Courses

Feminist Inquiry: Strategies of Effective Scholarship

Spring: Tuesdays, 5:30–8:30 p.m., February 1– May 2, 2006

This course investigates theories and practices of feminist inquiry across a range of disciplines. Doing feminist research involves rethinking disciplinary assumptions and methodologies, developing new understandings of what counts as knowledge, seeking alternative ways of understanding the origins of problems/issues, and redefining the relationship between subjects and objects of study. Discussions in this course will focus on how to identify and listen to the silences within traditional analyses and how to correct the partial and distorted accounts that such silencing has allowed.
As feminist scholarship has developed over the last thirty-odd years, it has become increasingly clear that the practice of feminist inquiry is inherently interdisciplinary. We aim to promote the development of feminist theory and methods by providing a forum for sharing and assessing strategies used by feminist scholars in an array of fields from history and philosophy to political science and evolutionary biology.

Debra Renee Kaufman is director of Jewish studies, professor of sociology and Matthews Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University. She is the author of Achievement and Women (with Barbara Richardson, The Free Press), Rachel’s Daughters (Rutgers University Press), and special editor of Women, Research and the Holocaust (Contemporary Jewry). Her current writing, research, and interest are on post-Holocaust Jewish identity.

Caroline Bicks, professor of English at Boston College specializing in the study of early modern literature and culture, and the history of medicine. Her research interests include women and performance, midwifery, and the construction of sex and gender.

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Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 14N-211
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Phone: 617-324-2085