Syllabus for the Course: Feminist Theory
FEMINIST THEORY
SOCY 5036, SPRING 2005
Professor AnnJanette Rosga
Class Time/Day: F 3:00-6:00pm
Office: 219 Ketchum Hall
Classroom: Ketchum 33
Phone: 735-2389, email: rosga@colorado.edu
Office Hours: Fridays 2:00-3:00, or by appt.
[T]o admit the importance of theory is to make an open-ended commitment,
to leave yourself in a position where there are always important things you
don’t know.
…Theory makes you desire mastery …[but]…makes mastery impossible.
Jonathan Culler
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
Audre Lorde
Course Description & Requirements
Depending on how one slices it, “feminist theory” can span decades (if not centuries),
disciplines, genres, agendas, languages, cultures, geographies and topical foci. Possible
organizational schemas for a graduate seminar on this material proliferate wildly. Rather than
attempting a representative sampling or making any pretense to comprehensiveness, this course
will focus primarily on feminist theories that are generally categorized as “poststructuralist,” and
will endeavor to ensure that students acquire sufficient vocabulary and familiarity with key texts
to understand and work with these theories.[1] Among other things, this means that the course
will prioritize a reckoning with the epistemological ramifications of poststructuralist feminist
theory: how do writings that fall within this loosely bounded arena impact the kinds of questions
we might ask in social research? What “moves” do they enable us to make in our study of social
phenomena? What are the assumptions made by these theories and how might they affect what
we think we know about the social world, how we “know” it, and what any of us think we’re up
to when we set out to “study” it?
The first half of the term will be spent reviewing the necessary corollary concepts to any study of
poststructuralist feminist theory (e.g. structuralism, semiotics, psychoanalysis, subjectivity,
discourse, language, power/knowledge). This material will be covered primarily in lecturediscussion format, while the readings assigned will each draw upon and make use of specific key
concepts.
During the second half of the term, we’ll set out to explore specific applications of feminist
poststructuralist theory. The course will focus particularly on the ramifications of these theories –
theories that arise out of, and analyze, the experience of living in and through the mediations of
“marked” categories (woman, queer, [post]colonial) – for the study of lives lived in/through/via
“unmarked” experiences and institutions. Put another way, the course will ask: of what use are
poststructuralist feminist, queer, and/or postcolonial theories for the analysis of topics that are
not primarily identified in terms of their connection to “oppressed” groups? To this end, we will
examine feminist theories of masculinity, heteronormativity, “white”-ness, the state, nation and
empire.
Writing & Presentation Requirements
Papers
Approximately half of the credit for this course is to be earned via traditional analytical writing
assignments. This requirement may be fulfilled in one of two ways. Option one is to write a fulllength (15-25pp.) seminar paper on a particular topic of interest, using the theoretical material
covered in this class. The second option is to write 3 shorter (5-7pp.) reading-response essays,
each considering (and placing into conversation) the writings of 2-5 different authors.
In order to facilitate our understanding of material that is often highly abstract, the remaining two
assignments are designed to concretize, to encourage you to directly apply, and to facilitate our
discussions of theoretical texts:
Applications
Each student will be required to prepare one 10-15minute presentation for the class in which she
or he describes an application of one or more particular theoretical texts to a topic or issue that is
apparently unrelated to the topics taken up by the text(s). (For example, one might apply Donna
Haraway’s analysis of technoscience to a legal practice or institution, or Chandra Mohanty’s
discussion of the “western gaze” to biomedical imaging procedures.) This assignment will likely
be most useful to you if you can apply a given theoretical text(s) to a topic of particular interest
to you (e.g. your dissertation research topic, or a topic you’re considering for your dissertation).
The goal of your presentation should be not simply to summarize, or to illustrate your grasp of,
the theory under discussion, but to extend our understanding of that theory by showing how it
affects your consideration of a seemingly unrelated topic.
Engagements
Theoretical texts are, of course, written by real live people. This assignment asks you to go out
and find the authors whose work we’ll be reading and interview them about that work. You may
carry out this assignment individually or in a group with one or two other students. You may
conduct the interview in any way you see fit (for example, you might focus entirely on the work
we’re reading, asking the author about her or his thoughts on that piece now that some time has
passed since it was written; you might ask the author to trace her or his intellectual influences;
you might ask her or him about how s/he writes and to what end? Or, you might interview two or
more co-authors about their work together). You’ll then present the findings of your interview to
the class in another 10-15 minute presentation. The goal of this assignment is similarly to bring
another dimension of an author’s work into our discussions so that we might all more richly
understand that work.[2]
Deadlines
Paper deadlines are for you, for the smooth functioning of the class, and to help me keep a sane
grading schedule. If you require a paper extension for any reason, please inform me, at least one
week prior to the class meeting in which the assignment is due, of the alternative deadline you
intend to meet. For your own and others’ sakes, please make every effort to meet original
deadlines.
