Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Courses/BrunellFeministThought/Course description

Course description
from the course syllabus, Dr. Laura Brunell

Purpose

To learn to use gender and gendered experience as analytical lenses through which we view social relations, attempt to solve political dilemmas and seek social justice. In our survey, we will touch upon many approaches to gender and sexuality including: functionalism/conservatism, liberalism, Marxism, existentialism, radical feminism, post-modernism, third wave feminism and queer theory.

Some questions we will explore include: How does looking at a problem from a feminist or gender-informed point of view alter the project of “doing theory?”  What is feminism? Are you a feminist? Can men be feminists? Can feminist theories be used to emancipate men? What are the natures of sex/gender and sex/gender difference? Is sex/gender socially constructed or biologically determined or both? Is biology itself a social construct? What does it mean to say that gender and sexuality exist on a continuum rather than as a dichotomy? What was the nature of sex relations in a state of nature? Is there such a thing as a “state of nature?” How have gender roles in reproduction and family affected women’s and men’s roles in the economy and politics? How have women’s and men’s roles in the family affected the conceptualization of rights, i.e., what rights are necessary and from whom/what do they afford protection? Can individual rights as construed by liberal theorists provide for women’s emancipation? Is the framework provided by human rights more helpful for attaining women’s emancipation and empowerment? How are gender identities mediated by our other class, race, or ethnically-based identities? What is intersectionality and how is it useful for building a more just world? What distinguishes First, Second and Third Wave feminism from each other? What’s different about Third Wave feminism? What would a gender just world look like?

United States Education Program

As a class, we will be participating in Wikipedia's United States Education Program. This is an exciting opportunity for us to improve upon Wikipedia entries related to feminism, feminist theory and the biographies of feminist theorists as well as inserting feminist or gendered critiques to mainstream entries. Students will choose from the following Working Groups in order to be grouped together and be sorted into working groups with others with similar interests. Together, you will research your subject(s) and theorists important to shaping it. In some cases, the working group will be developing a feminist critique of a mainstream political theory or approach to social theory.

The work will begin by reading the entries found in other encyclopedias, i.e., The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and others and then fanning out to other on-line information, journal articles and books. Our understanding of the subjects will be enhanced and complemented by the readings and discussions we have in class.

Each Working Group will produce a report critiquing the existing Wikipedia entries on your subject and theorists and suggesting improvements. The critique should not only point on the shortcomings of the entries but also enumerate their strengths, where they seem to be correct, complete, to rely on the correct sources, etc. The reports should conclude with a suggested revised version of all or parts of the entries. Suggested length: 10 pages. The Working Group need not choose all of the associated terms or theorists. They are just suggestions. We will zero in on which entries/theorists the group will work on once the groups are established and the number of group members is known.

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