DRAFT
GENDER THEORY AND FEMINIST THOUGHT:
ISSUES AND PERSPECTIVES
Professor Linda Fisher
Department of Gender Studies
MA Program
Fall 2004
4 Credits
Tuesday: 3:40-5:20
Thursday: 1:40-3:20
Course Description:
A study of key ideas and themes in gender theory and feminist thought. In examining
various issues in contemporary feminist discussions, we will consider both the conceptual and
theoretical background to these discussions and debates, as well as more contemporary
manifestations and developments. As such, the course will combine an overview of earlier and
classic feminist theories and philosophies, with a focus on current themes and issues in feminism
and gender theory. Representative topics include theories of oppression, sex and gender, identity
and self, theories of embodiment, knowledge and reason, and theories of difference and
otherness.
Course Requirements (Tentative):

Class Participation: 10%

Seminar Discussant: 10%

Mid-Term Paper: 20%

Final Oral Exam: 20%

Final Written Exam: 40%
Class Participation: Students are required to attend class regularly and to complete readings and
other assignments on time. You will be responsible for all required material and readings, and
will be expected to come to class prepared, with the assigned reading completed, and ready to
participate in class discussion.
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Seminar Discussant: Beginning with the first unit after the introductory material, for each class
one student will be responsible for preparing some questions about the topic and reading(s) for
that day, as a way of situating and leading the class discussion. At the end of that class, the
student will be required to hand in a short (1-2 page) written text consisting of her/his questions
and any other reflections on the material.
Mid-Term Paper: Students will submit a discussion paper (approx. 10 pages) during the
semester (date to be announced), consisting in a brief account and analysis of a given topic.
Final Exams: There will be two parts to the final exam, an oral exam and a written take-home
exam. The oral exam will focus on selected topics which students will be required to discuss; and
the written exam will consist in typed, essay-style answers, covering material from the entire
semester.
Course Topics and Required Readings:
Introduction:
- Lois Gould, “ ‘X’: A Fabulous Child’s Story,” from Feminist Philosophies.
- John Berger, selection from Ways of Seeing.
- Hélène Cixous, from “Sorties” in La jeune née.
- Toril Moi, “Feminist, Female, Feminine,” from Feminisms.
- John Stuart Mill, excerpt from “The Subjection of Women,” from Feminist Frameworks.
- Alison Jaggar, “Political Philosophies of Women’s Liberation,” from Feminism and Philosophy
(Vetterling-Braggin et. al.).
Theories of Oppression:
- Sandra Lee Bartky, “Toward a Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness,” from Feminism &
Philosophy.
- Marilyn Frye, “Oppression,” from The Politics of Reality.
- Shulamith Firestone, “Love and Women’s Oppression,” from Philosophy and Women.
- Monique Wittig, “One is Not Born a Woman,” from The Straight Mind and Other Essays.
- Jeffner Allen, “Motherhood: The Annihilation of Women,” from Women and Values.
- bell hooks, “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory,” and “Feminism: A Movement to End
Sexist Oppression,” from Feminist Theory: from margin to center.
- Iris Marion Young, “Five Faces of Oppression,” from Justice and the Politics of Difference.
Sex, Gender, and Sex/Gender:
- Claire Renzetti and Daniel Curran, “Gender Socialization,” from Feminist Philosophies.
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- Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,” from The
Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory.
- Moira Gatens, “A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction,” from Imaginary Bodies.
- Marilyn Friedman, “The Unholy Alliance of Sex and Gender,” from Metaphilosophy.
- Nancy Julia Chodorow, “Gender, Relation, and Difference in Psychoanalytic Perspective,” from
The Future of Difference.
- Nancy Tuana, “Re-Fusing Nature/Nurture,” from Hypatia Reborn.
- Judith Butler, “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire,” from Gender Trouble.
- Linda Nicholson, “Interpreting ‘Gender’,” from The Play of Reason.
