Full syllabus available for download here.

In-class presentations of required readings are part of the course requirements. You can sign up for the presentations via this google form.

Course schedule

Week 1 (February 18) Introduction

No required reading.

I. Vulnerable and precarious lives

Week 2 (February 25)

Butler, J. (2009). Frames of war : when is life grievable? London & New York: Verso. Introduction: Precarious life, grievable life (pp. 1 – 32).

Week 3 (March 4)

Carastathis, A. (2015). the politics of austerity and the affective economy of hostility: racialised gendered violence and crises of belonging in Greece. Feminist Review(109), 73-95. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/fr.2014.50

Lorey, I. (2015). State of insecurity : government of the precarious. London & New York: Verso. The government of the precarious: an introduction (pp. 1 – 15).

Week 4 (March 11)

Farris, S. R. (2012). Femonationalism and the “regular” army of labor called migrant women. History of the Present, 2(2), 184-199. doi:10.5406/historypresent.2.2.0184

Lorey, I. (2015). State of insecurity : government of the precarious. London & New York: Verso. Chapter 3: Welfare state and immunization (pp. 41 – 61).

II. Anti-gender thinking and movements

Week 5 (March 18)

Scott, J. W. (2013). The uses and abuses of gender. Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies, 16(1), 63-77. doi:10.5117/TVGEND2013.1.SCOT.

Paternotte, D., & Kuhar, R. (2017). The anti-gender movement in comparative perspective. In R. Kuhar & D. Paternotte (Eds.), Anti-gender campaigns in Europe : mobilizing against equality (pp. 253 - 276). Lanham & New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Week 6 (March 25)

Kuhar, R. (2015). Playing with science: Sexual citizenship and the Roman Catholic Church counter-narratives in Slovenia and Croatia. Women's Studies International Forum, 49, 84-92. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.07.005

Case, M. A. (2016). The role of the popes in the invention of complementarity and the Vatican’s anathematization of gender. Religion & Gender, 10(10). doi:10.18352/rg.10124. Retrieved from: https://www.religionandgender.org/articles/abstract/10.18352/rg.10124/

Week 7 (April 1)

Korolczuk, E., & Graff, A. (2018). Gender as “ebola from Brussels” : the anticolonial frame and the rise of illiberal populism. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 43(4), 797-821. doi:10.1086/696691

III. Misogyny, sexual objectification and emancipation

Week 8 (April 8)

Manne, K. (2017). Down girl : the logic of misogyny. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chapter 1: Threatening women (pp. 31 - 34); Chapter 2: Ameliorating misogyny (pp. 55 - 76); Chapter 3: Discriminating sexism (pp. 77 - 105).

Week 9 (April 15)

Bauer, N. (2015). How to do things with pornography. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press. Chapter 1: Pornutopia (pp. 1 – 12); Chap. 2: Lady Power (pp. 12 – 21); Chap. 4: Beauvoir on the Allure of Self-Objectification (pp. 38 – 52).

(April 22) No class. Easter Monday.

Week 10 (April 29)

Scott, J. W. (2012). The vexed relationship of emancipation and equality. History of the Present, 2(2), 148-168. doi:10.5406/historypresent.2.2.0148

IV. Choice feminism vs. feminism as practice of freedom

Week 11 (May 6)

Gill, R., & Orgad, S. (2017). Confidence culture and the remaking of feminism. New Formations(91), 16-34. doi:10.3898/NEWF:91.01.2017

Budgeon, S. (2015). Individualized femininity and feminist politics of choice. European Journal of Women's Studies, 22(3), 303-318. doi:10.1177/1350506815576602

Week 12 (May 13)

Milan Women's Bookstore Collective. (1990). Sexual difference : a theory of social-symbolic practice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Selection.

Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Chap. 24 (pp. 175 – 181), chap. 25 (pp. 181 – 187), chap. 34 (pp. 243 – 247).

Arendt, H. (1961). What is freedom? In Between past and future : six exercises in political thought (pp. 143-171). New York: The Viking Press. Selection.

Week 13 (May 20)

Zerilli, L. M. G. (2005). Feminism and the abyss of freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 3: Feminists make promises : The Milan Collective´s Sexual Difference and the project of world-building (pp. 93 – 123).

Syllabus can be subject to change during the semester.