Interdisciplinary Elective Subject, topic 3: Transatlantic Feminisms

This course will consider some of the most important debates and trends in feminist theory over the last five decades.  We will consider the intersections of academic and popular, intellectual and activist dimensions of feminist literary theory. In particular, we will focus on French Feminism and its influence in the US, the rise of the Wages for Housework Movement in Italy, and in the relations of race and gender theory forged in the US.  In the last weeks of the course, we will look at some of the new debates in Queer and Trans theory and ask about how they build on the feminist history we have explored. In each case, we will foreground our specialty as ENGEROM scholars able to think in detail about how feminist ideas have travelled back and forth between Europe and the US, both through literal and cultural translation.  Is feminism truly a transatlantic phenomenon?  What happens to some of these key texts as they move from one language to another?  How are the debates about individual differences and rights, and the impact of race, specific to the US, French, Italian, or German contexts?  Where are the archives of feminism held in these different national settings?