2019-20 Academic Catalog

This course is devoted to selected questions of (1) theory: what are the contours of feminist research in the social sciences and the humanities? and (2) practice: how does one actually conduct feminist research and, more specifically, how does one conduct feminist research cross-culturally? We will explore some of the following questions: What is the relationship between methodology and knowledge claims in feminist research? How do language and narrative shape experience? How do the practices of interpretation intersect with questions of the authority of the researching subject and her respondents? What are the power interests involved in keeping certain knowledges marginalized/subjugated? How do questions of gender/sex/ethnicity/class, as well as of national and cultural location, figure in these debates? And how is the traditional social science relationship between the researcher and the examined objects redefined within frameworks of feminist research? We will also pay close attention to questions arising from the hegemony of English as the global language of academia and of WGS as a discipline, and will reflect on what it means to move between different linguistic communities, with each being differently situated in the global hierarchies of power. The course will be centered around feminist approaches to these epistemological and methodological cross-cultural questions, foregrounding such schools of thought and such concepts as social constructivism, standpoint theory, situated knowledges, intersectionality, queer epistemology, and cross-cultural communication as a feminist practice. Prerequisite: Acceptance into the WGST Europe OCS Program required