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PSCI 264W Global Feminisms
Brooke Ackerly, Fall 2008
Calhoun 303, Wednesday 1:10-3:40
Catalogue description: PSCI264W The study of feminisms from around the
world, of feminisms transnationally, and of global politics through feminist
lenses. Work on boundaries associated with sex, gender, sexuality, ethnicity,
geography, identity, and membership. Focus on the ways in which systems of
power – race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, imperialism, genocide, slavery,
and health – are interrelated. Fall [3] Ackerly.
AXLE INT
264W and 271 are Political Theory courses that count toward the major (currently appearing
on page 357 of the undergraduate catalogue).
Professor Brooke A. Ackerly
Office:
Office Hours:
Calhoun 316, 322-6231
Monday 9-10 (preference given to 103), Monday 1-2
(preference given to 264).
Coffee, Cookies and Conversation: Tuesday 3-4 (actually, bring your own coffee, I offer
tea, cocoa, and sometimes soda)
Email
Email of classmate 1:
Email of classmate 2:
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
If you have any questions about course logistics that have been answered in a class
that you missed or in the syllabus, you should address these to your classmates.
Email of Prof. Ackerly:
brooke.ackerly@vanderbilt.edu. All assignments and
correspondence with me should include your name
and email address. (I receive approximately 100 emails
per day, PLEASE put “PSCI 264” in the subject line.
Delete “re” or “fwd;” I get TONS of those. I use a
filter to put all of your messages in a particular folder
so that I can attend to them.)
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Key dates
There will be no extensions given without prior written request and consent. If your
coursework is not completed on time, you may receive an incomplete.
***
Post to the blog:
24 hours before class, 15 times
10 minute group presentation:
on your country, September 17
10 minute group presentation:
on women’s human rights in your country, October 8
Paper paragraph
Paragraph on what about your country is interesting
to you, whenever you figure that out
10 minute group presentation:
on human security, peace, nation-building in your
country, October 29
10 minute group presentation:
on women’s activism in your country, December 3
2 of 3 input papers due
November 17
Last input paper due
November 21
Abstract of rewritten paper
December 2
Rewritten final paper
December 9, 11:59 pm, under my office door
Paper due as an email attachment:
December 9, 11:59 pm
Extra credit glossary due:
December 9, 11:59 pm
Introduction
Global feminisms is a burgeoning field of scholarship struggling to catch up with a century
of feminist and women’s interests and activism. Global feminisms is an important area of
inquiry in feminist research in all disciplines where feminism has a presence.
Why feminisms? Global feminisms is the study of feminisms from around the world, of
feminisms transnationally, and of global politics through feminist lenses. Some feminisms
defy geography; some are hyperconscious of geopolitics. The field is dynamic and at its best
transdisciplinary. But it is a field with its own history of power. By referring to “feminisms”,
we mean to be committed to noting the potential for power to obfuscate or silence
difference.
Scholars in the field work on boundaries associated with sex, gender, sexuality, ethnicity,
geography, identity, and membership. They are attentive to silence and marginalization, to
citizenship politics (including migration, refugees, rights, and participation), to political
economy (formal and informal), to society and culture, and to the environment (understood
as the places where we live, work, play, and pray). Global feminist scholarship is making
important contributions to many fields of study and to many ways of living.
In this course we will focus on theoretical insights – some coming explicitly from women
thinking theoretically themselves, others coming from our theoretical reflections about the
empirical insights of feminists. More specifically, we will focus on the ways in which systems
of power – race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, imperialism, genocide, slavery, and health –
are interrelated. We will do our best to challenge our own epistemologies and to use
epistemology that is self-consciously reflective of its own incompleteness. (This is humility as
scholarship and, combined with attentiveness to silences and marginalization, the core of a
global feminist research ethic.) We will seek out ways of making ourselves know that which
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we cannot see or hear. We will challenge ourselves to find the empirical evidence for or
against the generalizability of certain observations. And we will challenge ourselves to know
the stories of people who are otherwise lost in statistics.
Assignments
Summary of requirements and weighting: Blog (30%), four group presentations (30%)
(lowest grade will be dropped), three input paper individually written thought pieces on a
your country of focus that you use to work through ideas for your paper (5%), one abstract
of your proposed paper (5%), one written and significantly rewritten final paper based on
the work of the class presentations up to 20 pages (30%). Extra credit: glossary assignment
(up to 5%). You are always responsible for all of the material through the date of the class
assignment.
Blog: http://globalfeminismspsci264.blogspot.com/
The blog is one opportunity to reflect on the readings, to stay up on the readings, to let me
know how you are doing on the readings, to explore the relationship between the ideas of
the readings and the insights you are gaining from your country research.
When to post. Post 15 times during the semester at least 24 hours before class. If you need to
miss class for illness, sports or any personal reason, submit an additional post for each
missed class; these may be submitted before or after the class.
