CEU - Department of Gender Studies

The Uses of Comparative and Integrative Perspectives for Women’s and Gender Studies

The 4 credit mandatory Ph.D. course in Comparative Gender Studies

Autumn Semester 2007

Instructor: Susan Zimmermann

 

Schedule : Mondays

9.00 a.m. – 10.40 a.m. (seminar session based mainly on the required reading
related to the lecture of the previous week)

11.00 a.m. – 12.40 p.m. (lecture session, including instructor’s lecture, student
presentations, introduction of the upcoming seminar)

Please note that the first unit is organized differently. Please prepare for this unit by:

• Reading the syllabus;
• Reading and preparing the texts indicated for the first unit.

Location: TBA

Syllabus

The comparative and integrative component of the Ph.D. Program in Comparative Gen­der Studies is intended to advocate two trends in Gender Studies and other fields and disci­plines in the Hu­manities and Social Sciences. First, it seeks to move beyond ana­lytical frag­mentation resulting from the construction and deconstruction of difference and diver­sity especially in Cultural, Gender, and Post-Colonial Studies and at the same time to avoid a move back­wards, i.e. towards non-negotiated (and therefore, in view of the interests, identi­ties, and represen­tation of many social groups, repres­sive or exclusive) universalisms. What is at stake, therefore, is a move towards scholarly perspectives with a potential to develop comprehensive understandings and analyses of change in social and symbolic fields without reverting to teleological leanings, and with the capacity to integrate our understandings of processes and moments of homogenization and differentiation characterizing developments in both of these fields. Secondly, the comparative and integrative component of our Ph.D. Program seeks to contribute to reshaping the relationship between the social and the aca­demic world by explicitly reflecting social and political leanings and implications of scholar­ship in all disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and by translating the critical attitudes of Gender Studies as related to hierarchy, injustice, and inequality in culture and the social world into a new type of high quality scholarship.

The aim of this course is to develop students’ interest and insights into perspectives and ap­proaches in the social sciences and humanities which have the potential for meeting such scholarly demands, and their ability to critically relate to current debate and scholarly development in relevant themes and fields of inquiry. The basic assumption framing the course on this level is that we now live (and have lived for centuries) in a world of entangled and shared history and development – a world in which gender was and is in­evitably entan­gled with other social and symbolic phenomena and constructions, a world in which change in the social and the symbolic order is inevitably interwoven, a world in which local, regional, and national “stories” are part of the global and can be understood only in a global perspec­tive.

From this point of departure and in developing and debating this assumption, the course fo­cuses on the construction, problems, possibilities, and “points of juncture” be­tween major “schools” of comparative and integrative thinking in the humanities and social sciences and selected rele­vant and promising themes in Women’s and Gender Studies. The seminar group will work with some of the foundational texts introducing integrative, rela­tional, and comparative perspectives into the so­cial sciences and the humanities and will bring these texts into dialogue with some of the most sharply formulated writing in Gender Studies.

The first part of the course is devoted to the introduction and criti­cal debate of theo­reti­cal, epistemological, and methodological perspectives on comparison and integration and the implica­tions of these perspectives for current developments in the humanities and social sciences, including Gender Studies. While strongly focusing on theoretical (and methodo­logical) literature and debate related to this theme, we will also read and work with a limited number of examples (“masterpieces”) of comparative and integrative research in the social sciences and humanities. These examples will be closely analyzed and will serve to exemplify central themes and issues in the more general theo­retical and methodological debate.

The second and more extensive part of the course focuses on a critical examination of major trends and approaches as well as important themes and fields in comparative and integra­tive re­search in Gender Studies. In this part, in each unit we will first learn about and examine research examples of critical importance. We will then ‘go back’ to more theoretical and general writings re­lated to the approaches and fields exemplified through these research examples. Finally, we will use what we have learned here for developing our wider perspec­tives on the integra­tive and compara­tive perspectives in the humanities and social sciences built in the first part of the course.

Students are required to engage (orally and in writing) in critical debate of the (short) lec­tures and the required reading. In addition, they will develop critical readings of their own field of studies through the lens of comparative and integrative approaches and will present their related ideas as well as additional readings of strategic importance in developing these ideas (to be dis­trib­uted and read in addition to the required reading indicated below prior to presentation by all stu­dents) for discussion in class. Each unit consists of two sessions, scheduled for a late-morning session and an early-morning session in the following week. In the late-morning session the general theme of the unit is introduced through a short lecture by the instructor, questions and discussion related to the lec­ture, (short) presentations of stu­dents relating their Ph.D. topic to the unit theme, and an introduc­tion to the required read­ing by the instructor. The early-morning session in the following week is intro­duced by a problem-oriented student comment to the required reading and the discus­sion of these readings (and addi­tional readings as suggested and distributed by the students in the previous week).