Presentation deadlines are vital to meet, since the entire class will be counting on your
contribution in order to fully engage with the day’s assigned reading material. If you determine
that you will be unable to make a presentation for which you have signed up, you are fully
responsible for locating another student(s) to take your place, and for ensuring that the interview
or applications material will be covered by your replacement.
Attendance & Discussion Requirements
Attendance at all seminar meetings is mandatory. The course is designed as an intensive reading
and discussion workshop; your active, well-prepared, participation is essential to its success.
Should circumstances require you to miss a meeting, however, you are responsible for ensuring
that your writing assignments are delivered to me on time, that you are informed of the material
missed in class, and that any obligations you have to the class or other students are fulfilled or
rearranged. Each absence will result in a 2% reduction in your overall grade. More than two
absences will result in your failing the class.
Whenever possible, I encourage you to work with one or more of your fellow students in
preparing to discuss assigned readings in class. An extra eye helps ensure you’ve identified the
salient points of a given text and often helps you to formulate excellent questions about the
reading.
If you have specific physical, psychiatric, or learning disabilities and require accommodations,
please let me know early in the semester so that your learning needs may be appropriately met.
You will need to provide documentation of your disability to the Disability Services Office in
Willard 322 (phone 303-492-8671).
Grade Distribution
Application
Interview
3 short essays @ 15% each OR
15%
20%
45%
1 final seminar paper
Participation
Total
20%
100%
Required Texts
Abbrev. in
Text
Schedule
Denise Riley, Am I That Name? University of Minnesota Press, 1989
Haraway
Donna Haraway, The Haraway Reader, Routledge, 2003 (“Haraway” in schedule).
M&K
Carole R. McCann and Seung-Kyung Kim, Feminist Theory Reader: Local and
Global Perspectives, Routledge, 2002 (“M&K” in schedule).
JKG
Judith Kegan Gardiner, Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory, Columbia
University Press, 2002 (“JKG” in schedule).
Conboy
Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina and Sarah Stranbury, eds. Writing on the Body:
Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press,
1997.
Fine
Michelle Fine, et. al., eds. Off White: Readings on Race, Power and Society. New
York: Routledge, 1997.
McClintock Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti and Ella Shohat, eds. Dangerous Liaisons.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Vol.1. New York:
Vintage Books, 1978.
Bornstein, Kate. Gender Outlaw. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
[R]
Additional readings on Norlin E-Reserve
Schedule of Readings
Part 1: Key Concepts
January 14: What is theory?
Introduction to the class and to one another.
January 21: Structuralism and Semiotics
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Denise Riley, Am I That Name?
Nader, Laura. "Up the Anthropologist—Perspectives Gained from Studying Up."
Anthopology for the Nineties: Introductory Readings. Ed. Johnnetta B. Cole. New York:
The Free Press, 1988. 470-84.
January 28: Deconstruction & Post-structuralism 1
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Derrida, Jacques. "Différancé (1968)." A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. Eds.
Antony Easthope and Kate McGowan. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. 10832. [R]
Derrida, Jacques. ""Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences."
Writing and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. [R]
Scott, Joan Wallach. "Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: Or, the Uses of
Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism." M&K: 378-90. [R]
February 4: Deconstruction & Post-structuralism 2
Professor Rosga away – class-led discussion
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Kristeva, Julia. "Stabat Mater." Feminist Social Thought. Ed. Diana Tietjens Meyers.
New York: Routledge, 1997. 302-219. [R]
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "French Feminism Revisited: Ethics and Politics."
Feminists Theorize the Political. Eds. Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott. New York:
Routledge, 1992. 54-85. [R]
Cixous, Hélene. "Sorties (1986)." A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. Eds. Antony
Easthope and Kate McGowan. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. 146-57. [R]
Spivak, Gayatri with Ellen Rooney. ""In a Word" Interview." The Second Wave: A
Reader in Feminist Theory. Ed. Linda Nicholson. New York and London: Routledge,
1997. 356-78. [R]
February 11: Deconstruction & Post-structuralism 3
Guest: Professor Donna Haraway
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Haraway, Donna. "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist
Feminism in the 1980s." Haraway: 7-46.
---. "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial
Perspective." M&K 391-403.
---. "Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium." Haraway: 223-50.
---. "Cyborgs, Coyotes, and Dogs: A Kinship of Feminist Figurations and There Are
Always More Things Going on Than You Thought! Methodologies as Thinking
Technologies (an Interview with Donna Haraway, Conducted in Two Parts by Nina
Lykke, Randi Markussen, and Finn Olesen)." Haraway: 321-42.

