Jana Sawicki's Course Offerings for '03-'04

PHIL 225(F) Introduction to Feminist Thought

This course provides an introduction to feminist thought through readings of seminal feminist texts from the Enlightenment to the present. Special attention will be given to feminist revisions (including those by woman of color) of traditional and contemporary emancipatory theories such as liberalism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, and queer theory as well as transnational feminism. Authors read include the following: Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alexandra Kollantai, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, Emma Goldman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Adrienne Rich, Marilyn Frye, Gloria Anzaldua, Audre Lorde, Catherine MacKinnon, Judith Butler, Iris Young, Nancy Fraser, Gayatri Spivak, and Chandra Mohanty. We conclude the course with an exploration of the wide range of feminist analyses of issues concerning prostitution and pornography. Format: discussion. Requirements: several 2-page essays, one 4-page essay, one 6-page essay (including a draft) and participation in in-class exercises including short oral presentations. Prerequisite: Women's and Gender Studies 101, or Philosophy 101, or permission of instructor. Enrollment limit: 19 (expected: 10). This course is part of the Critical Reasoning and Analytical Skills initiative.

In this sophomore tutorial, students will read selections from an array of texts by and about this important French existential philosopher and feminist including autobiographical writings, interviews, and biographical essays. The centerpieces of the course will be readings of her philosophical essays, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and her groundbreaking analysis of the situation of woman in The Second Sex published just after World War II. We explore her relationship to the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, her life-long companion, her concept of situated freedom, her analysis of woman as the inessential Other of man, and the ethics and politics of existentialism. Other readings include, Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew and Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks. Students work in pairs and write and present five-page essays every other week on an assigned paper topic. On non-writing weeks students comment orally on their partners' essays. Format: tutorial. Evaluation will be based on written work, oral presentations of essays, and oral critiques. Prerequisite: one course in philosophy or one course in women's and gender studies. Enrollment limit: 10 (expected: 10). Preference given to sophomores who are potential majors in either Philosophy or Women's and Gender Studies.