Foundations in Gender Studies I.
4 credits
Fall 2014-15
Department of Gender Studies, CEU
Instructor:
Eva Fodor (fodore@ceu.hu)
Office: 507/b, Zrinyi 14
Class website on CEU’s e-learning platform
Course description
This is an introductory course which is designed to familiarize students with some
of the basic concepts and arguments in the broad interdisciplinary field of “gender
studies”. The first part of the course will address different understandings of the
concept of sex/gender in an effort to introduce students to the variety of ways in
which, throughout the past decades, thinking about these issues has changed. In the
second part of the course we’ll explore several different types of argumentations on
the meaning of gender, the woman question and women’s emancipation. We’ll
follow a historical path but in this version of Foundations I, we will focus on issues
from a sociological rather than a historical point of view. We will review
liberal/neo-liberal, socialist/Marxist, radical, post-colonial/post-socialist views on a
variety of topics. We’ll identify the key trends in each set of argument and try to
follow how they got transformed as they traveled to different locations and through
time. In the third part of the course we address a handful of popular concepts, which
students will encounter in the rest of their studies and while writing their MA
papers: “patriarchy”, the “public/private divide” and “intersectionality”. By the end
of the course students will be able to use these terms in a thoughtful and nuanced
way informed by their scholarly critique and history.
Learning goals and outcomes
The course provides students with the basic concepts in the field of gender studies.
Students will acquire the most important theories and arguments put forth by
scholars whose work is considered foundational in the field. In terms of skills,
student will practice/ learn how to formulate arguments, how to critically analyze
scholarly texts and how to write short essays on the topics reviewed in the course.
Requirements and grading:
Your grade will comprise of the following elements:
 Active participation in class which demonstrates your familiarity with the
material assigned - about 20% of the grade
 Midterm exam (an in –class, short answer exam around week 5)- about 35%
 Final take home essay exam – about 45%
Make sure you avoid plagiarism or even the vague possibility of plagiarism. Note
that copying from the internet or even taking ideas from internet sources without
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proper citation is also a form of plagiarism, not only copying from paper based texts.
Paraphrase the arguments whenever possible and add proper citations from the
original text. Quote if absolutely necessary. Students who plagiarize will get a
warning first, and if we encounter another incident of plagiarism they will fail the
course.
A note on learning disabilities:
We will have to complete in-class examinations and take home essays in this course.
If you have a documented learning disability and need extra time or help to do these
types of exams, please let me know in advance and we’ll find a way to accommodate
your needs.
A note on e-etiquette:
A number of recent research papers show that classroom learning is compromised
when students use laptops and other electronic devices (such as ipads, smart
phones, etc) during lectures and discussions in the classroom. Therefore, please
leave your electronic devices at home as their use will not be permitted in class.
Missing a class:
If you can’t attend a class because of an illness or another acceptable reason, you are
expected to inform the teacher in advance (either in person or through email) and
provide documentation.
Late papers will be penalized by deducting a notch of the paper’s grade each 12
hours they are late.
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Detailed schedule
NOTE ON CLASS FORMAT: We will meet for double sessions in this course. The first
part of each class meeting (from 1:30-3:10) will be a seminar discussion of the
readings assigned. You are expected to have done these readings in advance of the
class and to come prepared with questions and issues to be discussed. The second part
of each meeting (from 3:30-5:10) will consist of a lecture, which will summarize and
elaborate on the main points of the discussion and introduce the following week’s
readings.
Part 1: Intro to the concept of gender and gender studies
Week 1 (Sept 22): Gender, social construction and beyond
Required readings:
 Ann Oakley. 1972. “Sex and Gender,” pp. 158-172 in Sex, Gender, and Society.
New York, NY: Harper Colophon Books.

Tey, Meadow. 2010. “’A Rose is a Rose’: On Producing Legal Gender
Classifications. Gender& Society, 24, 6: 814-837.

Kessler, Suzanne J. 1998. Lessons from the Intersexed. “Introduction,” (pp. 111) and “Defining and Producing Genitals,” (pp. 33-51). New Brunswick NJ:
Rutgers University Press.
Week 2 (Sept 29): “Doing” and “undoing” gender
Required readings:
 West, Candace and Zimmermann, Don. 1987. “Doing Gender,” Gender&
Society, 1: 125-151.

Barbara Risman. 2009. “From Doing to Undoing Gender” Gender & Society,
23: 81-85.

Kristen Schielt and Laurel Westbrook. 2009. „Doing Gender, Doing
Heteronormativity: „Gender Normals,“ Transgender People, and the Social
Maintenance of Heterosexuality“ Gender & Society, 23: 440-464.
Recommended:
Sandra Lee Bartky. 1993. “The Feminine Body” in Alison Jaggar and Paula Rothenberg(eds). Feminist Frameworks: Alternative Theoretical Accounts of the Relations between
Women and Men. McGraw Hill, Boston MA. Pp. 454-461.
Francine M. Deutsch. 2007. “Undoing Gender.“ Gender& Society, 21: 106-127
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Week 3 (Oct 6): Masculinities
Required readings:
 R. W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity:
Rethinking the Concept,” Gender& Society, Vol. 19 No. 6 (December 2005):
829-859.

