Moral Politics
Moral Politics
GWS 605
Graduate Seminar
Dr. Adam Geary
Gender & Women’s Studies Dept.
Course Description:
This course engages the problems of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘power’ through the theme of ‘morality,’ starting from the later essays of the French theorist, Michel Foucault. While the terms of morality and ethics are often used in religion and the study of religion, this course will focus on how they appear in progressive and feminist analyses more broadly. In other words, we will examine how ‘the moral’ and ‘the ethical’ are understood to function in the production of subjectivity, sociality, and critique, beyond the study of religion.
•What does it mean to say that certain scientific, medical and social norms are “moralistic,” rather than objective?
•What are the relationships between morality and theories of society, economy, and governance?
•How do moral norms and ethical practices affect formations of gender, sexuality, race and nation, particularly under conditions of economic neoliberalism?
•What do moralities feel like for those within, outside of, and proximate to their norms?
•Are ethics fundamentally religious, or are there non-religious ethical form(ul)ations?
•How do pietistic or ethical practices challenge the concepts and experiences of subjectivity?