Right, Barrie!

'Feminism' -- along with 'hippie' for some reason -- remains a dirty word in many places for lots of different reasons, too, many out of ignorance, many arcane, some ideological.

'Philosophy of Gender' worked where I am, since on the one side Administration was recommending 'mainstreaming' gender studies (which was meant to obviate any need to have special courses or programmes of study in the subject) -- and so points were gained in an amorphous way for featuring gender in the programme, while on the other hand my colleagues didn't want women's concerns dealt with as philosophy at all -- so that as soon as there was a rush of interest from students to enroll, it stopped being selected and actually run from the overall course offerings of the department.

Anyway, in that sort of environment the syllabi I sent Talia worked very well. Too well for the taste of misogynists, in fact.  You can't have everything.

Helen


________________________________
 From: Barrie Karp <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2013 10:42 PM
Subject: Re: introductory essay on feminist theory/philosophy recommendations
 






On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 6:33 PM, Barrie Karp <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

times have changed, things are so different among students we may encounter, especially if there is a big generation gap and also regarding technology, devices in the classroom, Internet, resistance to reading and attention, etc., maybe this is just my experience because I don't generally get students who study philosophy these days . . . 
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>Last year the best students were especially excited to discover writings by Drucilla Cornell.  (Best students: they read everything and more -- very rare in my current encounters unfortunately).
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>One never knows what to expect.
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>The myths and stereotypes about feminism come out rather quickly in classrooms, one hardly needs to devise.
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>The Frye article mentioned, "Sexism," works best if taught with the first article in the book, "Oppression," and in reverse order can be good to try, but always emphasize how interlocked they are -- and do imaginary re-write where obvious improvements to these sturdy texts could be made.  Though they disagree in key ways, these texts go well with, have seeds of, basic Judith Butler.  I start my basic course with those two Frye essays and Butler (plus some category deconstruction from Lloyd and Louis Armstrong) and go right into antiracist feminism from there.  
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>Since I was not permitted to use the word feminism in a course title long ago when I invented what became my core feminist theory course (teaching sometimes in non-traditional places for study of philosophy, such as humanities, liberal arts, or social sciences departments of art schools where most students just want to concentrate on their studio courses), I made the title Philosophy of the Sexes, which I soon changed to Philosophy of the Sexes & Racism -- and it remains so.
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>It's great to read this discussion, thanks for starting and developing it.
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>-- 
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>Barrie Karp, Ph.D., Philosophy
>[log in to unmask]
>New York City!
>

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