Claudia Stumpf
cstumpf@suffolk.edu
Tuesdays 5:30-8:10
Sawyer, Room 133
WGS 111-AE
Fall 2013
September 3 – Week 1: Introductions, Definitions, and Expectations
September 10 – Week 2: Identities and Epistemologies
Reading Assignment: Simone de Beauvoir, from Second Sex (1949)
Candace West and Don Zimmerman, “Doing Gender” (1987)
Judith Lorber, “’Night to His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender”
(1994)
Julia Serano, “Performance Piece” (2010)
Sandra Harding, “Standpoint Theory as a Site of Political, Philosophic,
and Scientific Debate” (2004)
Optional/Additional Reading: Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution:
An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” (1988), “Feminist Epistemology and
Philosophy of Science” (2010)
September 17 – Week 3: History and Privilege
Reading Assignment: Toni Morrison, Sula (1973)
bell hooks, “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory” (1984)
Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack."
(1989)
Gloria Anzaldua, “La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New
Consciousness” (1987)
Optional/Additional Readings: Sonia Shah, “Slaying the Dragon Lady: Toward an Asian
American Feminism” (1999), Alice Walker, “Womanist” (1983), Ta-Nehisi Coates, “What
We Mean When We Say ‘Race is a Social Construct’” (2013)
September 24 – Week 4: Heteronormativity
Reading Assignment: Adrienne Rich, selected poems
Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”
(1980), “It is the Lesbian in Us…” (1976)
Eve Kokofsky Sedgwick, from Epistemology of the Closet (1990)
Optional/Additional Reading: Evelynn Hammonds, “Black (W)holes and the Geometry of
Black Female Sexuality” (1994)
October 1 – Week 5: Trans* Issues
Reading Assignment: David Harrison, “The Personals” (1990)
Kate Bornstein, “Abandon Your Tedious Search” (1994)
Anne Fausto-Sterling, “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female are Not
Enough” (1993) and “The Five Sexes, Revisited” (2000)
Film Viewing Assignment: Transamerica (2005)
Optional/Additional Reading: Claudia Lang, “Intersexuality and Alternative Gender
Categories in Non-Western Cultures” (2008)
October 8 – Week 6: Global Feminisms
Reading Assignment: Chandra Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and
Colonial Discourses” (1984)
Uma Narayan, from Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions and
Third World Feminisms (1997)
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis (2000)
Optional/Additional Reading: Chandra Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes Revisited” (2003)
October 15 – Week 7: MIDTERM EXAM
*No response is required this week
October 22– Week 8: Teaching Girls
Reading Assignment: Peggy Orenstein, Schoolgirls (1994)
L. Maurer, "Story of a Preadolescent Drag King” (2002)
Soraya Chemaly, “Boys Will Be Boys is No Excuse for Bad Behavior”
(2012)
Optional/Additional Reading: Gunderson et al. “The Role of Parents and Teachers in the
Development of Gender-Related Math Attitudes” (2011)
October 29– Week 9: Sex and Power
Reading Assignment: Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues (1996)
Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” (1984)
Catherine MacKinnon, “Trafficking, Prostitution, and Inequality”
(2011)
Eva Pendleton, “Love for Sale: Queering Heterosexuality” (1997)
Optional/Additional Reading: Carol Queen, “Sex Radical Politics: Sex-Positive Feminist
Thought, and Whore Stigma” (1997), tekjani, “What is Slut Shaming” (2010)
November 5– Week 10: The “Mommy Wars”
Reading Assignment: Linda Hirshman, “Homeward Bound” (2005)
Mary Eberstadt, “Home-Alone America” (2004)
Lilian Faulhaber, “How the I.R.S. Hurts Mothers” (2013)
Lonnae O’Neal Parker, from I’m Every Woman: Remixed Stories of
Marriage, Motherhood, and Work (2005)
Optional/Additional Readings: Anne-Marie Slaughter, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”
(2012), Rebecca Traister “Can’t modern women ‘have it all’?” (2012), Jodi Kantor, “A Titan’s
How-To on Breaking the Glass Ceiling” (2013)
November 12 – Week 11: Gender and Mental Illness
Reading Assignment: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), “Why I Wrote
The Yellow Wallpaper” (1913)
Anne Digby, “Women’s Biological Straightjacket” (2012)
Susan Lanser, “Feminist Criticism, The Yellow Wallpaper, and the
Politics of Color in America” (1989)
Additional/Optional Readings: WHO, “Gender and women's mental health,”
Seedat et al., “Cross-national associations between gender and mental disorders in the
WHO World Mental Health Surveys” (2009)
November 19- Week 12: Women’s Creativity
Reading Assignment: Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)
Alice Walker, “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens” (1983)
Sally Reis, “Toward a Theory of Creativity in Diverse Creative
Women” (1998)
Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1975)
Additional/Optional Readings: Tyler Cowen, “Why Women Succeed, and Fail, in the Arts”
(1996), “Woman’s Work” by Julia Alvarez (1985)
November 25 – Week 13: Presentations
December 3 – Week 14: Presentations