Ward, Jane. 2008. “Dude-Sex: White Masculinities and ‘Authentic’
Heterosexuality Among Dudes Who Have Sex with Dudes” Sexualities, Vol 11
(4): 414-434.

Judit Halbertsam. 1998. Female Masculinity. ”Introduction”. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Recommended:
Christine L. Williams. 1995. “Masculinity in Feminine Occupations” pp. 109-145, in Still a
Man’s World: Men who Do Women’s Work. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
David Grazien. 2007. The Girl Hunt: Urban Nightlife and the Performance
of Masculinity as Collective Activity. Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 30, Issue 2, pp. 221–243.
Part 2: Historical overview of ideas about women and gender
NOTE: No class on Oct 13!
Week 4 (Oct 9, 1pm-3:20pm): “Early” feminisms and their modern day
reincarnations
Required readings:
 Mary Wollstonecraft. (originally 1793). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
(selections from chapters 2, 3 ,4 12.)

Susan Moller Okin. 1999. “Justice, Gender and the Family” pp. 313-331, in
Janet Kourany, James P. Sterba, and Rosemary Tong (eds). Feminist
Philosophies (2nd edition). Prentice Hall.

Funk, Nanette. 2004. “Feminist Critiques of Liberalism: Can They Travel East?
Their Relevance in Eastern and Central Europe and the Former Soviet
Union,” Signs 29 (3): 695-726.

Watch Sheryl Sandberg’s TEDWomen talk (2010) about “leaning in”.
http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few_women_
leaders
Recommended:
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John Stuart Mill. Excerpts from “The Subjection of Women (1869). in Alison Jaggar and Paula
S. Rothenberg (eds) 1993. Feminist Frameworks: Alternative Theoretical Accounts of the
Relations Between Women and Men. Boston MA: McGraw Hill.
Offen, Karen. 1988. “Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach.” Signs 14 119157.
Week 5 (Oct 20): Radical attacks on the status quo
Required readings:
 Eisenstein, Zillah R. 1981. The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism. pp. 175200. “Friedan’s ‘Feminist Mystique’ and the Changing Politics of NOW”.
Boston: Boston University Press.

Schulamith Firestone. (originally 1970). Excerpts from The Dialectics of Sex.
pp. 353-359, In Janet Kourany, James P. Sterba, and Rosemary Tong (eds).
1999. Feminist Philosophies (2nd edition). Prentice Hall.

Adrea Dworkin.1981. Pornography: Men Possessing Women . The Women's
Press Ltd;London.
and you may want to read this as well:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/apr/12/gender.highereducation
Recommended:
Mary Daly. 1978. “Prelude to the First Passage” in Feminist Studies, vol 4, issue 3.
Gayle Rubin. 1975. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex.” pp. 2762 in Linda Nicholson, ed, The Second Wave. A Reader in Feminist Theory, New York/London:
Routledge.
Laura Kipnis. 2006. “Response to “The Traffic in Women”, in Women’s Studies Quarterly 34:
(1 & 2) 434-437.
Week 6 (Oct 27): Marxist/ socialist feminism
Required readings:
 Bebel, August. Woman and Socialism (originally: Die Frau und der
Sozialismus, 1879) in Alice S. Rossi ed.(1988). The Feminist Papers: From
Adams to de Beauvoir. pp. 496-505. Boston, MA: Northeastern University
Press.

Heidi Hartmann. 1981. “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism.
Towards a More Progressive Union,” pp. 97-122, reprinted in Linda
Nicholson ed. (1997) The Second Wave. A Reader in Feminist Theory. New
York and London: Routledge.

Evelyn Reed (originally 1970). “Women: Caste, Class or Opperessed Sex?”
(excerpts from Reed’s Problems of Women’s Liberation), pp. 415-424 in Janet
Kourany, James P. Sterba, and Rosemary Tong (eds). 1999. Feminist
Philosophies (2nd edition). Prentice Hall.
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Week 7 (Nov 3): Marxist emancipation ideology put to work
Session 1: In-class midterm exam during the first part of the session. The exam
covers the material up to this week, including this week’s readings (see
below).
Session 2:
Required readings:
 Klara Zetkin. Lenin on the “Women’s Question”. Read it from here (read both
parts):
https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1920/lenin/zetkin1.htm
and
https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1925/lenin/zetkin2.htm

Barbara Einhorn.1993. “The Woman Question: The Legacy of State
Socialism”. Pp. 17-38, in Cindarella Goes to Market. Verso Press.

