Fall: Wednesdays, 5:30 - 8:30 pm ~ September 6 - December 13, 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, formulating new ways of asking questions and redefining the relationship between subjects and objects of study. The course will focus on methodology, i.e., the theory and analysis of how research should proceed. We shall be especially attentive to epistemological issues--pre-suppositions about the nature of knowledge. What makes research distinctively feminist lies in the complex connections between epistemologies, methodologies and research methods? We shall explore how these connections are formed in the traditional disciplines and raise questions about why they are inadequate and/or problematic for feminist inquiry and what, specifically, are the feminist critiques of these intersections.
MODHUMITA ROY is associate professor of English and Director of the undergraduate Women's Studies program at Tufts University.
JILL McLEAN TAYLOR, Ed.D. is associate professor of Education and Women's Studies at Simmons College, and chair of Women's Studies. She is also the project coordinator of GEAR UP, a six-year partnership between Simmons, Suffolk, and the English High School. She is co-author with Carol Gilligan and Amy Sullivan of Between Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationship , and co-editor with Carol Gilligan and Janie Ward of Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Women's Thinking to Psychological theory and Education .
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