What to post. Post questions, reading summary, thesis idea, answer, comment, modification
on someone else’s post, response to a comment on your post.
How will posts be graded?
Base points.
Question – 1 pt.
Reading summary – 2 pts.
Thesis idea – 5 pts.
Comment on a question or reading summary – 2 pts.
Comment on a thesis – 3pts.
Response to a comment on your thesis or question – 2-5 pts.
Value points
Restate – 0
Restate and offer evidence for the argument – 1 pt.
Offer evidence and argument for an opposing argument – 1 pt.
Link the topic of the course to a topic in the news or your country – 2 pts.
Link the topic of the course to a topic in the news or your country and provide links
to news coverage with one source – 3 pts.
Link the topic of the course to a topic in the news or your country and provide links
to news coverage in more than one source or to scholarly argument on the topic – 4
pts.
Take the polemical statement of a classmate or external commentator and offer an
argument – 5 pts.
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Class discussion: Blog postings do not substitute for class participation, but rather are
another way for you to engage with the course material.
Participating in discussion: Come to every class prepared. Listen to your classmates.
Some readings will seem “too” theoretical – use these to guide your inquiry into your
country.
Class presentations:*
STEP 1: Form a group. Your group should have 2-3 people in it.
STEP 2: Select a country.
In theory, your group can choose to focus on any country in the world. However, in the
end, I want to end up with a range of countries from various regions of the world. Having
groups focus on a diverse range of countries will facilitate our ability to use the variety of
information presented in class to explore patterns, differences and commonalities between
countries.
The only other thing to consider as you select a country is that sufficient information in
English must be available for you to complete all aspects of the assignment. Uganda and
Bangladesh are Vanderbilt University sites of summer international service learning and
service research. If you would like to participate in either of these programs, you should
choose one of those countries.
STEP 3: Presentation #1, September 17ps, country presentation.
Your group will introduce the class to your country with a brief demographic, political and
economic overview of your country, its colonial and post-colonial experience, its culture and
big themes or issues of the women’s movement in your country. How old is the women's
movement in your country? How is women's activism or feminism defined? What is the
relationship between the women's movement in your country and the west? (If you cannot
find answers to this yet, you will by your last presentation).
Each presentation will be no more than 10 minutes. You will be graded down if you can not
present the necessary information in the allotted time.
STEP 4: Presentation #s 2, 3, 4 on women’s human rights; human security, peace, and
nation-building; and women’s activism
At the end of each of the substantive sections of the course your group will make a 10
minute presentation to the class. This presentation will use the theoretical and analytical
tools of the course readings to guide analysis of the situation in your country and use your
knowledge of your country to challenge the theory and analysis of the course readings.
In the final presentation on women's activism in your country you have an opportunity to
talk about how groups have organized and around what issues they have done so. This is
the place for you to highlight issues other than the ones we have discussed in class. In
addition, you should think about to what extent and how women's organizations in your
country have participated in the international women's/feminist organizing we have
discussed.
*
This assignment and much of its description is inspired by Debra Liebowitz of Drew University.
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General Guidelines for Presentations
You will have 10 minutes (on a stop watch) each time your group presents to the class. This
means that your time will be tight and, as a result, your presentation will have to be wellorganized in order to accomplish the assigned task.
You may use AV equipment, please give ample time to arrange what you need (days before)
and then please make sure you give yourself time to test it BEFORE CLASS. Anything you
use in class should also be posted in your country team's folder on Blackboard [click on the
“Discussion Board” button in Blackboard and then in the “Country Presentations” folder].
If you plan to use the computer to aide in your presentation be sure and bring a copy of your
presentation on disk as well as saving a copy of it onto Blackboard before you come to class.
Finally, be sure to check and make sure that the file works. Individual technological
problems are not a legitimate excuse for failing to complete the assignment at the designated
time.
If you want to copy materials to hand out to the class, you need to get them to me by Friday
morning before the date of the presentation.
All presentation materials must include proper citations. This includes all information
presented in handouts or in Powerpoint. To save paper you can post your bibliography,
handouts, presentations, to the blog.
Grading Presentations
I will grade each of your groups' presentations and those grades will be combined to form
your final presentation grade. The day after your presentation you need to come to class
with a filled out version of the "Presentation Evaluation Participation Form." This form is
available in the “Course Information” section of Blackboard. The purpose of this form is
for you to evaluate each group member's contribution to that day's presentation. I am using
this form because I do not expect each of you to be equally involved in every aspect of each
group presentation. In fact, I expect that you will divide the work up such that one or two
of you will take primary responsibility for each presentation. However, I do expect each of
the members of your group to be at least involved in the planning stages for each of the
presentations. If you plan as a group, it is fine to divide up the subsequent work. Given that
I expect you to do more work on some presentations and less on others, it is not a problem
if you give yourself or someone else in your group a low number on the participation scale
for any particular presentation. However, if you were to receive low numbers on all of the
presentations and, for instance, the group's overall grade averaged out to a B+, you would
not get a B+ on the final grade. Instead, you would receive a grade commensurate with the
level of effort you put into the project.
