Feminist Inroads in Epistemology, Method, and Theory

Carla Freeman
Emory University

Level: advanced

Perspectives:	Feminist Economics, Other
Topic:	Globalization & International Economic Relations, Race & Gender
Format:	Syllabus

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.