Julie Gaillard, gaillard@illinois.edu
Tue, 3:00 - 4:50 PM
This course explores various aspects of the lives of women and their empowerment in France after 1950 through the lens of their representation in literature, cinema, and other forms of cultural production. The term “French feminism” is often associated with a series of feminist theoreticians who, in the wake of the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes, drew on psychonalysis to denounce phallogocentrism and foreground a feminine difference. While also addressing this common understanding and its historical context, this course centers the vitality and diversity of French feminisms in the 21st century. Course participants will learn to situate a series of key feminist claims critically with respect to various trends of feminist thought. We will discuss essays, literature, and films engaging engaging topics and/or approaches such as reproductive rights, reproductive work, gender-based and sexual violence, afrofeminism and movements for intersectional justice, ecofeminism, or transfeminist deconstructions of hetero