Feminist Political Theory Professor Megan Gallagher Whitman College Politics 328A [email protected] Tuesday and Thursday, 1:00-2:20 Office: Maxey Hall 133 Maxey Hall 201 Office hours: W 1-2, R 3-4, and by appointment

Course description Political theory concerns itself with questions of authority, fairness, justice, and power (among others), yet historically, women’s interests have been routinely ignored or subordinated to those of men. Feminist political theory challenges women’s absence, or assumed subservience, in political life. It seeks to provide a philosophical foundation for the pursuit of “real world” goals and the improvement of women’s lives - and, oftentimes, men’s as well. In doing so, feminist theory’s primary method has entailed critical engagement with the western canon of political . Nonetheless, feminism has always been motivated by a concern for inequality and injustices in everyday life.

Yet feminist political theory is not monolithic - there are many diverse and conflicting strands, based in disparate notions of what constitutes “the good life.” Liberal feminism, conservative feminism, radical feminism, marxist feminism, women of color feminism, Chicana feminism, queer feminism, continental feminism, existentialist feminism: these varieties, and others, introduce different concerns into debates over the relationship between the public and the private; the variety of possible relationships between men and women; the complex interplay between sex, gender, and the body; the roles of class and race and how they interact with gender; to say nothing of what unifies and complicates the category of “woman.”

This course will involve close reading of major works in feminist political theory from the early modern period to the present. Because feminism understands itself to be fundamentally liberatory (that is, concerned with increasing liberty, specifically of women), our readings will focus on the theme of freedom. Specifically, we will consider 1) what it means to be a free political actor, 2) whether freedom is the highest political good, 3), whether, and how, freedom is compatible with other values, such as equality and justice, and 4) how different forms of government and political structures contribute to, or detract from, attempts to increase freedom. To examine these questions, we will follow a roughly chronological path from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, looking at influential schools and strands of feminist thought as they appeared. We will conclude by examining feminist political theory’s increasing engagements with two other fields of inquiry: disability studies and indigenous politics.

Reading schedule

Week 1 INTRODUCTION: FEMINIST THEORIES OF FREEDOM T 9/1 Sandra Bartky, “Toward a Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness,” Social Theory and Practice 3.4 (1975): 425-439* , “Freedom and Politics: A Lecture,” The Chicago Review 14.1 (1960): 28-46* R 9/3 Elisabeth Anker, “Feminist Theory and the Failures of Post-9/11 Freedom,” Politics & Gender 8.2 (2012): 207-215* Nancy Hirschmann, “Feminist Thoughts on Freedom and Rights,” Politics & Gender 8.2 (2012): 216-222* feminist political theory syllabus !1 Cristina Beltrán, “Freedom’s Ambivalent Pleasures: Richard Rodriguez and the Conservative Logic of Identity,” Politics & Gender 8.2 (2012): 223-231* Jennifer Nedelsky, “Relations of Freedom and Law’s Relations,” Politics & Gender 8.2 (2012): 231-238* Sharon Krause, “Plural Freedom,” Politics & Gender 8.2 (2012): 238-245*

Week 2 CONSERVATISM T 9/8 James VI and I, “The Trew Law of Free Monarchies”* John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, chapters 1, 6-8* Mary Astell, Reflections Upon Marriage, pp. 1-38 (top) R 9/10 Astell, Reflections Upon Marriage, p. 38-81

Week 3 WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN EUROPE T 9/15 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile, or On Education, excerpt* Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, dedicatory letter and chapters 1-4 R 9/17 Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, chapters 7-8, 13 Olympe de Gouges, “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Female Citizen”*

Week 4 T 9/22 Harriet Taylor Mill, “The Enfranchisement of Women”* John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, editor’s introduction and chapters I-II R 9/24 J.S. Mill, The Subjection of Women, chapters III-IV

Week 5 WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN THE UNITED STATES T 9/29 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions”* Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?”* Frederick Douglass on women’s suffrage* optional: Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Great Schism”* optional: Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Sojourner Truth, The Libyan Sibyl”* R 10/1 Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South, part first (“Soprano Obligato”)*

Week 6 EXISTENTIALISM T 10/6 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, pp. 3-17, 71-75, 148-156, 159-213, 279, 283, 638-664, and 721-766 R 10/8 No class - fall break

Week 7 MARXISM T 10/13 Michèle Barrett, “Some Conceptual Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis,” from Women’s Oppression Today: The Marxist/Feminist Encounter* Nancy Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism”* R 10/15 Barrett, “Feminism and the Politics of the State”* Catharine A. MacKinnon,”Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence,” Signs 8.4 (1983): 635-658*

feminist political theory syllabus !2 Week 8 BLACK FEMINISM AND INTERSECTIONALITY T 10/20 Midterm paper due in class Combahee River Collective, The Combahee River Collective Statement* Audre Lorde, “Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface” from Sister Outsider* Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”* Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”* Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”* bell hooks, “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory,” from Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center* hooks, “Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression”* hooks, “The Significance of Feminist Movement”* hooks, “Sisterhood: Political Solidarity Among Women”* R 10/22 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43.6 (1991): 1241-1299*

