Monday, August 29, 2011

AN INTRODUCTION TO READING AND RESEARCHING IN WOMEN’S STUDIES

Thursday 1 September – Welcome to Our Course!
•    HANDED OUT: Syllabus, Learning Communities, How to Read (it’s not so obvious!), and Good Advice (all on website for download as well)
•    CLASS BUDDIES, CLASS WEBSITE
•    Zandt, Share: bring to this first class if at all possible. In fact bring all the books you have so far!
How our portal course is intended to help you conscientiously practice feminist scholarship and its related actions. Helping each other and practicing solidarity. Reading ahead, reading to discuss, reading for research, rereading for further work and to grasp complexity, reading in libraries, on the web, with electronic devices, with other people. Our workshops and planning assignments ahead of time. Inspection exercises with Zandt. Who is she?

Tuesday 6 September – Scholarship and Practice: portals in the plural
•    Zandt, preface, chaps 1-3
(note for Th: Zandt & Davis Conclusions too; read all of it for this class and you will be ahead for the whole week)
•    MORE CLASS BUDDIES, RESEARCH ACTIONS IN BOOKS AND ON THE WEB
Have you used the Wikipedia? How and why? Have you ever been told NOT to use the Wikipedia? Why was that? What is crowdsourcing, and what are the limitations and powers of the Wikipedia? How does Zandt’s book help us think about the Wikipedia in a social media landscape? Why does that matter? 


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change.org on women not editors on the Wikipedia 

• BBC World Service's Lesley Curwen from Business Daily interviews Sue Gardner, executive director of Wikipedia. They discuss recruiting women to write for the Wikipedia.

Recent article in the NY Times says

"Jane Margolis, co-author of a book on sexism in computer science, 'Unlocking the Clubhouse,' argues that Wikipedia is experiencing the same problems of the offline world, where women are less willing to assert their opinions in public. “In almost every space, who are the authorities, the politicians, writers for op-ed pages?” said Ms. Margolis, a senior researcher at the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at the University of California, Los Angeles

"According to the OpEd Project, an organization based in New York that monitors the gender breakdown of contributors to “public thought-leadership forums,” a participation rate of roughly 85-to-15 percent, men to women, is common — whether members of Congress, or writers on The New York Times and Washington Post Op-Ed pages.

"It would seem to be an irony that Wikipedia, where the amateur contributor is celebrated, is experiencing the same problem as forums that require expertise. But Catherine Orenstein, the founder and director of the OpEd Project, said many women lacked the confidence to put forth their views. “When you are a minority voice, you begin to doubt your own competencies,” she said."

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 Sharing is Daring!




Thursday 8 September – Starting slow then getting intense: how to share the difficulties
• Bring all our books so we can inspect them together
Zandt & Davis: read each book’s conclusion 
• MORE BUDDIES, READING SIMULTANEOUSLY, KEEPING RECORDS
This portal course will be intense! We will start somewhat slowly, offering lots of “how to do” important things. But as we get closer to each workshop date, the readings and the projects will start to pile up. So planning ahead will be crucial! And you will need to be reading, reReading, and reading ahead, all at the same time! Keeping records of what needs to be done, and what you have done, and where you got what sort of information, all these are part of good scholarly practice. Fie on cutting and pasting last minute off the Web! Let’s learn to DO IT RIGHT! and enjoy it! Helping each other will make it a lot more fun.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Reconceptualizations ....

Well, what worlds do you imagine? How does your feminism shape these worlds? How have feminists altered the world in which you find yourself today? Which feminist reconceptualizations have made these changes possible? What feminist reconceptualizations will you work to create?

Women's Studies begins in re-thinking what is around us and how we are part of it all. We make and share feminist knowledges.
In this class we will explore the work such reconceptualizations do and how they are the ground upon which academic feminism and other sites of feminist knowledge making build. Women's Studies connects us to feminist communities and practices, within and also beyond the academy. In this course we will see Women's Studies as braided into many movements for social justice, and into alternative communities and visionary actions. Woven together these all constitute feminist reconceptualizations of knowledge, in the academy and in everyday life.

