Women’s & Gender Studies

This course regards the researcher’s self as a critical resource for ethnographic inquiry, observation and representation in anthropology. Building on queer-feminist debates around participation and positionality and taking The Vulnerable Observer (Ruth Behar, 1996) as a starting point, students are asked to introspectively examine who they are in the world and how that unique location informs the questions they are able to pose and pursue. This includes an understanding of the politics of belonging, experiences of class and queerness, racial or gendered difference, de/coloniality and so on, but equally the ethical and emotional dilemmas posed by their research engagements. Students read works that call into question the sharp divides between academic and other forms of writing, theory and poetry, ethnography and memoir. The course is designed to be interactive and workshop-oriented. Participants engage in short writing exercises in class and are encouraged to draw on their own experiences of life and learning in research.

Structured as a chronological survey, this class provides a historical overview of British and Commonwealth spoken word poetry from the late 1960s to the present day. Beginning with US American influences from beat poetry and the Liverpool poets, the class moves on to the “punk poet” John Cooper Clarke and dub poetry by Benjamin Zephaniah and Linton Kwesi Johnson from the 1970s and 1980s. It then discusses work from the 1990s and early 2000s by spoken word performers such as Roger Robinson and Malika Booker, ending with Jay Bernard’s contemporary archival poetry. Students use these primary texts to introduce and revise concepts from literary studies such as intertextuality, reader-response theory, the archival turn, and autotheory. Incorporating modes of writing like Saidya Hartman’s “critical fabulation” and Antonio Gramsci’s and Stuart Hall’s figure of the “organic intellectual” into the discussion, the class attempts to conceptualize spoken word poetry as a uniquely ephemeral and performative form of knowledge production. In addition to discussing the role of spoken word poetry for marginalized communities and identities, the class attempts to understand how it challenges categories like authorship and genre, as well as distinctions between e.g. fiction and nonfiction or high and popular culture.

This seminar explores the complex intersections of gender, nationhood, and emancipatory notions in contemporary Iran. The course critically engages with how Iranian women have historically navigated, contested, and redefined the meanings of feminism, resistance, and agency within varying political, religious, and cultural landscapes. Topics include: politics of veiling and unveiling, the role of women in protest and revolution, and the intersections of gender with class, religion, and sexuality. Emphasis is placed on Iranian women as intellectuals, activists, artists, and everyday agents of change.

This course increases understanding and analyzes of the impact of development practices, particularly as they have affected women and men in different contexts. The course offers an introduction to debates around the gendered impact of different economic and political development trajectories, and policies, such as industrialization, agricultural transformations, democratization, and contemporary structural adjustment programs. Case studies drawn from different regions and contexts are used to illustrate the theoretical debates, including those distinguishing “women in development” approaches from “gender and development” approaches. DP requirements: Completion of all semester coursework by deadlines as specified on the course curriculum. Assessment: Continuous assessment (essays, projects, tests, etc.) counts 100%.

Social media plays a major role in how people express themselves, interact with others, and construct their identities. It both reflects and shapes social interactions and norms, particularly those related to gender. In communication science, social media content represents an important research object for examining gender-related discourse. In this seminar, students learn how to conduct the six-step thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of YouTube comments in order to address gender-related research questions. They learn the full research process, from organizing and preparing the data to initial exploration and in-depth analysis. Students are introduced to qualitative data analysis software (e.g., MAXQDA) and gain hands-on experience in coding, categorization, and the systematic interpretation of the data. By the end of the seminar, students are able to conduct a thematic analysis independently to answer their own research questions.

From the intensifying assaults on abortion rights in the United States to the targeting of LGBTQIA+ communities and the racialized policing of bodies, gender and sexuality remain key sites of cultural and political struggle. In the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and amid escalating far-right attacks on healthcare access, trans rights, and gender-affirming care, the lecture series “Gender, Sexuality, Power: Critical Perspectives on the US and Beyond” examines how gendered and sexual norms continue to shape public life. The series brings together researchers from the Free University Berlin and international colleagues whose work advances current debates in Gender, Sexuality, and Queer Studies. Approaching the topic from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, the speakers trace how power has been organized through gender and sexuality, both historically and in the current political moment.

This course examines key theoretical concepts around gender and sexuality from an interdisciplinary lens with a focus on the Pacific. It explores the intersections of race, sex, biology, ableism, colonialism, nationality, politics and social movements in our constructions/understanding of gender in a Pacific and global context.

The course focuses on the main theories and debates in the postcolonial study of the intersections between racial formations, gender and sexuality, and cultural practices. Develop an understanding of race as a specific object of inquiry within postcolonial theory. There is an emphasis on introducing and sharpening key conceptual tools for analyzing the intersections between race and the social vectors of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and culture. The course examines postcolonial global realities, paying close attention to postcolonial configurations of social and political relations and the ways in which various expressive forms have recorded and engaged with these postcolonial realities. Questions of power and global asymmetry, social inclusion and exclusion, and cultural representation and appropriation are addressed in our analyses of authors and cultural products that contest, transgress, and rearticulate national boundaries and social identities.

Catharine MacKinnon’s 1989 Toward a Feminist Theory of the State remains one of the most influential works in feminist theory and is the most comprehensive statement of radical feminist philosophy. This class is dedicated to a semester-long close reading of the text. Central to MacKinnon’s thought is the attempt to develop an autonomous theory of sexist domination on the basis of sexuality. Students critically reconstruct this theory and examine its relationship to theories of class and gender based domination, as well as its opposition to liberalism and liberal feminism. Over the course of the semester, the book guides the class through many of the core themes of feminist philosophizing, including the social ontology of gender, feminist epistemology, sexual and reproductive freedom, the role of sexuality and pornography in patriarchal domination, and feminism’s relationship to law and the state. MacKinnon’s thoroughgoing social constructionism with regards to gender and sexuality is of particular interest, as in recent years radical feminism has sometimes been invoked to justify trans exclusionary views. MacKinnon herself has since firmly rejected this use of radical feminism. Accordingly, the class, too, examines her rejection of biologicist models of gender and the queer potentialities of radical feminism. Finally, the class discusses how radical feminism in general, and MacKinnon’s thought in particular, currently experiences a revival in feminist discussions about sexual freedom and the politics of desire.

The course examines gender and violence in Spanish literature and cinema from the Middle Ages to the present. Students analyze representations of gender, power, violence, and social norms through literary and film analysis, with attention to changing cultural perspectives.