Week 9 POSTCOLONIAL FEMINISM T 10/27 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” boundary 2 12/13 (1984): 333-358* Uma Narayan, Dislocating : Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism, preface, chapters 1-2 R 10/30 Narayan, Dislocating Cultures, chapters 3-4 (chapter 5 optional)

Week 10 POSTMODERNISM T 11/3 Seyla Benhabib,“Feminism and Postmodernism” in Feminist Contentions , “Contingent Foundations” (Fraser and Cornell essays optional) R 11/5 Benhabib, “Subjectivity, Historiography, and Politics” Butler, “For a Careful Reading” (Fraser and Cornell essays optional)

Week 11 CONTESTING FREEDOM T 11/10 Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, chapters 1-3 R 11/12 Mahmood, Politics of Piety, chapters 4-5, epilogue

Week 12 THE BODY POLITIC T 11/17 Margaret Atwood, A Handmaid’s Tale, chapters I-IX Amrita Pande, “This Birth and That: Surrogacy and Stratified Motherhood in India,” philoSOPHIA 4.1 (2014): 50-64* R 11/19 Atwood, A Handmaid’s Tale, chapters X-XV and historical notes

Week 13 T 11/24 No class - Thanksgiving break R 11/26 No class - Thanksgiving break

Week 14 NEW CURRENTS IN FEMINIST THOUGHT: FEMINISM AND DISABILITY STUDIES feminist political theory syllabus !3 T 12/1 Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory,” NWSA Journal 14.3 (2002): 1-32* Sami Schalk, “Metaphorically Speaking: Ableist Metaphors in Feminist Writing,” Disability Studies Quarterly 33.4 (2013)* R 12/3 Final paper outline due in class Peer review workshop Licia Carlson, “Cognitive Ableism and Disability Studies: Feminist Reflections on the History of Mental Retardation,” Hypatia 16.4 (2001): 124-146*

Week 15 NEW CURRENTS IN FEMINIST THOUGHT: FEMINISM AND INDIGENOUS POLITICS T 12/8 Devon Abbott Mihesuah, “A Few Cautions at the Millennium on the Merging of Feminist Studies with American Indian Women’s Studies,” Signs 25.4 (2000): 1247-1251* Renya Ramirez, “Race, Tribal Nation, and Gender: A Native Feminist Approach to Belonging,” Meridians 7.2 (2007) 22-40* Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill, “Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy,” Feminist Formations 25.1 (2013): 8-34* R 12/10 Joanne Barker, “Gender, Sovereignty, and the Discourse of Rights in Native Women’s Activism,” Meridians 7.1 (2006) 127-161* Rauna Kuokkanen, “Self-Determination and Indigenous Women’s Rights at the Intersection of International Human Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly 34.1 (2012): 225-250*

Exam week Final paper due (exact date TBA)

Required texts Mary Astell, Political Writings (978-0521428453) Margaret Atwood, A Handmaid’s Tale (978-0385490818) Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (978-0691149806) J.S. Mill, The Subjection of Women (978-0872200548) Uma Narayan, Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism (978-0415914192) Linda Nicholson, et. al., Feminists Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange (978-0415910866) Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and A Vindication of the Rights of Men (978-0199555468)

It is crucial that you use the listed editions. Inexpensive used copies are widely available online.

* Readings not included in the required texts will be available on, or via, the course website.

Course requirements Reading responses (15%): Reading responses of roughly 500 words to be posted weekly on the course website by 10pm on Mondays. In addition to week 8, one week may be skipped at the student’s discretion without penalty.

Midterm paper (20%): The midterm paper will be due on Tuesday, October 20, at the beginning of class. Further details will be given in class. feminist political theory syllabus !4 Final paper (35%): The final paper will be due during exam week. An outline will be due in class on Thursday, December 3, for a peer review workshop and is worth 5% of the final paper’s grade.

Participation (30%): Note that participation constitutes the second highest percentage of your final grade. Regular attendance is required, barring illness. As an advanced seminar, discussion is largely in your hands. Your reading responses should help you prepare! Please remember that quantity of comments does not reflect quality and our aim is to have a quality discussion. Moreover, there are many ways to participate, from offering your own thoughts, to asking your classmates to expand on or clarify points they have made, to speaking with me in office hours. It goes without saying that attendance is presumed.

** The instructor reserves the right to alter any reading or writing assignments during the semester.**

Important dates October 8: no class October 20: midterm paper due November 24 and 26: no class December 3: final paper outline due Exam week: final paper due (exact date TBA)

Academic honesty Integrity is essential to all of the work you do here at Whitman. I take academic honesty very seriously. Anyone found cheating or plagiarizing will automatically fail the related assignment(s). All issues of cheating and plagiarism will be documented and reported to the Dean of Students.

The best way to avoid any trouble is simply to ask me any questions you have about what does and does not constitute plagiarism – it can seem like a very confusing subject, but we can get a handle on it rather easily. As described in the Whitman Student Handbook, “plagiarism occurs when you, intentionally or due to your own negligence, use someone else’s words, ideas, or data without proper acknowledgment.” Please see the Handbook for further information and ask me any questions you have as they arise!

