Feminist Inroads in Epistemology, Method, and Theory

Instructor: Carla Freeman 

Course Objective:

For many social critics "globalization" is a signpost of “late-capitalism” with the rise of multinational corporations, mass consumption and the multidirectional flows of capital, labor, media, communication, ideologies and social movements across national borders. Feminist analyses of globalization and the gendered and sexualized permutations of these phenomena offer a critical stance for theorizing these processes, and for studying their complex articulations across time and space. This seminar will examine diverse manifestations and sites of globalization (migration, tourism, labor, consumption, media/internet communication, sexual commerce, and the circulation of social movements like feminism(s) through the lens of gender and feminist analysis. In so doing, we will raise questions about the relationships between theory, epistemology and method as they pertain to contemporary globalization. The goals of the course are twofold: to analyze the gendered forces and enactments of globalization as they are currently unfolding across the world, and to explore a range of epistemologies with which contemporary scholars are attempting to grapple with these phenomena. We will examine how globalization works in and through relations of gender, sexuality, class, and race, and analyze feminist and interdisciplinary efforts to unearth and explain these processes. Globalization serves as a prism through which we will explore social, cultural, political and economic dimensions of contemporary life and some of the advances, gaps, convergences, and puzzles in developing a feminist analytics.

Course Outline:

1. Globalization, Capitalism, Postmodernity, Neoliberalism
2. Globalization and Transnational Kinship
3. Globalization of Labor and Consumption
4. Global Finance Local Discontents
5. Globalizaiton and Transnationalization of Sex and HIV/AIDS
6. Global Science Local Lives
7. Global Circulations Ethnographic Worlding
8. Global Circulations: Feminist Texts, Feminist Movements
9. Global Circulations: Aesthetics, Politics, Religion

Download syllabus here

Comment from our editors:

This syllabus is part of the Syllabi collection on International Association for Feminist Economics. This course is suitable for graduate students.