Enjoying epistemologies on the ground – that is, seeing reconceptualizations in action – is one way to describe what we will be doing. Intellectual "fun" is one of the goals of the course!




Explore our books by clicking the linking titles:

Berger. 2009. The intersectional approach: transforming the academy through race, class, and gender. North Carolina. 9780807859810 Available on the Kindle B003ELQ5AQ and as a Google eBook





Davis. 2007. Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels Across Borders. Duke. 9780822340669. Available on the Kindle B003DSHWT8 and as a Google eBook.







Hewitt. 2010. No Permanent Waves: Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism. Rutgers. 9780813547251. Available on the Kindle. B003DSHWT8






Zandt. 2010. Share This!: How You Will Change the World with Social Networking. Berrett-Koehler. 9781605094168. Available on the Kindle B003KK5DOA and as a Google eBook and as an audiobook at Audible.com





And one recommended:


Berger. 2011. Transforming Scholarship: Why Women's and Gender Studies Students Are Changing Themselves and the World. Taylor and Francis. 9780415873284. Available on the Kindle B004QM9OP0.






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all readings are also on reserve at McKeldin Library. several are new though and await purchase. all will be on 24 hr. reserve. library instructions here.

Notice how many of the books are available on the Kindle, an ebook reader. You do not need the Kindle device to read these, but can download an ap for your computer/laptop or smart phone or iPad to read them without one. Some are available as Google eBooks. To learn how to read these on your computer, look here. Usually the price is a bit lower for each of these, many available for less than $10, although you cannot resell such books. One is even available as an audiobook, look here. Please ensure access to as many of our course books as you can, bring those you have obtained or notes about them to the first class. 

You are required to read these books, not to buy them, or even to own them. All are on reserve at McKeldin and many are available at other libraries. Share them, rent them, borrow them, xerox them, scan them. Fair use means producing copies for your own private research use. Of course you can help others in obtaining originals for such fair use copying. Always be sure to locate your books long before you need to read them, even if one or more turn out to be just coming out or even out of print. Find what you can and read them anyway! 

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how the class will be organized

This class is a seminar course so discussion and participation are essential! If you are a shy person who is usually quiet, this is the class in which you will need to stretch, challenging yourself to share your thoughts just as they happen! Prepare yourself mentally, do whatever preparation you need to work this out well, and come to Katie if you need a good pep talk! We are a kindly group and long to hear what you think! Discussion will be punctuated by mini-lectures and demos from the class website too, so you will not be on stage all the time. The website also will give you a chance to prepare before class and to review afterward as well.

In other words, the class will involve BOTH taking things in, absorbing them and learning to put them in context, AS WELL AS actively using what we come to know, sharing it others, thinking on one's feet, brainstorming and speculating, figuring out how it all fits together. YOU MUST KEEP UP WITH THE READING TO DO THIS WELL! Some educators call these forms passive and active learning. One can take in and absorb more complicated stuff than one can work with and work out, at least at first. We do both in the class, but we also realize that active learning requires patience and imagination, a bit of courage to try things out without knowing something for sure yet, and a willingness to play around with being right and wrong, guessing and redoing.

The website for our entire class is located at: http://morethink300.blogspot.com/
What you are looking at now is where graphics, mini-lecture materials and notes, communications and assignment help, and other vital class information and presentations are displayed. You can complete your assignments properly only if you stay very familiar with our website. Bookmark it immediately! Plan on visiting here and reading email every couple of days, and not just a few minutes before class. These are class requirements. If you have any difficulties getting access to these resources come and talk to me as soon as possible. Any announcements about cancellations due to weather or other considerations, and general class requirements will be sent out on coursemail and you need to see them quickly. To get help go to OIT's Help Desk at the Computer and Space Sciences Building, Rm. 1400, or checkout the help desk webpage at: http://www.helpdesk.umd.edu/

In this small class we will all be class buddies together. Get to know everyone in the class, share contact information, and support each other
with class notes and talking together if in emergencies anyone must be absent. Everyone should also have a class partner too. We will choose partners early in the semester, and partners should help each other brainstorm projects, edit each others’ work, provide feedback before assignments are due, and help each other work in drafts, starting projects early and completing them in good time.

