Whats Queer about Feminist Theory?

Professor Jennifer Purvis

Fall 2013


WS 525: Feminist Theory: Major Texts/EN 500-004 Special Topics (3 credit hours):
Wednesdays, 2:00-4:30, ten Hoor 119

My Office: 103 Manly Hall
Office Telephone: 348-3315
E-mail: jpurvis@ua.edu
Office hours: T/Th 3:30-5:00 and by appointment
Course Description: Part I in a Womens Studies course sequence, this course establishes a
baseline of knowledge of feminist theory in order to prepare students for the study of
contemporary feminist theory in WS 530. Students may enroll in either course, or both. This
course does not serve as a prerequisite to Part II in the sequence. Whats Queer about
Feminist Theory? takes as its starting point the premise that feminist theory is always-already
queer and embarks on analyses of critical debates within feminist theory concerning sex,
gender, sexuality, and the body. Feminist theorists offer intellectual and political challenges to
dominant narratives of subjectivity, including the ordering practices of kinship, which have
played a central role in shaping discourses, institutions, politics, identifications, and selfhood.
Students will consider the persistence of traditional identities, roles, and beliefs in spite of
internal conflicts and academic and activist critiques and examine major texts that advance
feminist and queer resistance and demonstrate the bodys historical construction. With an
emphasis on issues of sex, gender, sexuality, and embodiment, key points of analysis include:
the functioning of major binaries of self/other, the workings of sexual regulation, the power of the
feminine, orientations and disorientations, identifications and disidentifications, the usefulness
of the closet, and the contours of queer politics. We will examine major articulations and
rearticulations of gender, subjectivity, power, and embodiment in the spaces where Feminist
Theory meets Queer Theory, and beyond. (Prerequisites: None)
Course Objectives: Students will gain an understanding of the function of queer as a locus of
contention and how various thinkers have articulated intellectual and political challenges to
dominant narratives of sex, gender, sexuality, embodiment, and kinship, which then upset, or
trouble, discourses, institutions, politics, and subjectivities. Students will become conversant
with an assortment of theories which bear upon current debate with particular emphasis on how
feminist and queer researchers look to resistant and unconventional practices (critical, textual,
political, and otherwise) as ways of subverting normative identities and conventional narratives,
rigid cultural logics, and unjust social, governmental, and corporate structures. Students will
emerge with a more complex understanding of sexuality, gendered difference, and embodied
existence, as well as an array of feminist strategies and agendas.

Course Outcomes: Students will become familiar with the debates surrounding the queer
dimensions of feminist theory and use this knowledge to conduct their own independent
research on a particular topic or set of topics within the general framework of the course. This
research will locate and expand upon insights crucial to the development of politically
efficacious feminist theory.


Required Texts: (at the Supply Store, Ferguson Center):
Mimi Marinucci, Feminism is Queer
GLQ Special Issue: Rethinking Sex (GLQ 17:1 2011)
Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble
Jos Esteban Muoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics
Eve Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet
Feminist Theory and the Body (edited by Price and Shildrick)
GLQ Special Issue: Queer Bonds (GLQ 17:2-3 2011)

Course Requirements:

1.) Attendance: This class meets weekly and is discussion-based, so your attendance is
expected at each meeting. If you are absent, you miss a great deal of information and class
discussion. The general rule is to be in attendance, without exception, every week, barring
extreme circumstances, such as illness or emergency. In cases of unavoidable conflict, you are
permitted to excuse yourself from up to two class sessions. Beyond this, your final grade will be
reduced by one half of a letter grade for every class you miss.

2.) Participation: In this course, your careful reading and thorough consideration of assigned
texts is required, as is your frequent and substantial participation in class discussion. It is not
sufficient to merely read the materials on the reading schedule and attend class. You must
engage with the substance of the texts and regularly share your insights with other members of
the class during class discussion. Because this is a seminar class, your active participation is
crucialboth in terms of your own success and that of the course. Thus, participation weighs
heavily in the determination of your final grade. Your standing assignment for each class is to
formulate a short reading response (one developed paragraph) in preparation for class
discussion. In your paragraph, you will draw out a few main points, raise questions, and
respond, in brief, to the critical substance of the text(s) we will discuss in class. This standing
assignment is your opportunity to guide discussion by providing leading questions and remarks
that allow us to explore the interests and perspectives that struck you as most important. Your
objective for this standing assignment is not only to demonstrate your engagement with course
materials but to stimulate class discussion for the benefit of the entire class. Therefore, you are
expected to share your comments and questions with the class and expand upon them in class
discussion in a thoughtful and significant manner. This contributes to a dynamic, thought-
provoking, and engaging class. While your paragraph will necessarily provide only a brief sketch
of your ideas, you are required to elaborate on, clarify, refine, support, explain, and develop
your questions and insights in the course of the discussion. Include paraphrases or partial
quotes with page numbers for easy reference.

