French 351QU - Courses on Women and Gender: 'Une Philosophe, Qu'est-ce? Thinking with French Women Philosophers from Simone de Beauvoir to Catherine Malabou'

This course focuses on French women writers of philosophy. We start with the existentialism of Simone de Beauvoir, author of the founding text of second wave feminism, Le deuxième sexe. We'll consider écriture féminine with the French Feminism triad Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, as an antecedent of contemporary écriture inclusive. After exploring Barbara Cassin's project to define philosophical terms multilingually, we'll have a special focus on Catherine Malabou whose meditation on plasticity resonates with the gender fluidity of our time and whose recent study of anarchism offers a new critique of domination.

Prereq: Two of the following courses: FREN-215, FREN-219, FREN-225.