Whose Story Gets Told? Critical Perspectives on Social Movements and Their Relation to Intersectional Gender Studies

Aim

On completion of the course, the student should, at an advanced level within the field, be able to:

• demonstrate a broad knowledge and critical understanding of different feminist epistemologies, ontologies and ethics
• demonstrate a broad knowledge and critical understanding of historiographies of the field and analyse these from an intersectional perspective by taking into account local differences, different temporalities, and global diversity
• analyze and critically examine how the stories told about feminism and its pasts influence the kind of theoretical and political work that can be done now and in the future
• demonstrate an understanding of the role of various social movements in the emergence of the academic field of intersectional gender studies and connect these to contemporary research debates

Content

This course examines the role played by a range of social movements in the emergence of contemporary intersectional gender studies. This course will highlight the context in which these movements gained momentum and reflect on the conditions that facilitated their visibility. It frames these empirical examples/case studies with a critical theoretical attention to what storytelling does. Specifically, it will examine how the stories told about feminism and its pasts influence the kind of theoretical and political work that can be done now and in the future by gender studies scholars and activists.