3 input papers of 2-5 pages, posted to the blog
An input paper is a brief reflection piece on some of your research. You write this as you
finish one bit of research and move onto another. This paper will be written individually but
will build on the research that your group has done all semester.
Consider the boundaries associated with sex, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, geography, identity,
and membership as they may be observed in your country. Pay attention to silence and
marginalization, to citizenship politics (including migration, refugees, rights, and
participation), to political economy (formal and informal), to society and culture, and to the
environment (understood as the places where we live, work, play, and pray).
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Input papers enable you to build toward your final paper.
The purpose of the final paper is for you to analyze women's activism in your country in
light of the theoretical questions we read and discuss in class. The paper must present an
argument and should not simply be written as a descriptive report about the women's
movement in your country. A final paper which is simply descriptive will not receive a good
grade! However, the input papers may be primarily descriptive, ending with questions that
you intend to pursue and which might be the basis for your final paper.
The final paper should answer the following questions:
1) What contribution does women's activism in your country make to our theoretical
understandings of feminism? What is important about women's/feminist activism in your
country? What can we learn from women's/feminist activism in your country?
2) How is women's activism in your country similar to and different from the other countries
you have heard about over the course of the semester? What patterns do you see across the
countries and where and why does your country diverge or converge?
In writing the paper it is expected that you will use the information from your group
presentations. However, you many not simply copy any prose used in one of your
presentations--even if you wrote it for the presentation. Feel free to use the research and
information, but do not plagiarize from the presentations.
All information used in the paper must be properly cited. This is true whether it originated
from your research or was a reading assigned to the class. This syllabus models proper form.
Consult the Chicago Manual of Style for form and me or the writing studio if you have any
question about what needs to be cited. When in doubt, cite!
All papers must be submitted as attachments named “your-last-name paper date” (i.e., Smith
paper 12-7-06). **See separate handouts on paper writing that are posted on Blackboard.
Page lengths are exclusive of bibliography. Late papers are graded 1/3 off for every 24 hours
past the deadline. Once you have done your research, you need to offer an argument
informed by what you have found. The paper is short enough that your thesis should be
clear in the first paragraph. Allow time for three drafts. You do not need to hand in the
drafts, but you do need to hand in the input papers. Plan on the second draft being a major
rewrite of the first draft, with a new thesis and new evidence, and new ways of putting your
argument together. You could never have thought of these without writing that first draft.
The most common student comments in handing in their papers are
“This is the most important experience of my time at Vanderbilt” and
“I wish that I had started working on this sooner.”
But what I LOVE to hear most is “this is my best work.” I have designed the course and its
assignments with the purpose of enabling you to do your best work and to have to know
how you did it so that you can carry that skill forward into your next courses or career
experiences.
A Final Paper (see above):
A final paper will be a significant re-write of the first paper and development of the work in
your class presentation, your input papers, or will be a new original argument. Your final
paper is expected to be 15-20 pages.
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Extra credit glossary: You can get extra credit by creating a glossary of important words
that includes: word, citation of who used it, short definition, two sentences meaning of the
word or phrase in feminisms. You can generate your own terms from your individual
journals and I will hand out a list of terms collected from your journals and class discussions.
Feedback on papers: Comments are entered using the comment function and track
changes. If you cannot view these, please ask me to print the document for you. I spend a lot
of time on your papers so that you can improve your writing. In my comments returned to
you, text highlighted without comment contain some grammatical, word choice, or usage
error. Getting these right are important for enhancing your argument. You may email me
after the course to receive your comments on your final paper.
Countries in the readings: Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Guatemala, India, Iran, Iraq, United
States (Louisiana).
Office hours
Office hours: Welcome, do not wait in the hall. During office hours, I do not meet with
students one on one (unless only one student comes). Because learning political theory is not
a matter of memorization but rather of engagement with the material in the processes of
reading, discussing, and writing, my office hours will generally take the form of collaborative
work. Come to office hours with any questions you have (including any challenges you have
writing a thesis) and we will work collaboratively to resolve your issues. Please bring the
texts. Feel free to bring breakfast, snacks, or lunch for yourselves and plan to stay as long as
is beneficial.
Students need not come to office hours with a specific question but may come to learn from
one another. However, the more prepared you are, the more you will gain. All must come
with the expectation of working on each other’s questions.
If you need to discuss a matter unrelated to the course material or cannot come in my
scheduled office hours, you should make an appointment. Additional offices hours are
offered regularly as needed.
