WMST 2500B On Women - Glendon
Major project
Due date: March 14th, worth 20% of your final grade
Select one of the following options or select your own project/topic in consultation with your TA. This can be either a formal essay or an equally rigorous project chosen in consultation with the teaching team. Possibilities might include a development of the topic you explored in your annotated bibliography, a topic from the list below or a project chosen from the types of projects described below on a topic of your choice. EVERYONE MUST meet with Caitlin, Liz or Any during the month of January to confirm your choice of assignment (and to discuss the main thesis of your project if you chose to derive it from your annotated bibliography). All projects should incorporate both course materials and materials from outside of the course.
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N.B. if you choose to write a formal essay, you must follow academic conventions for essay-writing -- an introductory paragraph which contains a thesis statement, paragraphs which advance this argument, proper referencing of outside sources including
footnotes or endnotes and a works cited page or bibliography etc. If these terms are new to you, please visit the course web site for tips on writing essays and style guides:
http://www.yorku.ca/faculty/academic/cfisher/wstudies/style.htm
If you prefer print resources, consider purchasing Thinking it Through: A Practical Guide to Academic Essay Writing. Academic Skills Centre, Trent University, 1989. (This text is about 12 dollars and is extremely useful).
1.
Mothering
In Of Women Born, Adrienne Rich makes the distinction between mothering as experience and motherhood as institution. Using this text and course readings consider Rich’s distinction in the context of 20th century changes in women’s labour and ‘the family’. Can mothering be a liberating experience for women? If so, how, and under what circumstances? The following texts might help you to formulate your answer (but you are not limited to these):
Mary O’Brien The Politics of Reproduction
Sandra Pollock and Jeanne Vaughan, Politics of the Heart (lesbian mothering)
Mardy Ireland Reconceiving Women: separating motherhood from female identity
Sara Ruddick , "Maternal Thinking"
Valerie Walkerdine and Helen Lucey, Democracy in the kitchen
2.
White, heterosexual tunnel-vision
In the essay "Disloyal to Civilization: Feminism, Racism and Gynephobia" in the collection Lies, Secrets and Silence, Adrienne Rich introduces the concept of ‘white solipsism’. It involves, she says:
Thinking, imagining and speaking as if whiteness described the world... it is not the consciously held belief that one race is superior to all others, but a tunnel-vision which simply does not see non-white experience or existence as precious or significant...
A similar definition could be offered of heterosexual solipsism.
Using the course readings and your own concrete examples (from experience, from media etc. etc.) explore and document various ways in which white, heterosexual solipsism is inculcated in children and adults through socialization, education, the media, forms of social coercion, the law and the family. What are the dominant stereotypes of women of colour? Of non-heterosexual women? (Explore the varieties here) How do these forms of solipsism affect norms in such areas as sexuality, beauty, the family, domestic labour, the structure of the paid labour force, the arts, political life, civil rights?
Do these two forms of solipsism affect women in the same way? Why? Why not? How are they related to the liberation of women? Be sure to situate your discussion here and document your claims with reference to course texts and lectures.
3. Analyse a popular best seller which talks about gender -- The Rules OR men are from mars, women are from venus – from a feminist perspective. What do these texts say about men and women, masculinity/femininity? What cultural assumptions are operating here? How are men and women conceptualized? On what basis?
4.
Woman/Representation/Gaze
Laura Mulvey, a feminist film theorist, wrote an influential article entitled ‘‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema" (reprinted in Mulvey, L. Visual and Other Pleasures 1989). In this article she wrote that:
woman stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman, still tied to her place as bearer, not maker, of meaning.
(i)What does this mean? (ii)Explore the relevance of this statement today, using course readings. You will find articles on the female gaze, women and representation, language, pornography, race, sexuality and/or language useful.
5.
Biology
Various thinkers discussed in this course have identified particular features of women’s bodies -- or women’s bodies in general – as rational grounds for denying women equality with white men.
a) Explain, in general, how these arguments work. Illustrate your answer by discussuing at least two different versions of this argument (two different theories) as it appears in the writing of at least two authors. Describe what is cited as the locus of women’s inferiority and show the consequences of each theory for women’s position in political life, public life, education, morality, sexuality, the family etc.
b) How can this type of argument be criticized? Discuss as many different KINDS of arguments you can think of.