Technology The use of laptops, tablets, and (smart)phones is verboten (forbidden). All items must be muted for the duration of class. Readings posted online must be printed and brought to class.

Classroom decorum It is to be expected that you will encounter a variety of arguments, opinions, and perspectives over the quarter, a number of which you may disagree with. Polite, reasoned disagreement is welcomed - even encouraged! - but please maintain a respectful tone, particularly when addressing your colleagues.

Accessibility and Disability Support Services If you are a student with a disability who will need accommodations in this course, please meet with either Julia Dunn, Associate Dean of Students (Memorial 325, 509.527.5213, [email protected]) or Rebecca Frost, Director of Student Success and Disability Support Services (Memorial 325, 509.527.5213, [email protected]) for assistance in developing a plan to address your academic needs. feminist political theory syllabus !5 Feel free to speak with me as well. All information about disabilities is considered private and will be treated with discretion. You can find out more about Whitman’s Disability Support Services at their website.

General grading rubric A+/A/A- (100-90): demonstrates careful and thorough reading of the text; answers all parts of the question(s); provides a clearly articulated thesis; outlines the way in which thesis will be explicated; defends and supports thesis in the body of the paper using textual evidence; considers counter- arguments, if appropriate; argues, does not summarize; structurally elegant; writing is clear and straightforward. Excellent work. B+/B/B- (89-80): demonstrates familiarity with the text, though may rely more on lecture and discussion than on own reading, or may demonstrate a cursory reading; provides a solid thesis but may not explain how it will be defended, support it thoroughly with textual references, or develop arguments as fully as they ought to; may make selective use of text to support claims; structurally, individual points may feel disconnected from one another. Writing is clear but with room for improvement. Good, but not excellent, work. C+/C/C- (79-70): a weak, if appropriate or topical, thesis that either does not require a strong defense or relate entirely to the original question(s); demonstrates minimal passing acquaintance with the material; evidence may be drawn primarily from lecture; substance of paper may tend toward summary of the text rather than critical engagement; does not attend to counter-arguments; individual paragraphs may be well-crafted but the paper overall lacks a sense of cohesion and attention to detail. Fair, but not good, work. D+/D/D- (69-60): does not provide a clear thesis; may not respond to the question(s); does not support claims with evidence; emphasizes opinion or summary over analysis; paper lacks structure; does not otherwise demonstrate mastery of the concepts presented and analyzed in class; lack of organization makes paper difficult to follow; neglect of grammar, style, and writing. F (59-0): does not provide a thesis or respond to the question(s); may be purely opinion or summary of text(s); no attempt to convey an interpretation of the material; lacking structure, coherence; no attention paid to grammar, style, and writing.

Late assignments will lose one-third of a letter grade (i.e., an A- becomes a B+) for every day that they are late, including weekends. Assignments not submitted will receive an F. All assignments must be submitted in order to pass the course.

Academic resources on campus Center fOr Writing and Speaking (COWS) Whitman Workshop Wednesdays

Select further reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists. New York: Random House, 2015. M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, eds., Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures. New York: Routledge, 1997. Judith Baer, Ironic Freedom: Personal Choice, Public Policy, and the Politics of Reform. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013. Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. New York: Polity, 1992. feminist political theory syllabus !6 Wendy Brown, “The Impossibility of Women’s Studies,” differences 9.3 (1997): 79-101. ---, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Clare Chambers, Sex, , and Justice: The Limits of Choice. University Park: Penn State Press, 2008. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2000. Drucilla Cornell, At the Heart of Freedom: Feminism, Sex, and Equality. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. Mary Dietz, “Context Is All: Feminism and Theories of Citizenship,” Daedalus 116.4 (1987): 1-24. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Feminist Disability Studies,” Signs 30.2 (2005): 1557-1587. Joyce Green, ed., Making Space for Indigenous Feminism. Winnipeg: Fernwood Books, 2007. J. Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Sally Haslanger, “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?” Noûs 34.1 (2000): 31-55. Nancy Hirschmann, Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. ---, The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Alison Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Sharon Krause, Freedom Beyond Sovereignty: Reconstructing Liberal Individualism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Noëlle McAfee, and the Political Unconscious. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2009. Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Random House, 1997. Stacy Clifford Simplican, The Capacity Contract: Intellectual Disability and the Question of Citizenship. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. Sarah Song, Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Dana Villa, Public Freedom. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Alison Weir, Identities and Freedom. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013. Shannon Winnubst, Queering Freedom. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Nira Yuval-Davis, “Intersectionality and Feminist Politics,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 13.3 (2006): 193-209. Linda Zerilli, Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Journals of interest (not exhaustive!) Camera Obscura Feminist Review Journal of Gender Nora: Nordic Journal Constellations Feminist Studies Studies of Women’s Studies Contemporary Feminist Theory Journal of the History philoSOPHIA Political Theory Frontiers of Sexuality Political Theory differences Gender & History Journal of Middle Politics and Gender European Journal of Gender and Society East Women’s Studies Signs Women’s Studies History of Political Journal of Women's Women's Writing Feminist Legal Thought History Studies Hypatia Meridians feminist political theory syllabus !7