Global FeminismsTexts

The following discussion arose in response to a request for a
feminist theory text that would give students a sense of the
issues around global feminisms.  For additional WMST-L files
available on the Web, see the WMST-L File Collection.

Hello, I'm teaching Feminist Theory in the fall, offered as an upper-level
LIT course that attracts students from multiple disciplines who may or may
not have had much training in theory beyond the Intro to WS course.  I want
to give students a sense of the issues around global feminisms.  Some
students will have had the first half of Feminist Theory and will have read
Chilla Bulbeck's "Re-Orienting Western Feminisms."  Other students will not
have.  I cannot assume theoretical sophistication.  A colleague has had
some success with "Global Critical Race Feminism," which is from a legal
studies standpoint.  I usually use "Woman, Native, Other," but was trying
to go toward something more concrete and synthetic.  I'm afraid that
Mohanty's "Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism" is too
theoretically dense, especially since some of these students will be real
novices.  Has anyone looked at Mohanty's "Feminism Without Borders?"  Does
anyone have any recommendations?  I'm also interested in anything that
could blend global feminisms with ecofeminism, as students respond well to
both.  I've been online and seen lots of lists, but I'm looking for
informed opinions about how these texts work in the classroom or your sense
of how they would manage the kinds of students I'm describing.  Thanks for
any insights, and I'll compile a list for anyone interested in the
responses I get offline.  Lisa

Lisa M. Logan
Associate Professor of English
Director of Women's Studies
University of Central Florida
P.O. Box 161994
Orlando, FL  32816-1994
lmlogan  AT  pegasus.cc.ucf.edu

I don't teach Feminist Theory, but I've heard good things about my
colleague Carole McCann's recent anthology _Feminist Theory Reader:
Local and Global Perspectives_ (Routledge, 2002), which Carole
co-edited with Seung-Kyung Kim.  You can find some brief comments
about the book and a table of contents on Amazon's site:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/041593153
3/reviews/qid=1054780672/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-5032783-8368621> .
(If that URL doesn't work for you, this one should:
<http://tinyurl.com/dife> .)

        Joan

        Joan Korenman, Director
        Center for Women & Information Technology
        University of Maryland, Baltimore County
        Baltimore, MD 21250  USA
        jskor  AT  umbc.edu
        http://www.umbc.edu/cwit/

An excellent new book is Gender Justice, Development, and Rights, edited by
Maxine Molyneux and Shahra Razavi (Oxford University Press, 2002).

I think Cynthia Enloe's work would be useful in that she employs and
develops an international feminist theory about how nation states shape
each others economic politics but she does this in a way that also gets at
what each citizen does to contribute to the problem.

Her work is concrete and yet contributes to international feminist theory.

Eloise Buker

Uma Narayan/Sandra Harding's edited vol., "Decentering the Center:
Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World"
worked well in my upper level, undergrad. feminist theory course
which, like yours, carries only the prerequisite of one previous wmst
course. It includes "multicultural" essays, so students can make
important connections between some of the local and global issues.
These essays originally appeared in "Hypatia." (BTW: I used Trinh's
"Woman, Native, Other" once for this course--students had a hard time
with it.)
 
Jo-Ann Pilardi
Chair, Women's Studies,
Prof., Phil./WMST
Towson Univ. MD   jpilardi  AT  towson.edu

It might be worthwhile to check out the "Gender in Geography"
bibliography. It's a great resource on feminist theory from an
international perspective.
http://www.emporia.edu/socsci/fembib/index.htm

Another option might be: Chandra Mohanty: _Feminism without Borders:
Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity_ (2003)

Table of Contents
Introduction: Decolonization, Anticapitalist Critique, and Feminist Commitments

Part One. Decolonizing Feminism
1. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses
2. Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism
3. What's Home Got to Do with It? (with Biddy Martin)
4. Sisterhood, Coalition, and the Politics of Experience
5. Genealogies of Community, Home, and Nation

Part Two. Demystifying Capitalism
6. Women Workers and the Politics of Solidarity
7. Privatized Citizenship, Corporate Academies, and Feminist Projects
8. Race, Multiculturalism, and Pedagogies of Dissent
Part Three. Reorienting Feminism
9. "Under Western Eyes" Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through
   Anticapitalist Struggles

Best,
Kim Cordingly
kcording  AT  wvu.edu

A couple of years ago, while at Miami U. in The invited speaker was
Anne Sisson Runyan who is the co-author of a text on this issue.  The
citation:

Peterson, V. Spike and Anne Sisson Runyan. GLobal Gender Issues.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999.

The chapters are:
1) The Gender of World Politics
2) Gender as a Lens on World Politics
3) Gendered Divisions of Power
4) Gendered Divisions of Violence, Labor, and REsources
5) The Politics of Resistance: Women as Nonstate, Antistate, and
   Transstate Actors
6) Ungendering World Politics

My recollection is that the text stresses the need to take into
account the myriad situational differences of women around the globe
even at the same time they acknowledge that it is difficult to do so
with justice when introducing such a massive subject. The workshop was
accompanied numerous essays to flesh out the complexities of the topic

Pamela
**************************
Pamela M. Salela
UIUC Alumnae
MS '99, MA '96, BA '89

Iraqi Civilian Death Count
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/webcounters.htm

SING WHISPER SHOUT PRAY: FEMINIST VISIONS FOR A JUST WORLD, just
published by EdgeWork books, and edited by Sharon Day, Lisa
Albrecht, Jacqui Alexander, and the fabulous Mab Segrest, would
be an excellent text for an upper level women's studies course.
You can find out more about this anthology by logging onto
www.edgework.com.

