Please read the assigned texts before our synchronous class sessions. This includes the first day’s reading. If you join the class late, catch up as quickly as you can.
We will often move backward and forward in time as we work through concepts and movements, which means you are responsible for attending to dates of publication and considering which ideas authors may or may not have had access to. Pay attention to other contexts too: academic discipline, activist commitment, authorial voice.
Here are two articles on reading scholarship that you might find useful and interesting: Kyla Wazana Tompkins, “We Aren’t Here to Learn What We Already Know,” which describes best practices for deep reading; and Melissa Boone Brown, “How to Read for Grad School,” which discusses how to cope with seemingly-unmanageable reading loads.
Where readings are archived in spaces that require institutional access, links will take you directly to an authentication page where you can log in with your UMD ID. Installing this browser button may speed up your off-campus access. If you are using this syllabus for individual study and cannot access the texts, contact me (alothian at umd dot edu) and I will happily share files with you. If you are able to use institutional journal subscriptions, though, please do, as this helps authors to see that they are being read as well as supporting the work of journals publishing feminist and queer scholarship.
Week 1: 9/2
Setting Intentions and Collective Worldmaking
- Walidah Imarisha, “Introduction” to Octavia’s Brood (OB) (2015)
- Sara Ahmed, “Feminism is Sensational” and “A Killjoy Survival Kit” from Living a Feminist Life (2017)
- Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” (1973); N.K. Jemisin, “The Ones Who Stay and Fight.” (2018); P. H. Lee, “A House by the Sea” (2018).
- fiction content notes: child abuse, institutional violence
Opening reflection due: Monday 9/7 or the Monday after you join the class.
Unit 1: Foundational Critical Race Feminisms
Week 2: 9/9
Black Feminist Groundwork
- Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement” (1977);
- Interview with Barbara Smith by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (2017)
- Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Prophecy in the Present Tense: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee Pilgrimage, and Dreams Coming True” (2014).
- Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (1979), “The Uses of Anger” (1981) and “Poetry is Not a Luxury” (1977)
- Grace Kyungwon Hong, “The Future of Our Worlds: Black Feminism and the Politics of Knowledge in the University under Globalization” (2008)
- Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Evidence” (OB); Walidah Imarisha, “Black Angel” (OB)
- fiction content notes: institutional violence, police violence
Week 3: 9/16
Intersections and Interconnections
- Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex” (1989)
- “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” (1991)
- “And When You Leave, Take Your Pictures With You” section of Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrié Moraga (ed), This Bridge Called My Back (1981)
- AnaLouise Keating, “Beyond Intersectionality: Theorizing Interconnectivity With/In This Bridge Called My Back” from Transformation Now (2013)
- Jennifer Nash, “Introduction: Feeling Black Feminism” in Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality (2019)
- Dani McClain, “Homing Instinct” (OB); Autumn Brown, “Little and Bright” (OB)
- fiction content notes: institutional violence
Week 4: 9/23
Gendering
- Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of ‘Sex‘” (1975)
- Judith Butler, “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire,” from Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)
- Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book” (1987)
- Samuel R. Delany, “Aye, And Gomorrah” (1967); Octavia E. Butler, “Bloodchild” (1985)
- fiction content notes: medical and reproductive violence, body horror
Week 5: 9/30
Agency and Coloniality
- Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” (1984)
- Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988)
- Maria Lugones, Toward a Decolonial Feminism (2010)
- Saba Mahmood, “The Subject of Freedom” from Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (2005)
- Octavia Butler, “Amnesty” (2004); Aqdas Aftab, “Nuclear Disassociations” (2018)
- fiction content notes: suicide, sexual violence, child sex abuse, PTSD
First Assignment (Context) Due: Monday October 5
Unit 2: Queer and Trans Worldmaking
Week 6: 10/7
Queer / of Color Genealogies
- Lauren Berlant and Elizabeth Freeman, “Queer Nationality” (1992)
- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Queer and Now” (1994)
- Cathy Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” (1997)
- José Muñoz, “Introduction: Performing Disidentifications” from Disidentifications: Queer of Color Critique and the Performance of Politics (1999)
- Hiromi Goto, “Notes from Liminal Spaces” (2017)
Week 7: 10/14
Trans / of Color Genealogies
- Susan Stryker, “Transgender Studies: Queer Theory’s Evil Twin” (2004).
- C. Riley Snorton, Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (2017). Introduction and Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5.
- Jian Neo Chen, “Trans and Gender Nonconforming Digital Activisms and US Transnational Empire” from Trans Exploits: Trans of Color Cultures & Technologies in Movement (2019)
- Charlie Jane Anders, “Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue” (2017); An Owomela, “Three Points Masculine” (2016)
- fiction content notes: institutional violence, medical violence, transphobia
Week 8: 10/21
Transnational Queer/Trans Politics and Violence
- Jasbir Puar, The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017). Intro, postscript, and chapters 1, 2, and EITHER 3 or 4
- Ronak Kapadia, “Palestine(s) in the Sky: Visionary Aesthetics and Queer Cosmic Utopias from the Frontiers of US Empire” from Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War (2019)
- Bao Phi, “Revolution Shuffle” (OB); Mia Mingus, “Hollow” (OB);
- fiction content notes: institutional violence, ableism, medical violence
Week 9: 10/28
Justice and Care
- Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (2018)
- Hil Malatino, Trans Care (2020)
- Kai Cheng Thom, “I Hope We Choose Love: Notes on the Application of Justice” in I Hope We Choose Love (2019)
- Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, “Children Who Fly” (OB); Petra Kuppers, “Ice Bar” (2017)
- fiction content notes: ableism, child abuse, PTSD
Second Assignment (Vision) Due: Monday November 2
Unit 3: Knowledge, Otherwise
Week 10: 11/4
Producing Knowledge in the Wake
- Avery Gordon, “her shape and his hand” from Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (1997)
- Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016)
- Nisi Shawl, “Deep End” (2014)
Week 11: 11/11
Indigenous Knowledge and Radical Resistance
- Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” (2012)
- Leanne Betasomosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance (2017)
- Leanne Betasomosake Simpson, “Gezizhwazh” (2016); adrienne maree brown, “the river” (OB)
Week 12: 11/18
Inhabiting the University Otherwise
- Matt Brim, Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University (2020)
- la paperson, A Third University is Possible (2017)
- Kai Cheng Thom, “A School for Storytellers” in I Hope We Choose Love (2019); N.K. Jemisin, “Valedictorian” (2014)
Week 13: 11/25
Thanksgiving: No Class
Third Assignment (Affect) Due: Monday November 30
Week 14: 12/2
Coalition and Emergence
- Bernice Johnson Reagon, “Coalition Politics: Turning the Century” (1981)
- adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (2017)
- 2020 Allied Media Conference keynotes:
- Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Shobies’ Story” (1995)
Week 15: 12/9
Final Project Workshop
- Group preparation: read group members’ assignments.
Wednesday December 16: Final Projects, Closing Reflections, and Any Late Work Due