Topics and required reading

Unit 1 – 24 September:

Introduction

Required reading:

Fernando Coronil, Beyond Occidentalism: Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories. In: Cultural Anthropology 11 (1996), 51-87.

Uma Narayan, Dislocating Cultures. Identities, Traditions, And Third World Feminism, Routledge 1997, 41-117, 195-209.

I. Comparative and integrative perspectives in the

Humanities and the Social Sciences

Unit 2 – 1 October:

Why integration – which integration ?

Required reading:

Dipesh Chakrabarty, Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for “Indian” pasts? In: Representations 37 (1992), 1-26

Walter D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Princeton University Press, 49-126

Youngs, Gillian,‘Feminist International Relations: A Contradiction in Terms? Or why Women and Gender are Essential to Understanding the World ‘we’ Live in.’ In: International Affairs, 80 (2004) 1, 75-87.

 
Unit 3 – 8 October: Why comparison – which comparison ?

Required reading:

Chris Lorenz, Beyond Good and Evil? The German Empire of 1871 and Modern German Historiography. In: Journal of Contemporary History 30 (1995) 4, 729-765.

Frederik Cooper, Race, Ideology and the Perils of Comparative History. In: American His­torical Review 101 (1996), 1122-1138.

Peng Cheah, Grounds of Comparison. In: Diacritics 29 (1999) 4, 2-18.

Unit 4 – 15 October: Doing comparison
Required reading:

A.A. van den Braembusche, Historical Explanation and Comparative Method: Towards a Theory of the History of Society. In: History and Theory 28 (1989), 1-24 (please read 9-24).

Theda Skocpol with Margaret Somers, The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry. In: Theda Skocpol, Social Revolutions in the Modern World, Cambridge University Press 1994, 72-95.

Linda Gordon, Black and White Visions of Welfare: Women’s Welfare Activism 1890-1945. In: The Journal of American History 78 (1991), 559-590.

No class on Monday 22 October due to CEU special day-off

Unit 5 – 29 October:

Doing integration

Required reading:

Steven Feierman, African Histories and the Dissolution of World Histories. In: Robert H. Bates, V.Y. Mudimbe, Jean O’Barr (eds), Africa and the Disciplines: The Contribu­tions of Research in Africa to the Social Sciences and Humanities, Chicago, London, University of Chicago Press 1993, 167-212.

Claire Midgley, Anti-slavery and the Roots of ‘Imperial Feminism’. In: Claire Midgley (ed.), Gender and Imperialism, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 161-179.

Frederick Cooper, Decolonialization and African Society. The Labor Question in French and British Africa, Cambridge University Press, 361-386, 432-472.

II. Key issues in integrative and comparative Gender Studies

Unit 6 – 5 November:

Entangled categories : gender, class, “race,” and place in the dynamics of social con­flict

Required reading:

Eileen Boris, Angélique Janssens, Complicating Categories: An Introduction. In: Interna­tional Re­view of Social History. Supplement 7 44 (1999) “Complicating Categories: Gender, Class, Race and Ethnicity”. Ed. Eileen Boris, Angélique Janssens, 1-13.

Don Kalb, Expanding Class. Power and Everyday Politics in Industrial Communities, the Netherlands, 1850-1950, 1-24, 235-285, 281-286, 315-316

Leslie McCall, The Complexity of Intersectionality. In: Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society 30 (2005) 3, 1771-1800.

Unit 7 – 12 November:

Labor, paid and unpaid : the hidden connection

Required reading:

Claudia v. Werlhof, Production Relations Without Wage Labor and Labor Division by Sex. In: Re­view 7 (1983), 315-359.

Lourdes Bener í a, Maria S. Floro, Labour Market Informalization, Gender and Social Protec­tion: Reflec­tions on Poor Urban Households in Bolivia and Ecuador. In: Shireen Hassim, Shahra Razavi (eds), Gender and Social Policy in a Global Context: Uncov­ering the Gendered Structure of ‘the Social,’ Palgrave Macmillan, Houndsmills etc. 2006, 193-216.

Alice Kessler-Harris, Reframing the History of Women’s Wage Labor: Challenges of a global Perspective. In: Journal of Women’s History 15 (2004) 4, 187-205.

Unit 8 – 19 November:

Legal constructions : reproduction into rights?

Required reading:

Michelle Stanworth, Birth Pangs: Conceptive Technologies and the Threat to Motherhood. In: Marianne Hirsch, Evelyn Fox Keller (eds.), Conflicts in Feminism, Routledge 1990, 288-304.