Cookies and Conversation: The purpose of office hours is to further encourage
discussion, to clear up questions from class, and to fill gaps in your knowledge and
experience that make it hard for you to enjoy the class. Since we can all learn from each
other’s questions, office hours are run as a small group discussion. If you need one on one
attention, you should make an appointment. I encourage you to talk about anything that we
cannot talk about during class. I supply cookies, tea (and sometimes soda). We do not need
to keep our discussions to the course material.
Special sessions: Early in the semester I will plan special topics for office hours based on
your expressed needs. These may include how to use academic databases available through
Acorn to do research; how to write an abstract. As other essential topics come to mind,
please let me know and we can have prepared office hours.
Appointments: If you need to talk about something that is not connected to the course
material, please make an appointment.
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Weekly Readings
Complete bibliographic information is available for each reading in the bibliography at the
end of the syllabus. Readings are in texts for purchase at the bookstore, available through
Vanderbilt electronic journals, or available on the course OAK site.
The course is cumulative. Many articles raise issues that make them suitable for discussion
not only on the day they are assigned, but also on future days. Please do your best to make
these connections in your journals, in class, and in class presentations
Class 1: What is global feminisms? August 27
Receive wheelchair exercise. If you miss this class, you need to contact your classmates to
connect with them in order to complete the assignment.
Class 2: Methodology, September 3
Wheelchair exercise. Everyone must blog on this exercise. Enter your own entry by August
28th and add a second posting by Sunday the 30th.
(Enloe 2004: chapters 1 & 2, 12)
(Hancock 2007; Jordan-Zachery 2007; White 2007)
Class 3: Shocking intersections, September 10
(Ross 2005)
(Kapsalis 2002)
(Madley 2005)
(Mamdani 2001: 3-14)
By the beginning of class 3 you should have your groups formed and your country agreed
upon.
Class 4: Methodology revisited, September 17
(Harding and Norberg 2005)
(Stern 2006)
(MacKinnon 2006: chapter 5)
(Sowards and Renegar 2006)
Presentations:
Country introductions
Class 5: Culture, September 24
(Narayan 1997: chapter 1)
(Song 2005)
(Rao 2003)
(Chua, Bhavnani, and Foran 2000)
Class 6: Women’s human rights, October 1
(Bunch 1990)
(Petchesky 2003: chapter 1)
(Nash 2002)
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(Henderson 2004)
(Milner, Poe, and Leblang 1999)
Class 7: Women’s human rights, October 8
Presentations:
Women’s human rights in your countries
Class 8: Human security & peace, October 15
(Bunch 2003)
(Enloe 2004: chapter 19)
(Muthien and Bunch 2004)
(Sjoberg 2006: chapter 8)
October 20 Fall Break
Class 9: Nation-building, October 22
(D'Costa 2006)
(Povey 2001)
(McClintock 1995: chapter 10)
(Karim 2004)
(MacKinnon 2006: chapter 13)
Class 10: Human security, peace, nation-building in your country, October 29
Presentations:
Human security, peace, nation-building in your country
Class 11: Sexuality, November 5
(Rothschild, Long, and Fried 2005)
(Petchesky 2006)
Class 12: economics and globalization, November 12
(Sen 1999)
(Enloe 2004: chapter 3)
(Bullard 2005: chapter 4; Wright 2005)
(Kevane and Gray 1999)
(Youngs 2005)
Classs 13: Transnational feminisms, November 19
(Moghadam 2005)
(Joachim 2003)
(Hawkesworth 2006: chapters 4 and 5)
Class 14: Women’s activism, December 3
Presentations:
Women’s activism in your country, including networking with transnational feminism.
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Bibliography
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Pollution. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books.
Bunch, Charlotte. 1990. "Women's Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Re-Vision of Human
Rights." Human Rights Quarterly 12, November: 486-498.
---. 2003. "Feminism, Peace, Human Rights and Human Security." Canadian Woman Studies
22, 2: 6-11.
Chua, Peter, Kum-Kum Bhavnani, and John Foran. 2000. "Women, Culture, Development:
A New Paradigm for Development Studies." Ethnic and Racial Studies 23, 5: 820-841.
D'costa, Bina. 2006. "Marginalized Identity: New Frontiers of Research for Ir?" In Feminist
Methodologies for International Relations, ed. Brooke Ackerly, Maria Stern and Jacqui
True. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 129-152.
Enloe, Cynthia H. 2004. The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire.
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Hancock, Ange-Marie. 2007. "Intersectionality as a Normative and Empirical Paradigm."
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Harding, Sandra, and Kathryn Norberg. 2005. "New Feminist Approached to Social Science
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Milner, Wesley T., Steven C. Poe, and David Leblang. 1999. "Security Rights, Subsistence
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Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution, ed. Robert D. Bullard. San
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