Twice during the semester we will have a week of class workshoping. During part of that time paper and poster assignments will be presented poster conference style. That means that some people will be presenting their work in various parts of the room, all at the same time, while other class members wander around the room, interacting with them as they discuss their projects. Katie will also wander around, giving folks immediate feedback on their work. After we spend time doing this, we will move into collective discussion and engagement all together. Tuesday of workshop week will focus more on the first, Thursday more on the second.

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graded assignments: paper, poster, learning analysis, logbook

Four kinds of assignments are required in this class: • a paper, • a poster, • a final learning analysis, and • a logbook. The first three require you to practice analysis and reconceptualization. In each of these you will need to examine two class texts simultaneously, do extra research on the web, and be reflexive in your thinking. The logbook will help you organize your projects: when you started them, how many drafts you completed, who you worked with, where you are in what you have done, and what still needs to be done. It will be turned in four times during the semester, and you won’t get credit for any assignments until the final version is turned in on the last day of class with the final version of the learning analysis. The paper and poster each count for 1/3 of your grade, and the learning analysis, and logbook together count for the final 1/3.

 
Posters and papers are shared in one or the other of two class workshops. In each workshop you will do either a paper or a poster. Which one you will do when will be determined by lot. You cannot get full credit for either assignment until after you also present them on the first day of the workshop week, and participate in workshop follow-ups on the second day of the workshop week. In other words, just the written paper or the poster does not in itself complete the assignment. If an emergency or illness kept you from participation either or both days that week, to get full credit you will have to meet with three other students to share your work and their work outside class, and write up the experience and what you learned from it to complete the participation portion of that grade. SO DO NOT MAKE OTHER PLANS FOR THOSE DAYS: BUILD THEM CAREFULLY INTO YOUR SCHEDULE FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE TERM! Put them into your logbook from the beginning so that attending them will always be at the forefront of your term plans. This is also true of the final day of class, when you discuss your learning analysis with everyone else. Full credit for the learning analysis also requires attendance and participation on that last day.

workshop themes for analysis: • power, movements, worlds & • dynamics in our field  

•    Workshop 1: Power, Movements, Worlds

For our first workshop you will create either a paper or poster (which determined by lot) in order to explore how feminists analyze how power structures our worlds. 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.

•    Workshop 2: Dynamics in Our Field

For our second workshop you will create either a paper or poster (which determined by lot) in order to explore how feminists remember, participate in, and analyze the dynamics in our field of women’s studies. What is its history? What ways of analyzing power are best? How do particular disciplines locate the central concerns of women’s studies? How do feminist scholars share the work they do? You will explore two class texts carefully, and chose EITHER • to analyze Hewitt’s book through the analysis (eyes, lens) of Berger’s The Intersectional Approach OR • to analyze Berger’s book through the analysis (eyes, lens) of Hewitt’s No Permanent Waves • Berger’s collection demonstrates paradigm shifts in our field. NOTICE that it explores how to think THROUGH feminisms ABOUT feminisms. Hewitt’s book demonstrates that history doesn’t stand still. NOTICE and ask, why do we keep remaking our feminist pasts? No matter which of these approaches you take, also NOTICE that you will need to do some additional research. You will need to use the web to follow-up or look in greater detail at the kinds of feminisms displayed here, other ways of thinking about histories of feminism, and ways all of these are promoted in popular and scholarly media. Always make a point of connecting projects to class readings and lectures.

Presenting and discussing in workshop mode means that by attending and listening we will all benefit from the hard work of everyone. Notice that both sorts of projects in both workshops should be begun several weeks ahead of their due dates. Not only do you need this time to do the additional research required, but to get good grades you need to • write papers in at least three drafts, and • plan out posters carefully to demonstrate both the results of your research and also how you got to those results.