Nidevita Menon, Rights, Bodies and the Law. Rethinking Feminist Politics of Justice. In: Nide­vita Menon (ed.), Gender and Politics in India, Oxford University Press 1999, 262-295.

Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, The Body as Property. A Feminist Revision. In: Faye D. Gins­burg, Rayna Rapp, Conceiving a New World Order, University of Califor­nia Press 1995, 387-405.

Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Global Prescriptions. Gendering Health and Human Rights, London, New York, Zed Books, 1-30.

Unit 9 – 26 November:

Women’s struggle for change : comparative and integrative perspectives

Required reading:

Nancy A. Hewitt, Re-Rooting American Women’s Activism: Global Perspectives on 1848. In: Patricia Grimshaw et al. (eds), Women’s Rights and Human Rights: International Per­spec­tives, Houndsmills, New York, Palgrave 2001, 123-137.

Beatriz M. Pesquera and Denise A. Segura, There is No Going Back. Chicanas and Femi­nism. In: Alma M. Garcia (ed.), Chicana Feminist Thought. The Basic Historical Writings, Routledge 1997, 294-309.

Sherna Berger Gluck, with Maylei Blackwell, Sharon Cotrell, and Karen S. Harper, Whose Femi-nism, Whose History? Reflections on Excavating the History of (the) U.S. Women’s Movement(s). In: Nancy A. Naples (ed.), Community Activism and Feminist Politics. Organizing Across Race, Class, and Gender, Routledge 1998, 31-56.

Angela Woollacott, Inventing Commonwealth and Pan-Pacific Feminism: Australian Women’s Internationalist Activism in the 1920s-30s. In: Gender and History 10 (1998) 3, 425-448.

Unit 10 – 3 December:

Citizenship : tensions of the sub- and the supranational

Required reading:

Uday Mehta, Liberal Strategies of Exclusion. In: Frederick Cooper, Ann Stoler (eds), Ten­sions of Empire. Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, University of California Press 1997, 59-86.

Donna J. Guy, “White Slavery,” Citizenship, and Nationality in Argentina. In: Inderpal Gre­wal, Caren Kaplan (eds), An Introduction to Women’s Studies. Gender in a Transnational World, McGrawHill 2002, 196-199.

Jean Elisabeth Pedersen, “Special Customs.” Paternity Suits and Citizenship in France and the Colonies, 1870-1912. In: Frances Gouda, Julia Clancy-Smith (eds), Domesticating the Empire. Race, Gender, and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism, Uni­versity Press of Virginia 1998, 65-82.

Constantin Iordachi, The Unyielding Boundaries of Citizenship: The Emancipation of ‚Non-Citizens‘ in Romania, 1866-1918. In: European Review of History 8 (2001) 2, 157-186.

Unit 11 – 10 December:

Human rights : women’s struggles and global interventionism

Anne Orford, Reading Humanitarian Intervention. Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law, Cambridge University Press 2005, 38-71, 158-185.

Isabella R. Gunning, Arrogant Perception, World-Travelling and Multicultural Feminism: The Case of Female Genital Surgeries. In: Columbia Human Rights Law Review 23 (1992) 2, 189-248.

Fiona Robinson, Globalizing Care: Ethics, Feminist Theory, and International Relations, Westview Press 1999, 137-168.

Unit 12 – Make-up class for 22 October; schedule TBA

Relating global and gender hierarchies : beyond the East-West divide in Central Eastern European Gender Studies

Required reading:

József Böröcz, Goodness is Elsewhere: The Rule of European Difference. In: Comparative Studies in Society and History 48 (2006) 1, 110138

Laura Nader, Orientalism, Occidentalism and the Control of Women. In: Cultural Dynamics II/3 (1989), 323-355.

Lisa Rofel, Liberation Nostalgia and a Yearning for Modernity. In: Christina K. Gilmartin et. al. (eds), Engendering China. Women, Culture, and the State , Harvard University Press 1994, 250-249, 426-429.

Requirements

Reading and discussion of all required reading is of pivotal importance for this Ph.D. course. Students are therefore required to carefully prepare for class by dealing, on different levels, with the literature listed above. By the end of the fifth week students shall propose in writing (1 – 2 pages) a topic and an outline of their seminar paper. Partici­pation in all ses­sions is manda­tory.

The final grade will be calculated from:

- The seminar paper (20 – 25 pages): 40%.

- Written and oral summaries of the weekly required reading, based on problem-oriented perspectives on the reading (and when appropriate with a focus on its relation to the theme of the stu­dent’s Ph.D. project): 30%.

- Active participation in all other elements of the course in and beyond class: 30%.

Students have to achieve a positive evaluation in each of these three areas.