Courses

Feminist Inquiry

SPRING: Mondays, 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
February 2 - May 11, 2015
Meets at MIT, Building and Room TBD

 Feminist Inquiry is a seminar designed to investigate the conceptual frameworks that inform practices of feminist interrogation, critique, analysis, and research across a range of disciplines.  We will focus on epistemology and methodology:  the types of questions asked, the assumptions that serve as foundation, the frameworks that structure the method of inquiry, the values and power relations inherent in particular approached, and the criteria used to determine what constitutes knowledge.  Over the last 30 years, feminist epistemologists, theorists, and researchers have developed profound critiques of traditional constructions of Western knowledge and knowledge seeking. How are feminists to construct methods of inquiry that give voice to the multiply located perspectives of the marginalized without replicating the masculinist, racist, classist conceptual structures and methodologies that constitute traditional Western epistemologies?  Different questions require different modes of inquiry. In this seminar we will examine the various paths explored by feminist scholars.

FACULTY

Jo Trigilio received her Ph.D. (1996) and her MA (1993) in Philosophy from
the University of Oregon. She is the Director of the Graduate Program in
Gender and Cultural Studies at Simmons College, and holds a joint appointment in the departments of Women's and Gender Studies, and Philosophy. Trigilio specializes in oppression/liberation theories, including feminist and gender theories, race theories, sexuality theory, and queer theory and has a special interest in the intersection of theory and practice.

Sabina E. Vaught is Associate Professor of Education, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Director of Educational Studies, and Co-Interim Director of Africana Studies at Tufts University. Dr. Vaught's scholarship examines the institutional contexts and dynamics of race, gender, education, and power. Her research is grounded in Critical Race Theory and feminist theories. 

 

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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