26014 - Feminist Theory: Between Difference and Diversity - Theories of Gender Studies and Feminist Criticism

Learning outcomes

Students acquire knowledge of gender studies (theories and methodologies) in diverse cultural contexts with specific reference to the analyses of the notions of identity and otherness, difference and diversity. The course intends to favour the capability to deconstruct these notions in diverse texts (theoretical, literary, visual).

Course contents

Failing/Refusing Identification: An Intersectional Perspective Across Feminist and Postcolonial Speculative Fiction

“I do not want to dismiss the negative tout court. Indeed, I find some theories of the negative to be important resources”. These words by José Esteban Muñoz will guide us along the course, together with Jack Halberstam’s statement: “Under certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world”.

Focusing on speculative in fiction in a dialogue with feminist, black feminist, transfeminist, postcolonial, decolonial, cyberfeminist and queer theories, along the course we will meet “monsters”, “unhappy queers”, “puppets”, “angry black women”, “ghosts”, “Ais”, “sexbots”, “glitches”.

The aim is to explore the potential for alliances across cultural boundaries, identity categories, but also beyond the species. These alliances become vehicles for imagining alternative, “not-yet”, utopian futures. At the core there will be the plural, minor, ambiguous strategies and forms of resistance developed by marginalized subjectivities, who often reject normative emotional expectations, embracing what is conventionally labelled as negative. Far from being disempowering, these affective “dis-orientations” are radical tools to deconstruct, expose, and finally disrupt the dominant norms from within, turning into powerful, as much as fragile, instruments of transformation.

“We must stay unhappy with this world” (Sara Ahmed).

 

Readings/Bibliography

Novels

Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop (1967)

Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)

Bernardine Evaristo, Soul Tourists (2005)

Janette Winterson, Frankissstein: A Love Story (2019)

Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (2016)

Critical Theories

All the Critical Theories are available on the Virtuale page of the course

Ahmed, Sara, “Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology”, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 12, n. 4, 2006, pp. 543-574.

Ahmed, Sara, “Unhappy Queer”, in The Promise of Happiness, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2010 pp. 88-120.

Ahmed, Sara, “Feminist Killjoys (And Other Willful Subjects)”, The Scholar and Feminist Online, vol. 8, n. 3, 2010.

Anzaldúa, Gloria, “La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness”, in Borderlands. La frontera. The New Mestiza, San Francisco, Spinsters and Aunt Lute Book Company, 1987, pp. 77-91.

Braidotti, Rosi “Difference, Diversity, and Nomadic Subjectivity” online document, http://women.ped.kun.nl, 2000 (If the link does not work the file is available on Virtuale)

Butler, Judith, “Introduction”, in Bodies that Matter. On the Discoursive Limits of “Sex” [ed. or. 1993], New York and London, Routledge, 2011, pp. xi-xxx.

El-Tayeb, Fatima, “Introduction: Theorizing Urban Minority Communities in Postnational Europe”, in European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe, Minneapolis and London, University of Minnesota Press, 2011, pp. xii-xlvi.

Halberstam, Jack, “Introduction: Low Theory”, The Queer Art of Failure, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2011, pp. 1-25.

Haraway, Donna J, “A Cyborg Manifesto. Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in The Late Twentieth Century” [ed. or. 1984], in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature, New York and London, Routledge, 1991, pp. 149-181.

hooks, bell, “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness”, Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, n. 36, 1989, pp. 15-23.

Irigaray, Luce, “Divine Women" [ed. or. “Femmes divines” 1985], in Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall (eds.), Women, Knowledge, and Reality. Explorations in Feminist Philosophy, New York, Routledge, 1996, pp. 471-484.

Irigaray, Luce, “When our Lips Speak Together”, Signs, vol 6, n. 1, 1980, pp. 69-79.

Lorde, Audre, “The Uses of the Erotic. The Erotic as Power”, in Sister Outsider. Essays and Speeches, Berkeley, The Crossing Press, 1984, pp. 53-59.

Lugones, María, “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System”, Hypatia, vol. 22, n. 1, 2007, pp. 186-209.

Lugones, María, "Toward a Decolonial Feminism", Hypatia, Vol. 25, No. 4, 2010, pp. 742-759.

Monticelli, Rita, “‘I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess’: Genealogies, Re-Visions of the Body, and Feminist Figurations”, in L.M. Crisafulli and G. Golinelli (eds.), Women’s Voices and Genealogies in Literary Studies in English, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019, pp. 41 – 56.

