Women,Gender,Sexuality Studies 691B - S-Issues in Feminist Research

This is a graduate seminar in feminist research, and constitutes a core course for students enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies. Feminism has long been interested in a foundational way in questions of epistemology (how we know what we know) and research methodology (how we go about developing original research), because in its most recent incarnations, post-1968, it emerged as an academic formation that asked basic questions about disciplines: how did they invent a world without women? How was systemic bias built into its knowledge systems such that they made women, people of color, working class people, people outside the US and Europe (?the West,? as it came to be called, through an Orientalist bit of geographic folly), peasants, slaves, indigenous people, colonized people, (most) queers, trans folk and a great many others invisible? Obviously, in this endeavor feminists had help from many other fields and activist movements, which worked together across disciplines and movements to transform knowledge. In many ways, they won?no discipline or field of study is unchanged or untouched by these inquiries, although some are obviously more resistant than others. As this is a required course for graduate students enrolled in the Advanced Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies, those students have priority for enrollment.