War: Critical Perspectives
988:270
Fall 2009
Thursday 10:55-12:15
Hickman 101
Professor Ethel Brooks
Ruth Dill Johnson Crockett, 212
Office Hours: Mondays 2-3:30 and by appointment
E-mail: <ebrooks@rci.rutgers.edu>
Description
What are the lived experiences, cultures and historical contexts of war? This course will
allow students to grasp the complex national, racial, sexual and gendered mappings of war and to
grapple with reconfigurations of gendered, raced, classed, sexual and national subjectivities linked
to war. The global focus of this course will cover topics ranging from genocide and gang
membership to transnational labor organizing, where nation-building, urban gender practices, labor
regimes and production practices are often dependent on legacies of war, terror and state terror,
informing everything from shopfloor relations to economic development strategies, labor migration
and neighborhood geographies to anti-labor management practices in export-oriented factory
production. We will compare post-September 11 migration trajectories of South Asians to earlier
trajectories of Central Americans during the civil war, genocide and state terror of the 1980s.
Traditional academic investigations of war seldom link armed conflict to practices of
racialization or gendering. Construed as “organized violence between groups of people” (Osterud
2004, 1028), war has been studied in manifold and complex ways—but ways that offer little scope
for concerns with race, gender, or sexuality. Engaging mainstream studies of war, feminist
scholars have challenged constructions of war as gender-neutral or as “men’s business.”
Illuminating the complex interplay of gender, race, nation, culture, and religion in the context of two
dozen armed struggles, this course explores the raced-gendered logics, practices, and effects of
war. Highlighting women’s agency even under conditions of dire constraint, the course challenges
traditional stereotypes of women as perennial victims, perpetual peace makers, or embodiments of
nation that men seek to protect and defend. We will examine how women negotiate their survival,
enact resistance to oppressive and supposedly liberating forces, mobilize to protest war and
counter its effects, participate in redefining war, and appropriate war discourses to advance their
own political agendas. Incorporating cutting-edge research, the course will offer new ways of
understanding war. By shifting the analytic frame from a focus on war as an instrument of
statecraft and a means of destruction to war as a mode of production and reproduction, it will
consider how nations are produced, contested, reproduced and transformed through war in ways
that involve racialization and gendering. Indeed, it will demonstrate that practices of racing and
gendering are integral both to statecraft and to insurrection
Discussion sections
Discussion sections are a central part of this course, and you should have finished the readings for
the week before coming to discussion section, since it is in discussion that you will have the
chance to discuss, ask questions and engage both the lectures and the readings. Attendance and
participation in both discussion sections and lectures will be a significant part of your grade (see
below for grading policies) and are mandatory.
Guest Lectures and Co-curricular Programs
This course incorporates guest lectures with outstanding faculty from Rutgers and other
universities; we also have the unique opportunity to attend, participate in and learn from a range of
co-curricular activities. This will be a terrific opportunity to engage with first-rate scholars and topics
currently under debate amongst academics, policymakers and activists. With both the guest
lecturers and the co-curricular activities, I encourage students to have read carefully and to bring
questions to the guest lectures on the days they are scheduled to speak.
Requirements
You will be expected to attend lecture and discussion section, read carefully and participate
actively in the weekly discussion. At the beginning of each discussion section, a group of students
will be responsible for summarizing the readings and asking questions. You will sign up for your
presentation at the beginning of the semester in your section. Attendance, participation and
presentations will count for 40% of your grade; attendance will be taken at the beginning of every
class meeting. Please be advised that whenever you do not understand part of the reading or the
lecture, you should be sure to ask questions in class. This is essential, since you will be
responsible in your written work for information not necessarily covered in the lectures that appears
in the readings. Class participation is required as part of your grade; part of participation will
include your treating your classmates, the professor, and the course materials with respect, and
maintaining a serious, professional attitude at all times.
Other requirements include two short papers on topics that will distributed in class, as well as a
longer paper and/or project that will be due at the end of the semester. Each short paper will be
worth 15% of your grade, with the final paper/project worth 30% of your final grade. There will be
no extensions granted for the assignments in this course. Please note that you should incorporate
the readings, lectures and films from the class and the co-curricular activities in your written work.
If you miss a particular lecture or an in-class film screening, you will be responsible for the material
covered.
Academic Integrity
I will not tolerate cheating or plagiarism. You are expected to understand and follow the Rutgers
Policy on Academic Integrity, which can be found online at:
http://teachx.rutgers.edu/integrity/policy.html.