Claire Kirch
Duluth, MN
ClaireinDuluth  AT  aol.com

Thanks to all who responded so generously with recommendations for a global
feminisms text for my Feminist Theory course.  Big thanks to Young Rae Oum,
who sent along an extensive bibliography.  Using Young's bib. and your
suggestions, I've compiled the results.  For the curious, I went with Ella
Shohat's "Talking Visions" because it included non-traditional kinds of
projects (photomontage, reflective essay, performance pieces, etc.) and
because it tries to resist disciplinary narratives.  I'm hoping that
students will complete these kinds of projects for their final
piece.  Thanks again to all, and happy reading.  Lisa

Carole McCann and Seung-Kyung Kim, Feminist Theory: Local and Global
Perspectives (Routlegde, 2003) (an anthology which blends global feminist
texts into the history of western feminist texts excellent reviews from
listmembers.

Thanks to Marjorie Pryse, who recommended this great combination/sequence
of texts:
Maria Mies's latest edition of _Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World
Scale_ and some pieces from Mies and Vandana Shiva, _Ecofeminism_. She
focused in on one problem, and we applied the theory to Kamala Kempadoo &
Jo Doezema, _Global Sex Workers_, a collection of recent articles. She also
recommended Folly's video, _Femmes Aux Yeux Ouverts_/ Women with
Open Eyes_ for Africa), and some novels Nawal El Saadawi, _Woman at Point
Zero_ (Many of us are teaching this terrific!) and Tsitsi Dangarembga,
_Nervous Conditions_


The Penguin Book of International Women's Stories, ed. Kate Figes
Joan Williams' Unbending Gender
Aida Hurtado's The Color of Privilege
Maria Mies' Patriarchy & Accumulation on a World Scale
Sue Rosser's Women, Science, and Society
Dorothy Roberts' Killing the Black Body.
Bananas, Beaches and Bases by Cynthia Enloe;
Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladoras by Norma Prieto;
Disposable Domestics by Grace Chang;
Global Woman edited by Ehrenreich & Hochschild;
Sweatshop Warriors by Miriam Ching Louie;
Women's Activism and Globalization edited by Nancy Naples & Manisha Desai.
Mohanty's articles from Third World Women & the Politics of Feminism
articles/excerpts from Adrienne Rich's "Notes towards a Politics of Location"
Caren Kaplan's critique of Rich in Questions of Travel,
selections from Gender Politics and Global Governance edited by Meyer & Prugl.

***Anthologies
M. Jacqui Alexander & Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Eds.) (1997). Feminist
genealogies, colonial legacies, democratic futures. New York: Routledge.
Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (Eds.) (1991). Third world women and the
politics of feminism Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Ella Shohat (Ed.) (1998). Talking visions: Multicultural feminisms in a
transnational age. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
M. Jacqui Alexander, Lisa Albrecht, Sharon Day, and Mab Segrest (Eds.).
(2003) Sing, whisper, shout, pray!: Feminist visions for a just world.
EdgeWork Books.
Anne McClintock, Mamir Mufti, & Ella Shohat (1997). Dangerous liaisons:
Gender, nation and Postcolonial perspectives. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Grewal, Inderpal & Kaplan, Caren (Eds.) (1994) Scattered hegemonies:
Postmodernity and transnational feminist practices. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Global Feminisms: A Survey of Issues and Controversies (Rewriting Histories)
Ed. Bonnie Smith, Routledge, 2000.
Women, Gender, and Human Rights: A Global Perspective, ed. Marjorie Agosin
(Rutgers 2001)
A Map of Hope: Women's Writing on Human Rights: An International Literary
Anthology
Ed. Marjorie Agosin , Mary Robinson  (Rutgers, 1999)
Women's Movements and Public Policy in Europe, Latin America, and the
Caribbean (Gender, Culture, and Global Politics) Ed. G. Lycklama a Nijeholt
, Virginia Vargas et al.  (Garland 1997)

***The following are not anthologies but could work well in the global
feminisms course.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty (2003). Feminism without borders: Decolonizing
theory, practicing solidarity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press
Ong, Aihwa (1999). Flexible citizenship: The cultural logics of
transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press.
Begona Aretxaga. (1997). Shattering Silence. Princeton University Press.
Ritu Menon & Kamla Bhasin (1998). Borders and Boundaries: Women in India's
Partition. Rutgers University Press. 1998.
Cynthia Enloe (1993). The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the
Cold War. University of California Press.
Kamala Visweswaran (1994). Fictions of feminist ethnography. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak (1999). A critique of postcolonial reason:
Toward a history of the vanishing present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.

Lisa M. Logan
Associate Professor of English
Director of Women's Studies
University of Central Florida
P.O. Box 161994
Orlando, FL  32816-1994
lmlogan  AT  pegasus.cc.ucf.edu