Claudia Castañeda. Figurations: Child, Bodies, Worlds. Durham and London: Duke
University Press, 2002: chapter 5 (142-171). [R]
February 18: Psychoanalysis
First Short Essay Due
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Irigaray, Luce. "This Sex Which Is Not One." The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist
Theory. Ed. Linda Nicholson. New York and London: Routledge, 1997. 323-29. [R]
---. "And the One Doesn't Stir without the Other." Feminist Social Thought. Ed. Diana
Tietjens Meyers. New York: Routledge, 1997. 320-30. [R]
Abel, Elizabeth. "Race, Class, and Psychoanalysis? Opening Questions." Feminist Social
Thought. Ed. Diana Tietjens Meyers. New York: Routledge, 1997. 180-98. [R]
Butler, Judith. "Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory, and Psychoanalytic Discourse."
Feminism/Postmodernism. Ed. Linda Nicholson. New York and London: Routledge,
1990. 324-40. [R]
Silverman, Kaja. "Masochism and Male Subjectivity." The Masculinity Studies Reader.
1992. Eds. Rachel Adams and David Savran. Malden: Blackwell, 2002. 21-40. 2004. [R]
Probyn, Elspeth. "Shaming Theory, Thinking Dis-Connections: Feminism and
Reconciliation." Transformations: Thinking through Feminism. Eds. Sara Ahmed, et al.
London: Routledge, 2000. 48-60. [R]
February 25: Subjectivity
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Alarcón, Norma. "The Theoretical Subject(s) of This Bridge Called My Back and AngloAmerican Feminism." M&K:404-14.
Anzaldúa, Gloria. "La Conciencia De La Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness."
M&K: 179-87.
Berlant, Lauren. "The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy and Politics."
Transformations: Thinking through Feminism. Eds. Sara Ahmed, et al. London:
Routledge, 2000. 33-47. [R]
Scott, Joan W. ""Experience"." Feminists Theorize the Political. Ed. Judith Butler & Joan
W. Scott. New York: Routledge, 1992. 22-40. [R]
Das, Veena. "The Act of Witnessing: Violence, Poisonous Knowledge, and Subjectivity."
Violence and Subjectivity. Eds. Veena Das, et al. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2000. 205-25. [R]
Cha, Theresa Hak Kyung. Dictee. New York: Tanam Press, 1982. (Excerpts TBA). [R]
Bordo, Susan. "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity." [Conboy] 90-110.
[March 1: Angela Davis speaking @ Mackey]
March 4: Discourse
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Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Vol.1. New York: Vintage
Books, 1978.
de Lauretis, Teresa. "The Technology of Gender." Technologies of Gender: Essays on
Theory, Film and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. 1-30. [R]
[March 9: Kate Bornstein speaking]
March 11: Power/Knowledge
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Hartsock, Nancy. "Foucault on Power: A Theory for Women?"
Feminism/Postmodernism. Ed. Linda Nicholson. New York and London: Routledge,
1990. 157-75. [R]
Hall, Stuart. "The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power." Modernity: An Introduction
to Modern Societies. Eds. Stuart Hall, et al. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1996.
184-228. [R]
Hill-Collins, Patricia. "The Politics of Black Feminist Thought." M&K: 318-33.
Kang, Laura Hyun Yi. "Conjuring "Comfort Women": Mediated Affiliations and
Disciplined Subjects in Korean/American Transnationality." Journal of Asian American
Studies 6.1 (2003): 25-55. [R]
Gore, Jennifer M. "Disciplining Bodies: On the Continuity of Power Relations in
Pedagogy." Foucault's Challenge: Discourse, Knowledge and Power in Education. Ed.
Thomas S. Popkewitz and Marie Brennan. New York: Teachers College Press, 1998.
231-54. [R]
Gagne, Patricia and Richard Tewsbury. "Knowledge and Power, Body and Self: An
Analysis of Knowledge Systems and the Transgendered Self." The Sociological
Quarterly 40.1 (1999): 59-83. [R]
March 18: Performance
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Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology
and Feminist Theory." M&K: 415-27.
West, Candace and Don H. Zimmerman. "Doing Gender." Seldom Seen, Rarely Heard:
Women's Place in Psychology. Ed. Janis S. Bohan. Boulder Colorado: Westview Press,
1992. 379-403. [R]
Bornstein, Kate. Gender Outlaw. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
Pfeil, Fred. "Getting up There with Tom: The Politics of American “Nice”." JKG: 11940.
March 25:
Spring break, no class
Part Two: Diffractions
What we need is to make a difference in material-semiotic apparatuses, to
diffract the rays of technoscience so that we get more promising interference
patterns on the recording films of our lives and bodies. Diffraction is an
optical metaphor for the effort to make a difference in the world.
…The point is to learn to remember that we might have been otherwise,
and might yet be, as a matter of embodied fact.