How to practice reframing as a kind of analysis will emerge out of mini-lectures and their resources, so attending class faithfully and taking good notes will make this work a lot easier. Lecture materials are displayed on the class website, to be reviewed at any time. In college courses ALWAYS use your projects to demonstrate how you uniquely put together, or synthesize, class readings, mini-lectures and discussion. Make a point of displaying that you are doing all the reading and attending all the classes. Doing this clearly and carefully will demonstrate that this is your own work, and ensure your credit for honesty and for real engagement with the course. 


Wondering how grades are determined? What they mean on your paper?

•    A work is excellent, unusually creative and/or analytically striking
•    B is fine work of high quality, though not as skilled, ambitious, or carefully edited as A
•    C is average work fulfilling the assignment; may be hasty, drafted once, showing difficulties with grammar, spelling, word choice
•    D work is below average or incomplete; shows many difficulties or cannot follow instructions
•    F work is not sufficient to pass; unwillingness to do the work, or so many difficulties unable to complete

See http://www.womensstudies.umd.edu/wmstfac/kking/teaching/250/grades.html
for more discussion of each grade. Remember, you can always talk to Katie about grades and your evaluation concerns during office hours anytime.

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what to do when you must unavoidably miss class, for emergency or perhaps for illness: 

•    TALK TO AT LEAST TWO CLASS BUDDIES IMMEDIATELY. Before you even come back to class, call them up or email them and find out if any special assignments are due the day you return, and make sure that you know about any changes in the syllabus. Try to have done the reading and be as prepared as possible to participate in class when you return.
•    MAKE A DATE TO MEET WITH CLASS BUDDY TO GET NOTES AND DISCUSS WHAT WENT ON IN CLASS WHILE YOU WERE GONE. You are responsible for what happened in class while you were gone. As soon as possible, get caught up with notes, with discussions with buddies and finally with all the readings and assignments. Always talk with class buddies first. This is the most important way to know what went on when you were gone and what you should do.
•    AFTER YOU HAVE GOTTEN CLASS NOTES AND TALKED ABOUT WHAT WENT ON IN CLASS WITH BUDDIES, THEN MAKE APPOINTMENT TO SEE KATIE. If you just miss one class, getting the notes and such should be enough. But if you've been absent for more than a week, be sure you make an appointment with Katie, and come in and discuss what is going on. She wants to know how you are doing and how she can help. Or, while you are out, if it's as long as a week, send Katie email at katking@umd.edu and let her know what is happening with you, so she can figure out what sort of help is needed.
•    IF YOU ARE OUT FOR ANY EXTENDED TIME be sure you contact Katie. Keep her up to date on what is happening, so that any arrangements necessary can be made. If you miss too much class you will have to retake the course at another time. But if you keep in contact, depending on the situation, perhaps accommodations can be made. Since attendance is crucial for all assignments and thus for your final grade, don't leave this until the end. LET KATIE KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING so that she can help as much and as soon as possible.
•    THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN EXCUSED ABSENCE AND ANYTHING ELSE: generally speaking you are only allowed to make up work you missed if you have an excused absence. That the absence is excused does not mean you are excused from doing the work you missed, but that you allowed to make it up. I usually permit people to make up any work they miss, and do not generally require documentation for absences. Be sure to give explanations in your logbook and do make up all work you have missed. 

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Daily/Weekly outline of class assignments & activities: think Scholarship & Practice!


YOU ARE ENCOURAGED TO BRING LAPTOPS TO CLASS! Of course, all uses of electronic media during class should be class related. You may be asked during class to search for materials on the web and share them during seminar, or otherwise participate in class activities using your electronic media. Be prepared to respond quickly and appropriately, and to demonstrate that your use of electronic media is for class and even allows you to attend more intensively and creatively.

Handouts are downloadable at the class website from Google Docs.

Reading is very tricky in this class! You must read ahead constantly
in order to begin work on the assignments at the right time. We have portions assigned on particular days to discuss, but often this is properly a REREADING, as you sometimes you should have read that a first time already. Notice that some days you have a choice of several readings to focus upon, say, 3 chapters out of 5 in a section of one book. This is to give us all the chance to hear about readings we may not have time to do ourselves by that point. That means you need to be able to tell others about the readings, making note taking and preparation even more important. However, by the end of class you should have read the entirety of each of our books. So you can see that keeping up with the reading, discussed on the day on which it is named, is essential, as is attendance on both days! And that doing all this carefully will make your graded assignments so very much easier!

