Central European University (Vienna Campus) Department of Gender Studies GENDER, MEMORY AND NATIONALISM MA Level Elective Class, 2 Credits (Online) Fall 2020 Course Syllabus INSTRUCTOR INFORMATION Instructor: Dr Hannah Loney, Visiting Assistant Professor of Gender Studies COURSE INFORMATION Course Description: This course examines the complex relationships between gender, memory and nationalism. It addresses the main theoretical perspectives on nations and nationalism, as well as feminist critiques of these perspectives. The course also considers the material ways in which nationalist discourses and practices are both gendered and sexualized. Paying particular attention to the politics of memory, the course approaches the concept of the nation and its variants as historically contingent, and continually reproduced through discourse and practice. Particular areas of focus include imperialism, citizenship, sexual violence, ethnicity, migration and populism. Geographically and historically, the course takes a broad and comparative view of gender, memory and nationalism across time and space. Learning Outcomes: Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: • identify and discuss the main theoretical perspectives on nations and nationalism, and their critiques; • recognize and analyze the ways in which notions of gender, sex and sexuality are implicated in nationalist discourses and practices; • understand the role of memory within processes of nationalism; • critically assess and compare class readings according to different theoretical arguments and methods; and • present critical written analysis that is supported by arguments and evidence, and identify and research a topic relevant to the themes of the course. REQUIREMENTS & EXPECTATIONS Your final grade will be based on: • Online class participation: 30% • Reaction papers: 40% • Group media project: 30% 1 CLASS SCHEDULE NOTE: This is a provisional schedule and list of readings. The confirmed class schedule will be uploaded to Moodle. Week 1: Introduction to Nations and Nationalism Required Reading: • Benedict Anderson, Chapters 1–3, in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso: 1983), 1–46. • Partha Chatterjee, “Chapter 1: Whose Imagined Community,” in The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Week 2: Feminist Critiques: Women and Nationalism Required Reading: • Floya Anthers and Nira Yuval-Davis, “Introduction”, in Woman-Nation-State, ed. Floya Anthers and Nira Yuval-Davis (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 6–11. • Anne McClintock, “Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family”, Feminist Review 44 (Summer 1993): 61–80. Week 3: Feminist Critiques: Sexuality and Masculinity Required Reading: • Joane Nagel, “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21.2 (1998): 242–269. • Tamar Mayer, “From Zero to Hero: Masculinity in Jewish Nationalism,” in Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation, ed. Tamar Mayer (New York: Routledge, 2000): 283–307. Week 4: Nationalism, Sexuality and the Body Required Reading: • Geraldine Heng and Janadas Devan, “State Fatherhood: The Politics of Nationalism, Sexuality and Race in Singapore,” in Nationalisms and Sexualities, ed. Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer and Patricia Yaegar (New York: Routledge: 1992), 343–364. • Angela K. Martin, “Death of a Nation: Transnationalism, Bodies and Abortion in Late Twentieth-Century Ireland,” in Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation, ed. Tamar Mayer (New York: Routledge, 2000), 65–86. Week 5: The (Colonial) State as Pimp: Regulating Reproduction Required Reading 2 • John Lie, “The State as Pimp: Prostitution and the Patriarchal State in Japan in the 1940s,” The Sociological Quarterly 38, no. 2 (1997): 251–263. • Ann Laura Stoler, “Making Empire Respectable,” American Ethnologist 16(4), November 1989: 634-660. Week 6: Nationalism, Feminism and Ethnicity Required Reading: • Ranjoo Seodu Herr, “The Possibility of Nationalist Feminism,” Hypatia 18, no. 3 (2003): 135–160. • Nadje Al-Ali and Latif Tas, “Reconsidering Nationalism and Feminism: The Kurdish Political Movement in Turkey,” Nations and Nationalism 24, no. 2 (2018): 453–473. Week 7: Gender, Nationalism and the Military Required Reading • Ayşe-Gül Altinay, “Women and the Myth: The World’s First Woman Combat Pilot” and “Becoming a Man, Becoming a Citizen,” in The Myth of the Military Nation: Militarism, Gender, and Education in Turkey (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 33–58 and 61–86. • Joseph Massad, “Conceiving the Masculine: Gender and Palestinian Nationalism,” Middle East Journal 49, no. 3 (1995): 467–483. Week 8: Sexual Violence in War Required Reading • Veena Das, “National Honor and Practical Kinship: Unwanted Women and Children,” in Conceiving the New World Order, ed. Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 212–233. • Nayanika Mookherjee, “Gendered Embodiments: Mapping the Body-Politics of the Raped Woman and the Nation in Bangladesh,” Feminist Review 88 (2008): 36–53. Week 9: Queer Nationalism and Activism Required Reading • Anikó Imre, “Lesbian Nationalism,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 33, no. 2 (2008): 255–282. • Jason Ritchie, “How Do You Say ‘Come out of the Closet’ in Arabic? Queer Activism and the Politics of Visibility in Israel/Palestine,” GLQ 16, no. 4 (2010): 557–575. Week 10: Homonationalism, Terrorism and Imperialism Required Reading 3 • Jasbir Puar, “The Sexuality of Terrorism,” in Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 37–78. • Melanie Richter-Montpetit, “Empire, Desire and Violence: A Queer Transnational Feminist Reading of the Prisoner ‘Abuse’ in Abu Ghraib and the Question of ‘Gender Equality’,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 9, no. 1 (2007): 38–59. Week 11: Nationalism and Populism Required Reading • Sarah R. Farris, Introduction and Chapter 2, in In the Name of Women’s Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 1–21 and 57–77. Week 12: Gendered Memory and the Nation Required Readings: • Benedict Anderson, “Memory and Forgetting,” in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (rev. ed.) (London/New York: Verso, 1991). 4 .