Syllabus
Mandatory literature:
BRYSON, V. Feminist Political Theory. An introduction (2nd ed.). London: Palgrave Macmilan, 2003. ISBN 0-333-94568-9. Selected chapters.
TONG, R. Feminist Thought. A More Comprehensive Introduction. Philadelphia: Westview Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-8133-4841-4. Selected chapters.
Recommended literature: BOCK, G. (2002). Women in European History (A. Brown, Trans.). London: Wiley. ISBN 978-0631191452. Selected chapters.
NAGL-DOCEKAL, H. (2004). Feminist Philosophy (K. Vester, Trans.). London & New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0813365718. Selected chapters.
Annotation
The course aims to familiarize students with fundamental concepts and argumentation of feminist thinking. The focus is mainly on clarifying the commonalities and differences in first-wave and second-wave debates. Therefore the interconnections with dominant ideologies of 19th and 20th centuries – liberalism and socialism – are explored in detail. Furthermore, it focuses on theoretical contributions of second-wave radical feminism as it analyzed and conceptualized existing gender order. The last segment of the course aims to provide students with a framework for understanding the performativity of gender as well as to recapitulate various understandings of gender as they were discussed in the course. The course aims to elucidate various theoretical explanations of the determinants of gender inequality and their normative underpinnings. Topics
1. Feminism, feminist thinking, feminist theories
2. Enlightenment feminism and French Revolution
3. Liberal feminism in the 19th century
4. Socialist feminism in the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century
5. National feminist canons and their decolonization
6. Simone de Beauvoir
7. Liberal feminism in the second half of the 20th century
8. Radical feminism in the second half of the 20th century
9. Marxist and socialist feminism in the second half of the 20th century
10. Critiques of heteronormativity and whiteness in feminism in the second half of the 20th century
11. Poststructuralist approaches to power
12. Gender as performative
13. Gender as theoretical concept