Readings
The following books are available for purchase at the Douglass Co-op. Those with call numbers
listed in brackets are on reserve at Douglass Library:
The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection (Cambridge: Semiotext(e), 2009). [not
available in the library]
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Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of
Terror (New York: Three Leaves, 2005). [E840.M346]
Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost (New York: Vintage, 2001). [PR9199.3.O5A84]
Arundhati Roy, War Talk (Boston, MA: South End Press, 2003). [D860.R69]
The articles are taken from the journal Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, which is
available electronically through the Rutgers Libraries Article Database. Signs is available
electronically through the Rutgers University Libraries database, where you access it by searching
Iris for Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society after logging into the libraries system.
In addition, your discussion section leader and the guest lecturers may want to assign readings in
addition to those listed on the syllabus; we will announce and, if necessary, distribute these
readings in class well before the assigned date.
Class Schedule
Critical Approaches to Understanding War
September 3: Introduction
Civil War and Everyday Terror
September 10: Michael Ondaatje, “Author’s Note” – “The Grove of Ascetics”
September 17: Michael Ondaatje, “A Brother” – “Ananda”
September 24: Film Screening of The Battle of Algiers
Readings: Michael Ondaatje, “The Mouse” – “Distance”
Gendering Diasporas and Inventing Traditions
October 1:
Rosemary Marangoly George, Extra/ordinary Violence: National Literatures,
Diasporic Aesthetics, and the Politics of Gender in South Asian Partition Literature,
Signs 33(1), Fall 2007
Cihan Ahmetbeyzade, Negotiating Silences in the So-called Low-Intensity War:
The Making of Kurdish Diaspora in Istanbul, Signs 33(1), Fall 2007
Cawo Mohamed Abdi, Reimagining Somali Women: Collusion of Civil War and the
Religious Right, Signs 33(1), Fall 2007
*****First short paper due today, October 1: 3-5 pages*****
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Participation in Violent Conflict
October 8:
Myriam Denov and Christine Gervais, Negotiating (In)Security: Agency,
Resistance, and Resourcefulness among Girls Formerly Associated with Sierra
Leone’s Revolutionary United Front, Signs 32(4), Summer 2007
Aaronette White, All the Men are Fighting for Freedom, All the Women are
Mourning Their Men, But Some of Us Carried Guns: A Raced-Gendered Analysis
of Fanon’s Psychological Perspectives on War, Signs 32(4), Summer 2007
October 15:
Film Screening of The Judge and the General
Readings:
Meg Samuelson, The Disfigured Body of the Female Guerrilla: (De)Militarization,
Sexual Violence, and Redomestication in Zoë Wicomb’s David’s Story, Signs
32(4), Summer 2007
Dorit Naaman, Brides of Palestine/Angels of Death: Media, Gender, and
Performance in the Case of the Palestinian Female Suicide Bombers, Signs 32(4),
Summer 2007
Carrie Hamilton, Political Violence and Body Language in Life Stories of Women
ETA Activists, Signs 32(4), Summer 2007
War Talk
October 22:
Arundhati Roy, “Come September,” “The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky” and
“Confronting Empire”.
October 29:
Arundhati Roy, “War Talk,” “Ahimsa” and “Democracy.”
War and Terror: Raced-Gendered Logics and Effects
November 5:
Farhat Haq, Militarism and Motherhood: The Women of Lashkar-i-Tayyabia in
Pakistan, Signs 32(4), Summer 2007
Orna Sasson-Levy and Sarit Amram-Katz, Gender Integration in Israeli Officer
Training: Degendering and Regendering the Military, Signs 33(1), Fall 2007
*****Second short paper due today, November 5: 3-5 pages*****
November 12: Bronwyn Winter, Pre-emptive Fridge Magnets and Other Weapons of Masculinist
Destruction: The Rhetoric and Reality of “Safeguarding Australia,” Signs 33(1),
Fall 2007
Liz Philipose, The Politics of Pain and the Uses of Torture, Signs 32(4), Summer
2007
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Zakia Salime, The War on Terrorism: Modalities of Appropriation and Subversion
by Moroccan Women, Signs 33(1), Fall 2007
Targeting Bodies
November 19: Mahmood Mamdani, entire book.
Feminist Interventions
December 3: Hagar Kottef and Merav Amir, (En)Gendering Checkpoints: Checkpoint Watch and
the Repercussions of Intervention, Signs 32(4), Summer 2007
Pam Spees, Women’s Advocacy in the Creation of the International Criminal
Court: Changing the Landscapes of Justice and Power, Signs 28(4), Summer
2003
Felicity Hill, Mikele Aboitiz, and Sara Poehlman-Doumbouya, Nongovernmental
Organizations’ Role in the Buildup and Implementation of Security Council
Resolution 1325, Signs 28(4), Summer 2003
Vanessa A. Farr, Notes Toward a Gendered Understanding of Mixed-Population
Movement and Security Sector Reform after Conflict, Signs 32(3), Spring 2007
The Invisible Collective
December 10: The Invisible Committee, entire book.
*****Final paper due today: 5-7 pages*****
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