Donna Haraway
April 1: Masculinities
Second Short Essay Due
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Halberstam, Judith. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Men, Women, and Masculinity."
JKG: 344-68.
---. “Drag Kings,” Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. [R]
MacKinnon, Catherine A. "Rape: On Coercion and Consent." Writing on the Body:
Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory. Eds. Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina and Sarah
Stranbury. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. 42-58. [R]
Newton, Judith. "Masculinity Studies; the Longed-for Profeminist Movement for
Academic Men?" JKG: 176-92.
Wiegman, Robyn. "Unmaking: Men and Masculinity in Feminist Theory." JKG: 31-59.
Brod, Harry. "Studying Masculinities as Superordinate Studies." JKG: 161-75.
April 8: Heteronormativity
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Rubin, Gayle. "The Traffic in Women (Notes on the "Political Economy" of Sex)." The
Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory. Ed. Linda Nicholson. New York and
London: Routledge, 1997. 27-62. [R]
Butler, Judith, and Gayle Rubin. "Sexual Traffic (an Interview with Gayle Rubin by
Judith Butler)." differences 6.2-3 (1994): 62-99. [R]
Stone, Sandy. "The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttransexual Manifesto." [Conboy] 337-59.
Butler, Judith "Revisiting Bodies and Pleasures." Theory, Culture & Society 16.2
(1999): 11-21. [R]
April 15: “White”-ness
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hooks, bell. "Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination." Cultural Studies. Eds.
Cary Nelson, Paula A. Treichler and Lawrence Grossberg. New York: Routledge, 1992.
338-46. [R]
Billig, Michael. "Keeping the White Queen in Play." [Fine] 149-57.
Dyer, Richard. "The White Man's Muscles." The Masculinity Studies Reader. 1997. Eds.
Rachel Adams and David Savran. Keyworks in Cultural Studies; Vol. 5. Malden:
Blackwell, 2002. 262-73. 2004. [R]
Fine, Michelle. "Witnessing Whiteness." [Fine] 57-65.
Hurtado, Aida, and Abigail J. Stewart. "Through the Looking Glass: Implications of
Studying Whiteness for Feminist Methods." [Fine] 297-311.
Roman, Leslie G. "Denying (White) Racial Privilege: Redemption Discourses and the
Uses of Fantasy." [Fine] 270-82.
Winant, Howard. "Behind Blue Eyes: Whiteness and Contemporary U.S. Racial Politics."
[Fine] 40-53.
Haraway, Donna. "Race: Universal Donors in a Vampire Culture. It's All in the Family:
Biological Kinship Categories in the Twentieth-Century United States." Haraway: 25194.
April 22: State & Nation
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Mouffe, Chantal. "Feminism, Citizenship & Radical Democratic Politics." Feminists
Theorize the Political. Eds. Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott. New York: Routledge, 1992.
369-84. [R]
Williams, Patricia J. "On Being the Object of Property." [Conboy] 155-75.
Mani, Lata. "Multiple Mediations: Feminist Scholarship in the Age of Multinational
Reception." M&K: 364-77.
McClintock, Anne. ""No Longer in a Future Heaven": Gender, Race, and Nationalism."
[McClintock] 89-112.
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Brown, Wendy. “Finding the Man in the State.” States of Injury. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995: 166-196. [R]
Rosga, AnnJanette. "Policing the State." Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law
Inaugural Issue (1999): 145-71. [R]
April 29: Nation & Empire
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Carby, Hazel V. ""on the Threshold of Woman's Era": Lynching, Empire, and Sexuality
in Black Feminist Theory." [McClintock] 330-43.
Jordan, June. "Report from the Bahamas." M&K: 438-46.
Minh-ha, Trinh T. "Not You/Like You: Postcolonial Women and the Interlocking
Questions of Identity and Difference." [McClintock] 415-19.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. "“Under Western Eyes” Revisited: Feminist Solidarity
through Anticapitalist Struggles." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28.2
(2003): 499-535. [R]
Narayan, Uma. "The Project of Feminist Epistemology: Perspectives from a Nonwestern
Feminist." M&K: 308-17.
Stoler, Ann Laura. "Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexuality in
Twentieth-Century Colonial Cultures." [McClintock] 344-73.
May 2, 5pm
Third Short Essay or Final Seminar Paper Due
[1] One of the required texts, however, Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives,
contains a sampling of early canonical works in feminist theory as well as an excellent sampling
of second and third wave “classics.” This text was selected to provide a resource to students with
limited background in first-third wave precursors to, and foundations for, poststructuralist
feminist theories.
[2] An exception to the rule that anyone who is living, and whose work is assigned in this class,
may be interviewed is Donna Haraway. She will be visiting the class herself, so we may all pose
questions to her in person.