Feminist Futures (Spring 2009)

Co-Organized with Gender and Women's Studies by the Unit for Criticism's 2008-9 Nicholson Fellows, Ruth Nicole Brown (Educational Policy Studies/Gender and Women's Studies); J. B. Capino (English/Cinema Studies); Dara Goldman (Spanish/Center for Global Studies/Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Sarah Projansky (Institute of Communications Research/Cinema Studies/Gender & Women's Studies), as well as Lauren M. E. Goodlad (Interim Director, Unit for Criticism/English)

*All meetings are on Monday nights from 8:00-10:00pm at the IPRH Building, 805 W. Pennsylvania, Urbana

*All readings will be on electronic reserves, listed under UNIT 2009, Goodlad.


February 16: Introduction

Selections from J.K. Gibson-Graham. A Post-Capitalist Politics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 2006.

Lead Discussant: Lauren M. E. Goodlad, English/Unit for Criticism

Ella Shohat. "Area Studies, Gender Studies, and the Cartographies of Knowledge." Social Text 20.3 (Fall 2002): 67-78.

Lead Discussant: Sarah Projansky, Institute of Communications Research/Cinema Studies/Gender & Women's Studies

Linda M. Zerilli. "Towards a Feminist Theory of Judgment." Signs 34.2 (Winter 2009): 295-317.

Lead Discussant: Bruce Rosenstock, Religion/Program in Jewish Culture and Society

March 16

Mary L Gray. "'Queer Nation is Dead/Long Live Queer Nation': The Politics and Poetics of Social Movement and Media Representation." Critical Studies in Media Communication, forthcoming.

Lead Discussant: Siobhan Somerville, English/Gender & Women's Studies

Nadine Naber. "Arab American Femininities: Beyond Arab Virgin/American(ized) Whore." Feminist Studies 32. 1 (Spring 2006): 87-111.

Lead Discussant: Junaid Rana, Asian American Studies/Anthropology

Cathy J. Cohen. "Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics." Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 1.1 (2004): 27-45.

Lead Discussant: Ruth Nicole Brown, Gender & Women's Studies/Educational Policy Studies

April 13

Linda Martín Alcoff. Selections from Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006.

Chapter 6 "The Metaphysics of Sex and Gender."

Chapter 2 "The Political Critique" (optional)

Chapter 3 "The Philosophical Critique" (optional)

Lead Discussants: Lauren M. E. Goodlad, English/Unit for Criticism and Sarah Projansky, Institute of Communications Research/Cinema Studies/Gender & Women's Studies

Diane Negra. "'Quality Postfeminism:?' Sex and the Single Girl on HBO." Genders 39 (2004): 23 paragraphs.

-----. Selections from What a Girl Wants?: Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism. London: Routledge, 2008.

Chapter 1 "Introduction." 1-14

Chapter 2 "Postfeminism, Family Values and the Social Fantasy of the Hometown." 14-47.

Lead Discussant: Dara Goldman, Spanish/Center for Global Studies/Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies

May 4

Ranjana Khanna. "Aslyum." Texas International Law Journal 41:3 (Summer 2006): 471-490.

-----. "Signatures of the Impossible." Duke Journal of Gender, Law and Policy 11 (Spring 2004): 69-91.

Lead Discussant: J. B Capino, English/Cinema Studies

Patricia J. Williams. "On Being the Object of Property." Signs 14.1 (Autumn, 1988): 5.

-----. Selections from Seeing a Color-Blind Future: the Paradox of Race, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1998.

"Chapter 1: The Emperor's New Clothes." pp. 3-16.

"Chapter 2: The Pantomime of Race." pp. 17-30.

-----. "Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. F.C.C.: Regrouping in Singular Times." Harvard Law Review 104.2 (1990): 542-44.

Lead Discussant: TBA