Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University of Missouri, Columbia/Understanding Intersectionality (Spring 2024)

In this course, we consider the historical and contemporary concepts and practices of several episodes in the U.S. and global world, relevant to movements toward feminist ideas and gender discourse. More importantly, this course will investigate how an intersectional perspective deepens an understanding of power within these contexts. Though readings will be drawn from a variety of disciplines, the course highlights the intellectual tradition of U.S. and transnational feminisms. Therefore, the course readings, drawing from primary sources, life stories and scholarly essays, investigates how people themselves make sense of their experiences in order to show how people not only imagined, but also applied liberatory practices. As we explore these, we examine the shifting understandings of social movements, of gender, and of activism. In our study, we will ask what is the theory of change imagined in each case study? How is resistance and liberation understood, and how is a movement constituted? Who is the subject of liberation and of the “social,” and how is difference imagined? An assumption in this course is that these are open questions, and that our own agency in shaping our futures derives from how we contribute to the ongoing mutability of gender, race, class, ability and sex. Furthermore, we will deepen our digital literacy skills with the help of the Wiki Education program.