Keep in mind, some contextualization is necessary in order to demonstrate comprehension and
convey your meaning. Thus, for each comment, talking point, or discussion question you raise,
you should take care to present these ideas within the context of the material in the larger
discussion. That is, there is little room to do this in your paragraph, so you should be prepared
to ground your points, or observations, firmly within the text, or texts, and support these ideas
with direct textual evidence from the primary source(s) during class discussion. Your aim should
be to point out moments of illuminationeither those you locate within the given text, or those
you experience while reading it, a texts distinctive contribution to the debates at hand, key
moments in relation to other texts and perspectives. Come to class prepared to relate the
readings of the day to each other and note connections to previous texts in the course, where
relevant. The aim of your response is to document your engagement with the course readings
in preparation for class and help maintain quality class discussion. But it will be serve as a
summary of any extensive notes or marginalia in your texts, a tool to reference in the service of
your more elaborate in-class remarks, comments, questions, and observations.

If you have difficulty deciding what to write about: enumerate the most important points in the
readings or moments of insight you experienced while reading; identify a point that connects the
readings with other texts/perspectives; locate the primary insight or place of convergence
among the readings for the day. These are simply suggestions, since course texts are rich with
insights and often quite dense. I will review your responses regularly.

3.) Essay Assignments: You are each required to write one short, 5-page essay on the readings
of a given week (due to me on Monday by 6 pm). During the Wednesday class meeting, you
will consider yourself a central facilitator of class discussion, and you will share relevant insights
and questions from your short paper with the class in the context of the class session. We will
have up to two people per class perform this duty. If more than two people wish to do so,
additional students (more than 2) may write their short, 5-page essays on the literary text of their
choice using Eve Sedgwicks framework found in Epistemology of the Closet and insights from
relevant course texts (two weeks). Preferences are due Week 2 of class. (Choices should state
text and day and be in order, from top choice, #1, to #3, third choice.)

This short essay should demonstrate a substantive engagement with the text(s) of the day (an
engagement with the most important points, or the vital substancei.e., a critical response, but
this will be formulated into an essay. It will not suffice to write a summary. This paper should be
geared towards opening up new perspectives and designed to generate discussion. This shorter
paper will be based on the assigned reading(s) for the day and include specific textual evidence
from that source or sources (quotes and paraphrases fully cited, using parenthetical notation),
but you will also address 1-2 critical sources that you find through your own independent
research. You will not submit a reading response paragraph the week of your paper.

Your short paper may serve as the prelude to your major research paper (20 pages) in which
you will address a topic of your own choosing at greater length; but the two projects need not be
related. The longer research paper should reflect your own interests, but it should also actively
engage the issues and debates of the course texts, as well as the content of the course texts
themselves (you are required to reference any course texts relevant to your topic). You must
also conduct a significant amount of secondary research for this final project and include any
outside sources with your final essay. You may write a short proposal (1-2 pages) outlining your
extensive research undertaking for the final paper, if you wish to receive feedback and
suggestions on your final paper, to be completed by one of the dates indicated on the reading
schedule. Major research papers are due at the end of the semester. Since this is, in essence,
your final exam, they will be collected during finals week, roughly during the scheduled final
exam period.

Grading Policy:
Your fulfillment of the objectives of this course will be determined by your successful completion
of the following assignments and weighted in percentages as follows:

Participation/Responses 25%
Short Critical Paper 25%
Final Research Paper 50% (Proposal Optional)

Policy Regarding Late Work:
All work must be completed and submitted in a timely fashion in order to succeed in this course.
Late responses do not contribute to class discussion and will not be accepted. If you are late to
class or come to class without your paragraph, your participation will be compromised, and your
participation grade will reflect this. Once you commit to a date for your short paper (the day you
will act as a discussion facilitator), you should do your best to honor this commitment. In the
case of all formal papers, you should request an extension in advance of the due date,
whenever possible, if you find you need more time. If you miss a major paper deadline, you
must be able to provide documentation of legitimating circumstances (should I request it);
penalties will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Reading Schedule (subject to change, addition, or substitution):
* = Electronic copies (available on Blackboard Learn)

