria Steinem. "If Men Could Menstruate." pp. 347-48

Also recommended:

Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1982. Gilligan argues that men and women employ different criteria when making moral decisions-women according to an ethic of care, men according to an ethic of rights.

Chesler, Phyllis. Woman's Inhumanity to Woman. Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation books. 2002. In sharp contrast to Gilligan who portrays women as having different values from men, values which favor caring and connection, pioneer feminist scholar, Phyllis Chesler argues that women can be every bit as ruthless and competitive as men. She portrays women as behaving competitively, aggressively, and destructively towards other women.

Cott, Nancy. The Grounding of Modern Feminism. Yale University Press, 1988. Cott argues that the sameness/difference, minimizer/maximizer divide has deep historical roots. Nineteenth century feminist activists may not have felt the need for theoretical consistency, but they certainly did feel the pull of opposing tendencies, some advancing arguments supporting women's fundamental similarity to men and at other times emphasizing their fundamental difference – what Nancy Cott has called "a functional ambiguity rather than a debilitating tension."

Tannen, Deborah. You Just Don't Understand: Men and Women in Conversation. New York: Ballantine, 1990. Like Gilligan, Tannen is generally considered a "difference feminist". She explores differences in men's and women's conversational styles that she believes derive from men's desire for status and independence and women's desire for intimacy and connection.

Tavris, Carol. "Measuring Up, Mismeasure of Woman. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992 Tavris stresses dangers of over-emphasis on difference and takes issue with Gilligan stress on women's "different voice" and values. Tavris questions the "idea that women have natural assets when it comes to intuitions, emotions, nurturing, professional self-effacement, and opposition to war." (p. 58).

Race/Class faultlines:

In the 70s, feminist theorists argued that all disciplines had to be rethought from the perspective or standpoint of women; however, the idea of a single standpoint of women has been challenged by women of color and by working class women. In the 1980s, feminism came under the same attack it once leveled at men-that is, the charge that men viewed themselves as the norm and ignored women's perspectives. European-American middle class women were charged with seeing themselves as the norm and failing to recognize the diversity of women's experience.

bell books raised the issue in 1981 in Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism and has argued in her more recent work Sisters: of the Yam: Black Women and Self Recovery (1993) that some white middle-class feminists continue to "completely ignore the specificity of race, and once again construct women as a monolithic group." Alice Walker has also insisted on the "specificity of race" and has coined the term "womanist" to express what she considers a uniquely African-American approach to feminist thought. Audre Lorde explores the relationships between African-American and European-American feminists and argues that "community must not mean a shedding of our differences."

Increasingly, Latina and Asian-American feminist theorists have insisted on the specificity of race and ethnicity and have raised challenges to what they consider the frequently unquestioned assumption of many feminist theorists that European-American middle class women are the norm. Generally, women of color who have raised such challenges to the monolithic nature of feminist thought have raised class as well as racial and ethnic issues.

We will analyze the perspectives of women of color and consider to what extent there are commonalities in women's experience which cross-racial and class lines.

Required Readings Selections:

Paula Allen Gunn "Where I Come From is Like This." pp. 18-22.

Lorde, Audre. "The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," pp. 22-24

Alice Walker. "Womanist," p. 84

Yen Le Esp