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Academic Year 2005/2006

Gender in South Asian Contexts
WMST 304 SP
Crosslistings:
ANTH 304

This course will use interdisciplinary and transnational feminist frameworks to examine gender relations in South Asia and in South Asian diasporic communities (especially in the United States and Britain). We will begin by examining the colonial and nationalist histories of gender within South Asian contexts and then look at how these histories shape postcolonial gender relations and feminist activism in various locations. We will look at South Asian/diasporic women's struggles over laws, rights, environment, land, labor, community, reproduction, immigration, sexuality, violence, and representation, among other things. Our approach will be intersectional in that we will explore how gender relations and feminist struggles are defined in and through class, race, sexualities, and religion, for example. We will draw upon a variety of feminists texts, including theories, ethnographies, film, and fiction.

MAJOR READINGS

Lata Mani, Partha Chatterjee, Urvashi Butalia, Ayesha Jalal, Kumari Jayawardena, Malathi de Alwis, Valentin Moghadam, Bina Agarwal, Vandana Shiva, Naila Kabeer, Ritu Menon, Rita Kumar, Amrita Basu, Inderpal Grewal, Kamala Visweswaran, Sunaina Maira, Gayatri Gopinath, Vijay Prashad, Karen Leonard, Shamita Dasgupta, Lavina Shankar, Bharati Mukherjee, and others; films by Gurinder Chadha, Pratibha Parmar, Indu Krishnan, Deepa Dhanraj, Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta, and others.

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Several papers.

COURSE FORMAT: Seminar

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS WMST    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-30-2006

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