The intellectual and political field of "Transnational Feminisms," although almost instantly institutionalized from the moment of its articulation, is still very much a field-in-formation. There are a lot of ways to articulate its roots and relationships, but this course frames its interlocutors as feminist anthropology, ethnic studies, women’s studies, history (particularly subaltern studies and the emerging history of U.S. imperialism), and postcolonial studies. Hence, we will be reading "around" the field as much as in it, not so much with the goal of being exhaustive, but with an eye toward general trends and webs of relation.

Academe has trained us all to think of learning as a competitive affair. One scholar is right, another wrong; students compete against each other for the highest grade. In truth, though, all learning takes place in the context of intellectual communities--written, virtual, or face-to-face. Institutions of higher education like this afford us the privilege and pleasure of reading together and learning from each other. Our job in this seminar is to create an intellectual community, one in which we are all enriched by each others' readings of difficult material. And this is difficult material, without a doubt, which is why we need each other's help to read it well and try to understand how it can (or fails to) speak to our situation in the world. This imposes on each of us the responsibility of reading carefully, speaking up about our insights and questions, and listening respectfully to each other (which is not to say always agreeing).

To this end, it is the responsibility of each student to prepare for seminar by bringing to class two questions, comments, or areas of the reading they would like to discuss further. Or, alternately, bring questions, issues, newspaper clippings (preferably with copies) from outside the assigned readings that the course material helps us (or fails to help us) understand. One person will be chosen arbitrarily each week to start us off, and we will try to get to everyone's agenda. Some people hate this kind of thing, and find it makes them feel shy. This is who this policy is for. An intellectual community is as good as its most daunted member. Seminars are about talking.

Available at ASUA bookstore.

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen

Mary Renda, Taking Haiti

Dorothy Roberts, Shattered Bonds

1. Option one: Research

Class participation: 30%

Research paper: 70%

Research paper. Use the theoretical material in relation to something else, perhaps a thesis or dissertation topic. For example, you could the material on genital cutting in Africa to think about refugee cases in the U.S. related to African gay men and lesbians, or Spivak to think about the work of a particular NGO. If you write a research paper, it will be due May 16 by 5 pm.

class participation: 30%

response papers: 30%

final paper: 40%

3 response papers, related to the reading

2 pp paper--due Feb. 3

2 pp paper--due March 3

5 pp paper--due March 24

Final paper: 10 pp.

I would prefer everyone write a research paper, but am well aware that the course does not teach research, so some first year students may prefer another choice. Before you decide, though, remember that grad school is about original research, and you will have to figure it out sooner or later. However, this is the bailout option: you can write an overview essay drawing on several of the assigned reading, pulling them together to write a review or make an argument about a theoretical intervention. If you do this, the paper is due at the last scheduled meeting of the course, May 5.

You're expected to come to class. If you must miss a class, email the instructor. Two absences are a cause for concern. If you miss three or more classes, plan on meeting with me to discuss options related to making up the work, taking a grade reduction, or repeating the course.

Michael Ignatieff, "The American Empire: Get Used to It," New York Times Magazine (5 January, 2003): 22-27, 50-54.

Gayatri Spivak, "Cultural Talk in the 'Hot Peace,'" Robbins, ed. Cosmopolitics (1998)

Caren Kaplan and Inderpal Grewal, "Transnational Feminist Cultural Studies: Beyond the Marxism/Poststructuralism/Feminism Divides," in Kaplan, Norma Alarcón, and Minoo Moallem, eds. Between Woman and Nation: Nationalism, Transnational Feminisms, and the State

Miranda Joseph,

Gayatri Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271-313.

Gyan Prakash, "Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism," American Historical Review 99:5 (December 1, 1994): 1475-

Gayatri Spivak, "Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography," in Spivak and Ranajit Guha, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies (New York: Oxford, 1988)

Ann Stoler and Nicholas Cooper, "Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda," in Cooper and Stoler, Tensions of Empire (1997)

Ileana Rodríguez, "Reading Subalterns Across Texts, Disciplines, and Theories: From Representation to Recognition," in Rodríguez, The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader (Durham: Duke, 2001), 1-32.

Christine Walley, "Searching for 'Voices': Feminism, Anthropology, and the Global Debate over Female Genital Operations," Cultural Anthropology 12:3 (1997): 405-438.

Lynn Thomas, "'Ngaitana (I will circumcise myself),'" Gender and History 8:3 (April 1997):338-363.

Leslye Amede Obiora, "Bridges and Barricades: Rethinking Polemics and

Intransigence in the Campaign Against Female Circumcision," Case Western Reserve Law Review 47: 2 (Winter 1997): 275-378

Edward Said, from Orientalism

Melani McAlister, ch 1, conclusion in Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000 (California, 2001).

Ella Shohat, "Area Studies, Gender Studies, and Cartographies of Knowledge," Social Text 20.3 (2002) 67-78.

Chandra Mohanty, "Under Western Eyes"

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen (1993), Preface, Opening, chs. 1, 3, and 6

March 17--Spring Break

Amy Kaplan, "'Left Alone with America: The Absence of Empire in the Study of American Culture," in Kaplan and Donald Pease, Cultures of United States Imperialism (Duke,1993)

Oscar Campomanes, "1898 and the Nature of the New Empire," Radical History Review 73 (1999): 1-30.

Ann Laura Stoler, "Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies," Journal of American History 88:3 (December 2001): 829-873.

Mary Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2001), 3-181.

Donna Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs"

Banu Subramaniam, "The Aliens Have Landed: Reflections on the Rhetoric of Biological Invasions," Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 2:1 (2001): 26-40.

Warwick Anderson, "'Where Every Prospect Pleases and Only Man is Vile': Laboratory Medicine as Colonial Discourse," Critical Inquiry 18 (Spring 1992): 506-529.

David Gutiérrez, "Migration, Emergent Ethnicity, and the `Third Space': The Shifting Politics of Nationalism in Greater Mexico," Journal of American History 86:2 (September 1999): 481-519.

From Philip Deoria, Playing Indian "Counterculture Indians and the New Age"

Alicia Camacho, "Body Counts on the US-Mexico Border" (unpublished)

From Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: Asian American Cultural Politics, chs. 1, 7

Dorothy Roberts, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic, 2002).

Ramón Grosfoguel, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, and Chloé Georgas, "Beyond Nationalist and Colonialist Discourses: The Jaiba Politics of the Puerto Rican Ethno-Nation," in Puerto Rican Jam: Essays on Culture and Politics (Minnesota, 1997): 1-38.

Homi Bhabha, "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse"

Stuart Hall, "The Local and the Global" in Dangerous Liaisons

in-class research presentations