C) to what extent do you agreee or disagree with this claim?
“...genuine sexual equality requires the de-institutionalization of sexual differences, that social and political ‘sexual blindness’ is an approrpiate goal for women’s liberation”
Give reasons, arguments and illustrations to support your position.
6. Feminist utopias
Sketch out your own social utopia paying particular attention to the situations of girls and women. What necessary features would you build into your utopia? Why? Defend your views with reasons and arguments and consider the implications of your ideas. Would you retain gender categories? Family categories etc.? What new categories might you construct? Why? How would you raise children (girls in particular?)... perform work, create intimacy, political community, morality etc...? You might want to look at some
feminist science fiction, but this should be an original *well argued* essay which refers to course readings. Some suggested utopian(?) fiction:
Charlotte Perkins Gillman, Herland
Sarah Scott, Millennium Hall
Ursula Leguin
Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
Types of Projects:
*Please consult with a member of the teaching team if you choose to do a project*
7. Select one person or a specific, historic, small group to talk about one of the issues listed below: (This assignment could be written as a formal essay or might be tackled as a scrapbook, lifewriting, interviews etc. In any case you will be expected to ANALYZE you materials. We will be looking for strong reports in which you use your own words to effectively synthesize and summarize the material you've looked at. Toward that end you will need to demonstrate your ability to evaluate and analyze your materials and to construct an argument/thesis that offers us a perspective on your topic that goes beyond simply re-presenting stereotypes or overgeneralized, over-familiar materials.) Issues to explore:
The myths, legends, and/or cultural assumptions that fuel ideas about [again, select only one from the list]:
1. Femininity in Canada for disabled women
2. Femininity in Canada for Black women
3. Femininity in Canada for Jewish women
4. Femininity in Canada for lesbians
5. Femininity in Canada for Muslims
6. Femininity in Canada for ________
OR
1. Fraternities and masculinity
2. Women in blue collar jobs
3. Female-owned or run corporations
4. Acquaintance rape
(i) Keep a journal which documents either the paid or volunteer work you do or the work you do in the home/with family and draws connections between your own socialization and present personal/political position, and the world around you. Pay attention to issues of gender, class, race, sexuality, ability, language. While you must hand it in as an appendix and refer to it, the journal itself will not be marked.
(ii) In your analysis, examine what the underlying assumptions of the items on your ‘appendix’ are, what central values are at work, the central themes, the central arguments, the social and political goals that are embedded in the items in question. Critically evaluate these assumptions, arguments, and goals, working from the concrete data in your appendix. Remember that your own thoughts, feelings and current experiences are part of the ‘world’ you examine during this time.
(NB: word length and page limit will apply only to the analysis part, not to your ‘appendix’.)
10. Oral history project. (You must speak with your TA if you want to do this project.)
Interview a woman at least 30 years older than yourself, or 20 years younger and write a mini life-herstory. How was this woman raised? What did she value as a child? What was she taught about in her home? Outside the home? What is her relationship to/experience with paid work, religion, sexuality, marriage, education, children etc.? How does she understand the place gender, race, class, sexuality etc. plays in her life. You should keep a detailed transcript of your ‘interview’. In your *analysis* of this material, you *must* become familiar with scholarly texts in areas that will help to provide a context for your subject’s life – these will be different depending where/when and with which influences your subject was raised. Especially in the case of this type of project, it is absolutely imperative that you meet with a member of the teaching team before beginning as there are specific rules and codes of ethics to be met when interviewing people.
11. Creative assignment. (You must speak with your TA if you want to do this project.)
Rewrite a fairy tale, popular song etc., write a short story or poem from a feminist perspective. Reflect on its construction in a separate section. What makes the content of this work or the form of this work feminist? How does it fit with other creative works by feminists we've studies this year? Submit for publication ;)
12. Listen-up style creative non-fiction. (You must speak with your TA if you want to do this project.)
"The personal is political" -- using the lifewriting in our class anthology Listen Up as a
model, take an aspect of your personal life and tell us what's political about it. What feminist 'clicks' have you had in your own life? Be sure to move *beyond* writing about the incidents in your own life to make connections with the lives and situations of others and to bring the materials, issues, concepts explored in class to bear on your own reflection.