Notice that you are assigned web research as well as readings. Put as much time into this as you do for reading and take it quite as seriously. Web reading and analysis is as important today as book reading is and should be done as carefully and with as much thought, not as a easy substitute for harder work: it IS the harder work! Similarly, everyone should spend time in McKeldin library, finding on the bookshelves stuff not available on computer databases. Schedule time on campus to do research in the library in person and to meet, face to face, with your partner or with other class buddies. In this class we think carefully about how to do all this as well as doing it! Learn to cite your sources, web and print, carefully and conscientiously. This means keeping good records of them all.



AN INTRODUCTION TO READING AND RESEARCHING IN WOMEN’S STUDIES

Thursday 1 Sept – Welcome to Our Course!
•    HANDED OUT: syllabus, Learning Communities, How to Read (it’s not so obvious!), and Good Advice (all on website for download as well)
•    CLASS BUDDIES, CLASS WEBSITE
•    Zandt, Share: bring to this first class if at all possible. In fact bring all the books you have so far!
How our portal course is intended to help you conscientiously practice feminist scholarship and its related actions. Helping each other and practicing solidarity. Reading ahead, reading to discuss, reading for research, rereading for further work and to grasp complexity, reading in libraries, on the web, with electronic devices, with other people. Our workshops and planning assignments ahead of time. Inspection exercises with Zandt.

Tuesday 6 Sept – Scholarship and Practice: portals in the plural
•    Zandt, preface, chaps 1-3
(note for Th: Zandt & Davis Conclusions too; read all of it for this class and you will be ahead for the whole week)
•    MORE CLASS BUDDIES, RESEARCH ACTIONS IN BOOKS AND ON THE WEB
Have you used the Wikipedia? How and why? Have you ever been told NOT to use the Wikipedia? Why was that? What is crowdsourcing, and what are the limitations and powers of the Wikipedia? How does Zandt’s book help us think about the Wikipedia in a social media landscape? Why does that matter?

Thursday 8 Sept – Starting slow then getting intense: how to share the difficulties
•    Bring all our books so we can inspect them together
•    Zandt & Davis: read each book’s conclusion  

•    MORE BUDDIES, READING SIMULTANEOUSLY, KEEPING RECORDS
This portal course will be intense! We will start somewhat slowly, offering lots of “how to do” important things. But as we get closer to each workshop date, the readings and the projects will start to pile up. So planning ahead will be crucial! And you will need to be reading, reReading, and reading ahead, all at the same time! Keeping records of what needs to be done, and what you have done, and where you got what sort of information, all these are part of good scholarly practice. Fie on cutting and pasting last minute off the Web! Let’s learn to DO IT RIGHT! and enjoy it! Helping each other will make it a lot more fun.

Tuesday 13 Sept – This is the book I always wanted to write: how to care about it all
•    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.

Thursday 15 Sept – Sharing is Daring: when knowledge travels what happens?
•    Zandt, ch 5 and the rest of it; • Davis, ch 2
•    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?

Tuesday 20 Sept – Social media web research: beyond google and the Wikipedia, where do you go?  How to do this seriously?
•    HOW TO MAKE POSTERS, DIGITAL PICTURES, AND USE AND MAKE DATA VISUALIZATIONS
•    read ahead in Berger, and pick 5 things to do serious web research about.
(Notice what you need to do for Thursday. Maybe do it now?)
What did you choose in Berger to research on the web and why? what were your results? how did you get them? 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 are data visualizations and did you come across any in this research? Be sure you spend at least as much time doing all this as you ordinarily do reading for class.

