WGS Courses

WGST 310.01 - - (same as ENGL 404.03)
GENDER AND SOCIOPOLITICAL ACTIVISM
IN 20th CENTURY FEMINIST UTOPIAS
T-R-- 1:00-2:30
MAIN 010
Professor Sarker

SYLLABUS/READINGS

THE COURSE:
‘ U-topia’ means ‘a place (topos) that doesn’t exist’ and ‘Eu-topia’ means ‘a good place.’
Implicit as well as explicit in much of the 20th century’s feminist critical analysis of the state of society and its politics is a desire for a better state yet-to-be (utopia) as well as a fear of catastrophe or nightmare (dystopia). This course investigates how women's literary writing from different parts of the world (Bangladeshi, English, African-American, to name a few) produce visions of the present and the future, of the real and the imagined, beliefs about masculinity and femininity, socialist and capitalist philosophies, modernity, the environment (ecotopia), and various technologies including cybergenetics. Writers included are Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Suniti Namjoshi, and Marge Piercy. Literary, political, and philosophical theories—such as those of Seyla Benhabib, Donna Haraway, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas More, Paula Moya, Gayatri Spivak, Alexis de Tocqueville, Virginia Woolf—will inform our readings. The collection of texts is intended also to provides us with genealogies to construct as well as analyze our own fantasies of sociopolitical change.

REQUIRED TEXTS:
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale.
Butler, Octavia. Adulthood Rites.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland.
Hossain, Rokeya Sakhawat. Sultana’s Dream. The Feminist
Press, 1988.
Piercy, Marge. Woman on the Edge of Time. Fawcett Book Group,
1985.

Some previous readings (in supplementary extracts) have included the following:
Benhabib, Seyla, ed. Democracy and Difference.
Cavendish, Margaret. Blazing World.
De Tocqueville. On Democracy, Revolution, and Society.
Donaldson, Laura. “The Eve of De-struction”.
Doskow, Minna. “Herland: Utopia in a Different Voice”. In Politics, Gender, and the Arts.
Dyck, Noel. Indigenous Peoples and the Nation-State.
Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere” in Habermas and the Public Sphere.
________. Unruly Practices.
Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan.
Maciunas, Billie. “Feminist Epistemology in Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time”.
Mohanty, Chandra, and Jacqui M. Alexander. Introduction from Feminist Genealogies, Colonial
Legacies, Democratic Futures More, Thomas. Utopia.
Moya, Paula. “Postmodernism, ‘Realism’, and the Politics of Identity: Cherrie Moraga and Chicana
Feminism” in Feminist Genealogies.
Rudy, Kathy. “Ethics, Reproduction, Utopia: Gender and Childbearing in Woman on the Edge of Time.”
Silbergleid, Robin. “Women, Utopia, and Narrative: Toward a Postmodern Feminist Citizenship.”
Spivak, Gayatri. “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing
Historiography” in Selected Subaltern Studies.
Tomc, Sandra. “The Missionary Position: Feminism and Nationalism in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale”.
Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas.
Zaki, Hoda. “Utopia, Dystopia, and Ideology in the Science Fiction of Octavia Butler”.