Introductory description

The module aims to introduce students to feminist literary theory in a trans-national context. The module will focalise students’ interests in feminist theory by introducing them to inter-disciplinary methods of reading and analysis. Literary texts will be read in combination with film, historical sources, sociological essays and theoretical pieces.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

1. Outline Syllabus
   Term I
   Week 1: Introduction to Transnational Feminisms: key concepts and debates
   Modernism, Colonialism and Gender
   Week 2: Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark
   Week 3: Sander L. Gilman, “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature”, in Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed. “Race”, Writing, and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
   Anne McClintock, “’Massa’ and Maids: Power and Desire in the Imperial Metropolis”, in Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (London: Routledge, 1995).

Week 4: Antoinette Burton, “The White Woman’s Burden: British Feminists and ‘the Indian Woman’, 1865-1914”, in Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel, eds. Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); pp. 137-157.

Inderpal Grewal, “The Culture of Travel and the Gendering of Colonial Modernity in Nineteenth-Century India”, Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996).

Woman/Nation
Week 5: Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World
WEEK 6: READING WEEK/NO CLASS
Week 7: Partha Chatterjee, “The Nation and its Women” and “Women and the Nation”, in The Nation and its Fragments(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993)

Kamala Visweswaran, “Betrayal: An Analysis in Three Acts”, in Fictions of Feminist Ethnography (Minneapolis: the University of Minnesota Press, 1994)

Rebecca Gould, “Engendering Critique: Postnational Feminism in Postcolonial Syria” WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly 42:3&4 (Fall/Winter 2014): 209-229
Film: The Home and the World
Migrating Selves
Week 8: Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy

Week 9: Chandra Mohanty, “Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts: Ideologies of Domination, Common Interests, and the Politics of Solidarity”, in Alexander and Mohanty, eds. Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies (1997): 3-29.
Maria Mies, “Colonization and Housewifization”, from Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale
Ngai PunNgai Pun, “Becoming Dagongmei (Working Girls): the Politics of Identity and Difference in Reform China",The China Journal, No. 42 (Jul., 1999), pp. 1-18.

Week 10: Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands

Term II:
Subalterneity, Solidarity and Experience
Week 1: Mahasweta Devi, “The Hunt”, “Draupadi” and “Douloti the Bountiful”

Week 2: Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Chrisman and Williams, eds. Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory

Joan Scott, “Experience” in Butler and Scott, eds. Feminists Theorise the Political (New York: Routledge, 1992): 22-40.

Week 3: Kamila Shamsie, Burnt Shadows

Unveiling the Subject
Week 4: Frantz Fanon, “Unveiling Algeria”, from Studies in a Dying Colonialism

Nawal el Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero (1983)
Sadia Abbas, "The Echo Chamber of Freedom: The Muslim Woman and the Pretext of Agency" boundary 2 40:1 (2013)
Film: The Battle of Algiers
Week 5: Assia Djebar, Fantasia

Week 6: READING WEEK: NO CLASS
The World, the Body, the Text
Week 7: Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions

Week 8: Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs”

Francoise Lionnet, “Feminisms and Universalisms: ‘Universal Rights’ and the Legal Debate Around the Practice of Female Excision in France”

New World Order?
Week 9: Monica Ali, Brick Lane

Week 10: Jacqui Alexander, “Whose New World Order? Teaching for Justice”, Pedagogies of Crossing (2005)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Acquire deep knowledge of key theoretical and literary concepts and of cultural and critical contexts within which to situate the set texts
• Deploy advanced analytical and critical skills through close reading/viewing of the set texts
• Explore methods of reading feminist theory and criticism
• Indicate awareness of various critical, analytical and creative approaches to the production of knowledge about course content and demonstrate a conceptual understanding that enables the development and sustaining of a critical argument
• Exhibit an effective command of written English together with a wide-ranging and accurate vocabulary
• Show command of the protocols of textual analysis and critical argument
• Generate original research questions

Subject specific skills

Third year year students will gain a global perspective on feminist theory. They will be introduced to inter-disciplinary methods of reading and analysis. They will gain familiarity with foundational and advanced concepts in feminist theory and learn to use them in interpretation. They will also learn to devise their own research topics for essay assignments and prepare a bibliography.

Transferable skills

Third year year students will gain a global perspective on feminist theory. They will be introduced to inter-disciplinary methods of reading and analysis. They will gain familiarity with foundational and advanced concepts in feminist theory and learn to use them in interpretation. They will also learn to devise their own research topics for essay assignments and prepare a bibliography.