This course traces the development of feminist theories from the Woman Controversy of the early seventeenth century, through influential nineteenth- and twentieth-century debates in a variety of contexts (including Marxist/materialist, Freudian/psychoanalytic, and (post)structuralist theories), to the complexity of feminist discourses in the twenty-first century. Feminist Theories is required for the Women's Studies major and minor; majors and minors should complete this course before taking upper division Women's Studies courses.

Wed 16 Jan: Getting Started
In class: Introduction to course. What is theory? feminist theory? What's the connection to Women's Studies? Discussion of selection from Roland Barthes, Mythologies.

Wed 23 Jan: Feminist Theories and Women's Studies: Where are we now?
For class: Sign on to class listserv. Send the following email message to listserv@listserv.arizona.edu:

    subscribe ws305 Yourfirstsname Yourlastname

(where Yourfirstname is your first name, etc.) Make sure the subject line is blank and that you include no signature or other words or symbols in the email. I will approve your subscription when I pick up your email request. Make sure that you send the message from the email account you plan to use to post messages to the class list and read others' messages. It is the email account that subscribes to the list, not you.

Read

• Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Agatha Beins, [long] Introduction to Women's Studies for the Futures;
  
• Wendy Brown, "The Impossibility of Women's Studies" (or search the journal differences 9.3 [1997] through the UA Library, choosing the first option, General Reference Center Gold, and you'll be able to see the entire journal issue, which was dedicated to the topic Women's Studies on the Edge);
• Robyn Wiegman, "The Possibility of Women's Studies";
  
• and Sandra K. Soto, "Where in the Transnational World are U.S. Women of Color?."
  

• about the querelle des femmes (debates about women) or Woman Controversy in a lecture by Kari Boyd McBride, "Humanist Discourse Meets Popular Culture";
• a selection of contributions to the Woman Controversy in England;
  
• Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, La Respuesta
• in preparation for next week, read an overview of Mary Wollstonecraft's life and thought in the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism and a more in-depth discussion of her philosophy in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy;

• a summary of Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the whole of her Chapters 2, 3, and 7 from the full text (don't get bogged down in the details of the French Revolution or particular authors Wollstonecraft refers to; instead, read for her argument about the nature of women);
• about Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill;
• Taylor's "The Enfranchisement of Women";
  
• Chapters 1 and 2 of The Subjection of Women by Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill;
• writings of US slave women and a discussion of their lives in a selection from Women's America.
  

• about Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?"; another version;
• about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony;
  
• about the first women's rights conference at Seneca Falls, NY, and the Declaration of Sentiments produced by those who attended;
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Solitude of Self;
  
• about Emma Goldman and anarchism;
  
• two of Goldman's articles, "The Traffic in Women" and "Woman Suffrage";
• about Karl Marx;
  
• an Introduction to Marxism;
  
• two excerpts from Karl Marx's Wage Labour and Capital: "What Are Wages?" and "The Nature and Growth of Capital."

• Stanton's "Solitude of Self;
• either of Goldman's articles;
• Marx's theory (draw from the Introduction and the two chapters of Labour and Capital
  

• Mary Klage on Ferdinand de Saussure;
• Kari Boyd McBride on Structuralism, Poststructuralism, Deconstruction (Foucault)

• Mary Klage on the theories of Sigmund Freud;
• Klage on the work of Lacan, who combined psychoanalytic and poststructuralist theories.

• Chapters 1 and 2 of Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas.

• Gayle Rubin's "The Traffic in Women";
  
• Chapters 3 and 4 of Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas.

• Simone de Beauvoir, Introduction to The Second Sex;
  
• Shulamith Firestone,
• Betty Friedan, "The Problem That Has No Name";
• bell hooks, "Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory."
  

• Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience";
• Audre Lorde, "The Master's Tools";
• Donna Haraway, "The Cyborg Manifesto."
  

• Arlene Dallery, "The Politics of Writing the Body: Ecriture Féminine";
• Hélène Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa."
  

• Selections from Moraga and Anzaldúa, This Bridge Called My Back;
• Norma Alarcón, "The Theoretical Subjects of This Bridge Called My Back";
• Linda Alcoff, "Cultural Feminism versus Poststructuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory," in Signs 13.3 (1988): 405-36;
• Chela Sandoval, "U. S. Third World Feminism"
  

• Mary Hawkesworth, "Knowers, Knowing, Known";
• Audre Lorde, "The Master's Tools";
• Donna Haraway, "The Cyborg Manifesto."