W 8/21 Introductions, Syllabus review

8/28 Mimi Marinucci, Feminism is Queer + *Purvis Queer chapter + *Simone de
Beauvoir, Intro, Second Sex

9/04 *Gayle Rubin, Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of
Sexuality + GLQ Special Issue: Rethinking Sex (GLQ 17:1 2011)

9/11 Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays + *Paradigm, +
*Diane Griffin Crowder, From the Straight Mind to Queer Theory: Implications for
Political Movement

9/18 *Adrienne Rich, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence + Judith
Butler, Gender Trouble, Preface through Part 2

9/25 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, Part 3-end + *Judith Butler, Critically Queer from
Bodies That Matter

10/02 Eve Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, Intro-2, *Siobhan Somerville,
Feminism, Queer Theory, and the Racial Closet + *Marlon B. Ross, Beyond
the Closet as Race-less Paradigm

10/09 Eve Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 3-end + *Katariina Kyrl, The Fat
Gendered Body in/as a Closet + *Saguy and Ward, Coming Out as Fat:
Rethinking Stigma

10/16 Eve Sedgwick, Queer and Now, from Tendencies (1-22) + Michael Warner, Queer
and Then: The End of Queer Theory, The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 1,
2012 (http://chronicle.com/article/QueerThen-/130161/) + *Lauren Berlant
and Michael Warner, Sex in Public Critical Inquiry 24 (Winter 1998): 547-566 + *Bryan
McCann, Queering Expertise: Counterpublics, Social Change, and the
Corporeal Dilemmas of LBGTQ Equality, Social Epistemology 25 (2011): 249-262

10/23 Jos Esteban Muoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of
Politics (emphasis on Intro, 4, 7-8)

10/30 *Roderick Ferguson, Race-ing Homonormativity: Citizenship, Sociology, and Gay
Identity, Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology + *bell hooks, Selling Hot
Pussy: Representations of Black Female Sexuality in the Cultural
Marketplace, + *Cathy Cohen, Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The
Radical Potential of Queer Politics? + *Michelle Jarman, Dismembering the
Lynch Mob: Intersecting Narratives of Disability, Race, and Sexual Menace

11/06 Feminist Theory and the Body (Intro-3.2) + *J. Halberstam, Transgender Butch
+ *Susan Stryker, (De)Subjugated Knowledges: An Introduction to Transgender
Studies, *Katrina Roen, Transgender Theory and Embodiment: The Risk of
Racial Marginalization, + *Jacob Hale, Are Lesbians Women? (from The Transgender
Studies Reader)

11/13 Feminist Theory and the Body (3.3-5.4) + *Simone de Beauvoir, The Data of
Biology, Second Sex* + *Michael Davidson, Pregnant Men: Modernism,
Disability, and Biofuturity; Proposalsoptional

11/20 Feminist Theory and the Body (5.5-end) + *Tobin Siebers, A Sexual Culture for
Disabled People + *Abby Wilkerson, Normate Sex and Its Discontents from
Sex and Disability; Last day for Proposals

11/27 Thanksgiving BreakNo Class

12/04 GLQ Special Issue: Queer Bonds (GLQ 17:2-3 2011)

Finals Week: 12/9-13
th
Final Research Papers due(during scheduled final exam period:
Tuesday, 12/10, 3:30-6pm)

Academic Misconduct:
Acts of dishonesty in any work constitute academic misconduct. This includes, but is not limited
to: cheating, plagiarism, fabrication of information, misrepresentation, and abetting any of the
above. In the event that any member of this class engages in academic misconduct, the
Academic Misconduct Policy will be applied. Students should refer to the Student Affairs
Handbook which can be obtained from the Office of Student Life or on-line via the Office of
Academic Affairs and the Provosts Office: http://provost.ua.edu/academicmisconductpolicy.doc

Disabilities Access Statement:
Students with disabilities are encouraged to register with the Office of Disability Services (348-
4285) or http://ods.ua.edu/. Thereafter, you are invited to schedule an appointment to see me to
discuss accommodations and other special needs.

In Case of Emergency:
The primary University communication tool for sending out information is the universitys
website www.ua.edu. Students should consult this site as soon as they can in an emergency,
and I will provide information on the course through Blackboard Learn, as I am able.

I look forward to a pleasant and productive semester working with you. If you have any
questions or concerns about this course, or any related research interests you would like to
discuss with me, please feel free to meet with me during my office hours or at another
scheduled time if office hours conflict with your teaching/class schedule.