Thursday 22 Sept – How the transnational and the transdisciplinary live on the Web
•    HOW TO WRITE PAPERS, CREATE HANDOUTS, USE CITATIONS, AND FIND CITATION STYLES ON THE WEB
•    bring in the results of your serious web research on transnational feminisms, and be prepared to tell us 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
What do Zandt and Davis have to tell us that helps us understand what sorts of knowledge live on the web? What does looking for and analyzing such knowledges about transnational feminisms tell us about the work of both Zandt and Davis? How can we flip back and forth between one way of seeing things and another? What does that have to do with what happens when knowledge travels?

Tuesday 27 Sept – 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!

Thursday 1 Sept – NO CLASS: ROSH HASHANAH

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

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?

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? What other kinds of articles were being published in the journal Feminist Studies in 1983? In other feminist journals? What other feminist journals were big in 1983?

Tuesday 11 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?)

Thursday 13 Oct – Making Intersectionality Transnational?
•    Foundations Intersectionality, Berger Part I: Yuval-Davis’ essay
Why does Yuval-Davis start off with a little history of intersectionality? “All-inclusive”? 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?

Tuesday 18 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 20 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.

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

Tuesday 25 Oct – Reframing Narratives & Reclaiming Histories
•    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 27 Oct – Theoretical Explorations, Exploring theories and their worlds
•    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?

Tuesday 1 Nov – CLASS ON ITS OWN: KATIE AT 4S – Coming together and pulling apart, which is which?
•    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 3 Nov – CLASS ON ITS OWN: KATIE AT 4S – Method, theory, praxis – do they need to be connected or are they already?
•    Berger: Part III: pick 2 of 5 from the section on methodological innovations
Come with ideas and questions that look ahead to our workshop.

Tuesday 8 Nov – Agendas, Activisms, Relocations
•    Hewitt: Part III: pick 3 of 5
Look through all of these enough to compare them all somewhat, then become an expert on the ones you choose. How do these projects each in their own specific way contribute to the epistemological project of the whole book? How can you tell?

Thursday 10 Nov – Comparing epistemological projects
•    Berger: Part IV: choose 2 of the 5 and everyone should read the epilogue
How might each of these chapters work to help us envision the future of intersectionality and to see what is at stake?

Tuesday 15 Nov – WORKSHOP #2 – Dynamics in Our Field of Women’s Studies
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 17 Nov – WORKSHOP #2 – Talking about it all 
•    LOGBOOK 3 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.

Tuesday 22 Nov – NO CLASS: THANKSGIVING WEEK
Thursday 24 Nov – NO CLASS: HAPPY THANKSGIVING


REFLEXIVITY IN WOMEN’S STUDIES: SOLIDARITY IN RESISTANCE, FLEXIBILITY IN BUILDING

Tuesday 20 Nov – Share Feminism/s, how? with whom? with what care?
•    rereading Zandt as lens on all the other books
•    how to do learning analysis
What does Zandt have to teach us about the issues raised in the other books that we might have missed if we hadn’t read her work?

Thursday 1 Dec – Intersectionality as Boundary Object, meaning different things to different feminisms?
•    finishing up and rereading Berger as lens on all the other books; read stuff you missed or reread the stuff that has become a touchstone for you; be able to say why and how.
How do different feminisms use intersectionality to share their urgent projects and their hopes for feminism?

Tuesday 6 Dec – How do we use the notion of an epistemological project?
•    rereading Davis as lens on all the other books
So how well does Davis’ notion of epistemological project travel? Can we use it to think about these books, ideas, activisms, methods, disciplines, feminisms?

Thursday 8 Dec – Feminist Time Machines: how can we historicize what is happening now?

•    finishing up and rereading Hewitt as lens on all the other books;
Read stuff you missed or reread the stuff that has become a touchstone for you; be able to say why and how. Why do feminists want to be able to historicize? How is that a kind of sharing? a kind of traveling?

Tuesday 13 Dec – LAST DAY! Learning, sharing, making, doing, thinking, acting
•    LEARNING ANALYSIS DUE & PRESENTED; LOGBOOK 4 DUE 
On our last day we will share with each other our thoughts on how what we know has changed during the time of the course, and which issues have stuck with us to use from now on.