Muñoz, José Esteban, “Introduction: Performing Disidentifications” in Disidentifications. Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, Minneapolis and London, University of Minnesota Press, 1999, pp. 1-34.

Muñoz, José Esteban, “Introduction: Feeling Utopia” in Cruising Utopia. The Then and There of Queer Futurity, New York and London, 2009, pp. 1-18.

Preciado, Paul B., Dysphoria mundi [2022], Roma, Fandango Libri, 2023, pp. 11-65 (Ch. “Dysphoria mon amour”; “Ipotesi rivoluzione”).

Russell, Legacy, Glitch Feminism. A Manifesto, London and New York, Verso, 2020 (excerpts)

Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book”, in Diacritics. A Review of Contemporary Criticism, vol. 17, n. 2, 1987, pp. 65-81.

Spivak, Gayatri C., “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: a Reader, edited by Laura Chrisman and Patrick Williams, New York, Sidney, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993, pp. 66-111.

Stryker, Susan, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix. Performing Transgender Rage”, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Vol. 1, 1994, pp. 237-254.

Bibliography will be provided also during the lessons (and then published in Virtuale). Students are requested to check the online program also during the course for further notice and information.

A tentative calendar with the dates and the topics will be published on Virtuale after the first lessons.

There is no different programme for students who cannot attend lessons, but they are kindly asked to contact the lecturer via e-mail before the exam.

B.A students are not admitted.

Exchange students are requested to contact the lecturer before enrolling in the course.

Students with SLD or temporary or permanent disabilities. It is suggested that they get in touch as soon as possible with the relevant University office (https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en) and with the lecturer in order to seek together the most effective strategies for following the lessons and/or preparing for the examination.

Teaching methods

Lessons and discussions. Language: English

Assessment methods

The final exam will be an oral exam in presence: a discussion (about 20-30 mins.) on the topics dealt with during the course and the texts chosen by the candidate from the reading list.

More specifically, for the final exam:

Students of Feminist Theory between Difference and Diversity (10 CFU) are requested to study and analyse:

· 4 novels;

· about 250 pages to be chosen from the Reading List of Critical Theories.

Students of English Literature / Literature of English-speaking Countries 2 (LM) (9 CFU) are requested to study and analyse:

· 4 novels;

· about 200/220 pages to be chosen from the Reading List of Critical Theories.

Students of Gender Studies (6 CFU) are requested to study and analyse:

· 3 novels;

· about 150 pages to be chosen from the Reading List of Critical Theories.

The modalities of the oral exam will be explained in class during the first lessons.

Active participation in class discussions: 20%.

By participation in class we mean the ability of the student to enter the debates, contributing with questions and/or elaborations of the topics proposed by the lecturer. This participation does not aim at testing students' specific preparation in the field, rather, to favor their ability to take part in discussions and their capability to discuss in group.

Final oral exams: 80%.

The final oral exam will test the student's critical capability, their knowledge of the methodologies employed, their ability to combine theories with the analyses of the case studies chosen. The close reading of the texts aims at showing the student's critical ability, their knowledge not only of the texts but also of their context of creation together with the cultural politics that inform them. Students are requested to use an appropriate language, to be able to articulate their thought in English (high level) and to have an accurate knowledge of the bibliography chosen for the exam.

Grades:

Excellent: Students' high capability to elaborate on the exiting debates on the topics chosen, originality of thought and excellent knowledge of the theories and of the texts chosen for the exam, their ability to read them within an intersectional perspective, using also the theories employed during the course and showing comprehension of the bibliography chosen, accurate and appropriate language.

Very good level: Students' capability to elaborate on the exiting debates on the topics chosen, originality of thought and very good knowledge of the theories and of the texts chosen for the exam, their ability to read them within an intersectional perspective, using also the theories employed during the course and showing comprehension of the bibliography chosen, and accurate and appropriate language.

Good level: Students' capability to elaborate on the exiting debates on the topics chosen, knowledge of the theories and of the texts chosen for the exam, using also the theories employed during the course and showing comprehension of the bibliography chosen, and appropriate language.

Pass: Mnemonic and superficial knowledge and understanding of the material, a sufficient analytical ability, non-satisfactory use of appropriate language.

Fail: Student's lack of knowledge of the theories employed during the course, incapability to critical reading of the novels, inappropriate and inaccurate language.

Teaching tools

Slides; Videos.

Office hours

See the website of Francesco Cattani