WGSS 12 Feminist and Queer Theories and Methods
How do feminist, queer, and racialized minoritarian subjects produce knowledge about inhospitable worlds, often against the limits of what is sayable, knowable, and thinkable? What makes a reading practice, text, or act feminist or queer? What makes critical knowledge critical? These are the questions that will guide our seminar on feminist ways of knowing. We work from two premises: knowledge is political, and theory helps us make sense of as well as transform the world. Each week is organized around a set of keywords and questions. The first half of the course builds a foundation in contemporary Western feminist and queer theory. We will explore gender, race, sexuality, difference, identity, subjectivity, bodies, temporality, and affect, among others. The second half of the course shifts to epistemology and methodology – what we know, how we know, and how we produce knowledge – as sites of contestation. Throughout the course, we will read texts engaging with ethnographic, visual, cultural, and historical analysis to become familiar with a variety of modes of knowledge production and interdisciplinary methods.