Gender, Sexuality, and History (321-0-22)
Topic
Pleasure in the Archives
Instructors
Amy Ruth Partridge
847.491.5872
Meeting Info
University Hall 318: Mon, Wed 12:30PM - 1:50PM
Overview of class
Topic: Pleasure in the Archives.
"I find myself increasingly insisting on the importance of history, not because things were better (or worse) in an earlier time but because, as cocreators of collective memory, we're all doing it one way and another, and it matters how we tell the story."—Finn Enke, "Collective Memory and the Transfeminist 1970s" TSQ (2018)
In recent years, the "second wave" of feminism has increasingly been conflated with "white, middle-class feminism" and critiqued as an exclusionary form of feminist politics in contrast to the more intersectional feminist politics of the "third" and "fourth" waves of feminism. Numerous historians of the period have challenged us to reconsider this claim, which elides "feminism's deeply questioning, queer, coalitional and anti-imperialist past" and risks missing "some ways that feminist, lesbian, and queer of color and trans activists grappled hard to develop critical insights and knowledges that move us today" (Enke 2018). In this course, we will begin by examining how the "second wave" of feminism is being framed in 2021 and explore which projects, groups, and concerns have come to define the "second wave" of feminism in the United States in our collective memory. We then turn to recent histories of the "second wave" that challenge us to reconsider what counts as "feminist politics" during this period. For example, histories that focus on the formation of broad-based coalitions across and between liberation movements around issues of economic justice, reproductive rights, and the right to "self-defense" against both state and interpersonal violence during this period, challenge us to expand our conception of feminist activism. In the process, they require us to incorporate the "critical insights and knowledges" of labor and welfare rights activists, sex workers and gay liberationists, Black, Chicana, Puerto Rican and Indigenous liberation movement members as central to the feminist politics of the period. As we grapple with the urgencies of the present, what are the politics (and promise) of telling more complex and nuanced stories of activism and social change?
Class Materials (Required)
All course materials will be provided on Canvas.
Class Attributes
Historical Studies Distro Area