Zimmermann, Susan. 2010. “Gender Regime and Gender Struggle in
Hungarian State Socialism,” Aspasia: International Yearbook for Women’s and
Gender History of Central Eastern and Southeastern Europe 4, 1 (2010): 1-24.
Recommended:
Holmstrom, Nancy, The socialist feminist project: a contemporary reader in theory and politics
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002).
Wang Zheng. 2005. “State Feminism?’ Gender and Socialist State Formation in Maoist China.”
Feminist Studies 32, 3: 519-551.
Week 8a (Nov 10, 1:30-3:10): Under “Western” Eyes
Required readings:
 Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1991. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist
Scholarship and Colonial Discourse,” pp. 51-80 in Chandra Talpade Mohanty,
Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres (eds), Third World Women and the Politics of
Feminism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP. (originally published in
1984).

Allaine Cerwonka. 2008. “Traveling Feminist Thought: Difference and
Transculturation in Central and Eastern European Feminism” Signs, 33 (4):
809-832.
Week 8b (Nov 10, 3:30-5:10): The Third Wave
Required readings:
 Surfing the Third Wave: A Dialogue between Two Third Wave Feminists Rita
Alfonso and Jo Trigilio, in Hypatia: Third Wave Feminisms 12 (1997): 7-16.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810219
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
Barbara Findlen (ed.), Listen up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation
(Seattle, Wash.: Seal Press, 2001):
- JeeYeun Lee, “Beyond Bean Counting,” 67-73
- María Cristina Rangel, “Knowledge is Power,” 188-196
- Daisy Hernández, “Bringing Feminism a la Casa,” 209-211
- Veronica Chambers, “Betrayal Feminism,” 258-264.
Recommended:
Hypatia: Third Wave Feminisms 12 (1997).
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis (London: Jonathan Cape, c2003): 3-21.
Part 3: Selected key themes in gender studies
Week 9 (Nov 17): The concept of patriarchy- the question of male power
Required readings:
 Pateman, Carole. 1988. “Introduction” and “What’s Wrong with
Prostitution?” The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Fraser, Nancy. 1993. “Beyond the Master/Subject Model: Reflections on
Carole Pateman’s Sexual Contract,” Social Text, 37: 173-181.

Sylvia Walby. 1990. “From Private to Public Patriarchy” in Theorizing
Patriarchy, pp. 173-179. Blackwell Publishers.
Week 10 (Nov 24): Public/ Private “divide”
Required readings:
 Susan Gal and Gail Kligman. 2000. “Dilemmas of Public and Private,” pp. 3762 in The Politics of Gender After Socialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.

Hill Collins, Patricia. “It’s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and
Nation,” Hypatia 13 (1998): 3, 62-82.

Ann Crittenden. 2002. “How Mothers’ Work was “Disappeared”: the
Invention of the Unproductive Housewife,” “Pp. 45-64 , in The Price of
Motherhood. Holt Paperbacks.
Recommended:
Barbara Arneil. 2001. “Women as Wives, Servants and Slaves: Rethinking the Public/Private
Divide”, in Canadian Journal of Political Science XXXIV (March): 29-54.
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Week 11 (Dec 1): The changing concept of “gender equality” in policy making
Required readings:
 Shahra Razavi. 2011. World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and
Development - A Commentary. Development and Change, Volume 43, Issue 1,
Pages 423-437.

Maria Stratigaki. 2004. “The Cooptation of Gender Concepts in EU Policies:
The Case of “Reconciliation of Work and Family.” Social Politics, vol 11, 1: 3056.

Megan Rivers-Moore. 2014. Waiting for the State: Sex Work and the
Neoliberal Governance of Sexuality. Social Politics, doi: 10.1093/sp/jxu020.
Recommended:
Take a look at the World Development Report 2012. (you can easily find this online).
Week 12 (Dec 8): The buzzword of the decade: Intersectionality
Required readings:
 Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Violence
Against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, 6: 1241-1279.

McCall, Leslie. 2005. “The Complexity of Intersectionality,” Signs, Vol. 30, No.
3, pp. 1771-1800. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/426800

Audre Lorde. 1995. “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining
Difference,” pp. 283-291 in Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Words of Fire. An Anthology
of African-American Feminist Thought . New York, NY.
Recommended:
bell hooks. 1995. “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory,” pp. 269-282 in Beverly Guy-S
heftall, Words of Fire. An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought. New York.
Bock, Gisela. 1992. “Equality and Difference in National Socialist Racism,” pp. 89-109 in:
Bock, Gisela and James, Susan (eds). Beyond Equality and Difference: Citizenship, Feminist
Politics and Female Subjectivity. London: Routledge.
Take home exam questions will be posted online on our class website by noon
Dec 11. Take home exams are due in hard copy format in my mailbox in the
Departmental Main Office or in the box in front of my door by noon, Tuesday,
Dec 16.
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