- Genevieve Lloyd, “Woman as Other: Sex, Gender and Subjectivity,” from Australian Feminist
Studies.
Knowledge and Reason:
- Phyllis Rooney, “Recent Work in Feminist Discussions of Reason,” from American
Philosophical Quarterly.
- Evelyn Fox Keller, “Baconian Science: The Arts of Mastery and Obedience,” from Reflections
on Gender and Science.
- Genevieve Lloyd, “The Man of Reason,” from Women, Knowledge, and Reality, 2nd edition.
- Linda Fisher, “Is Reasoning Gendered?” in Argumentation and Rhetoric.
- Elizabeth Grosz, “Bodies and Knowledges: Feminism and the Crisis of Reason,” from Space,
Time, and Perversion.
Embodiment and Bodies:
- Susan Bordo, “Normalisation and Resistance in the Era of the Image,” from Feminisms.
- Sandra Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” from
Women and Values.
- Elizabeth Grosz, “Refiguring Bodies,” from Volatile Bodies.
- Iris Marion Young, “Breasted Experience: The Look and the Feeling,” from Throwing Like a
Girl.
- Susan Bordo, “Reading the Slender Body,” from Feminism & Philosophy.
- Judith Butler, “Selection from Bodies that Matter,” from Body and Flesh: A Philosophical
Reader.
Self & Identity:
- Sigmund Freud, “Femininity,” from Feminist Frameworks, 3rd Edition.
- Susan Hekman, “Identity Crises: Identity, Identity Politics, and Beyond,” from Feminism,
Identity and Difference.
- Rebecca Kukla, “Decentering Women,” from Metaphilosophy, vol. 27 (nos. 1&2): 1996.
- Jessica Benjamin, “The Shadow of the Other Subject: Intersubjectivity and Feminist Theory,”
from Shadow of the Other.
- Anthony Appiah, “‘But Would That Still Be Me?’ Notes on Gender, ‘Race,’ Ethnicity, as
Sources of ‘Identity,’” from The Journal of Philosophy.
- Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” from The Signs Reader.
- Trinh T. Minh-ha, “Not You/Like You: Postcolonial Women and the Interlocking Questions of
Identity and Difference,” from Dangerous Liaisons.
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- Rosi Braidotti, “Embodiment, Sexual Difference, and the Nomadic Subject,” from Hypatia.
Equality/Difference/Sexual Difference:
- Caroline Whitbeck, “Theories of Sex Difference,” from Women and Values.
- Chris Weedon, “The Question of Difference,” from Feminism, Theory and the Politics of
Difference.
- Susan J. Hekman, “The Problem of Difference,” from The Future of Differences.
- Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” from Sister
Outsider.
- Luce Irigaray, “Sexual Difference,” and “An Ethics of Sexual Difference,” from An Ethics of
Sexual Difference.
- Linda Fisher, “The Character of Sexual Difference,” from Wissen Macht Geschlecht/Knowledge
Power Gender.
- Alison M. Jaggar, “Sexual Difference and Sexual Equality,” from Theoretical Perspectives on
Sexual Difference.
- Catharine A. MacKinnon, “Difference and Dominance: On Sex Discrimination,” from
Feminism Unmodified.
- Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill, “Theorizing Difference from Multiracial
Feminism,” from Gender Through the Prism of Difference.
- Sneja Gunew, “Feminism and the politics of irreducible differences:
Multiculturalism/ethnicity/race,” from Feminism and the Politics of Difference.
Self/Other and Otherness:
- Simone de Beauvoir, “Introduction to The Second Sex,” from The Second Sex.
- Luce Irigaray, “The Other: Woman,” from I Love to You.
- Luce Irigaray, “The Question of the Other,” from Democracy Begins Between Two.
- Iris Marion Young, “Xenophobia and Abjection,” from Justice and the Politics of Difference.
Feminist Theorizing:
- Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” from The
Gender Reader, 2nd Edition.
- Jane Flax, “Women do Theory,” from Feminist Frameworks.
- Linda Alcoff, “Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist
Theory,” from Feminism & Philosophy.
- Diana Fuss, “The ‘Risk’ of Essence,” from Feminisms.
- María C. Lugones and Elizabeth V. Spelman, “Have We Got a Theory for You! Feminist
Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for ‘The Woman’s Voice’,” from Feminism &
Philosophy.
- Cheshire Calhoun, “Separating Lesbian Theory from Feminist Theory,” from Feminist Theory
Reader.
- Jane Flax, “Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory,” from
Feminism/Postmodernism.
- Beatrice Hanssen, “Whatever Happened to Feminist Theory?” from Feminist Consequences:
Theory for the New Century.