Feminism

LEH 352: Groupwork Review on Unit II: Early Modern, Modern, Postmodern.

Each item in each topic may also be a topic for Essay 3

Instructions: There are four groups and four topics: 1) Mainstream Feminism; 2) Intersectional Feminism; 3) Sexuality, Desire and Sexual Behavior; 4) Relationships, Marriage, Romance, Love. Using email or other means of communication, each group creates and then edits a GoogleDoc of a list of interesting major points on their topic (about one page long; if there’s disagreement, present both sides). Each group decides how to cover subtopics (perhaps one student does one subtopic). Summarize some (not all) ideas in required texts & lectures to create a list of major points (in full sentences). You may do only some of the subtopics of your Group’s topic. Group topics may overlap. The authors’ names & titles of required texts are: a) Shakespeare, Twelfth Night; b) Shakespeare, Sonnets 18, 20, 138; c) Sedgwick, “Christmas Effects”; d) Astell, Preface to “Reflections on Marriage”; e) Wollstonecraft, “Introduction” to Vindication of the Rights of Women; f) Stanton, from “Declaration of Sentiments”; g) Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?”; h) hooks, “Theory as Liberatory Practice”; h) Joyce, “Eveline”; i) Joyce, “A Painful Case”; j) Mirabelli, “Notes on Historical Developments in Marriage and Intimate Relationships”; k) Hay, “Who Counts as a Woman”; l) Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination”. Also, there are Online Lectures for Modules 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 that review modules and place them into context.

Topic for Group I: Mainstream Feminism and the Status of Women

A) Twelfth Night . Discuss how Olivia has power over her household and in her relationships with Orsino, Cesario, and Sebastian. What are your views about a woman’s and a man’s power in a relationship? Discuss whether or not Viola has power in her relationship with Orsino. Then you may discuss power relations in relationships apart from the play.

B) Astell’s Preface to Reflections on Marriage. Discuss her statement that "If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?” How could she believe that and also believe that a husband is the king of the household? Then you may discuss power relations in marriage in general.

C) Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman . Discuss Wollstonecraft’s view on education, on feminine beauty culture, or on masculine woman, etc. Also discuss the relevance of this to our present culture.

D) Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments”. Discuss, and put in context perhaps, Stanton’s beginning of the women’s suffrage movement. Discuss some of the oppressions of women she lists. What still remains to be done for women’s rights?

Topic for Group II: Intersectional Feminism: Feminism, Race and Socioeconomic Status

A) Viola in Twelfth Night . Discuss how Viola copes after the shipwreck by disguising herself as a man (Cesario). Discuss what strategies women use to cope with sociocultural oppression.

B) Joyce’s “Eveline”. 1) Should Eveline have gone with Frank to Argentina or stayed home as she ended up doing? 2) Does this story have a thrust (make a point) about poor young women? Then you may discuss oppression of poor women and/or if a person can “save you” in the sense of providing fulfillment of one’s important needs. Discuss what strategies women use to cope with socioeconomic oppression.

C) Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman”. Discuss Truth’s reference to so-called gentlemen that say they helped women into carriages. Then discuss feminism’s relations to race and/or to social and economic class. Discuss strategies women use to cope with racial and socioeconomic oppression.

D) bell hooks’ “Theory as Liberatory Practice”. Discuss hooks’ questioning of her father’s authority and its inflection by race. Discuss how social activism relates to feminist theory. Discuss feminism’s relations to race. Should a black woman’s primary identification be as a woman and a feminist or as an African American? Discuss the relationship between the two identifications.

Topic for Group III: Sexuality, Desire and Sexual Behavior

A) Twelfth Nigh t. Discuss the attractiveness of Viola/Cesario, who is taken for a man but appears similar to a woman in appearance. Does Viola/Cesario disrupt the sexual binary? Why does Olivia fall in love with Cesario (Viola in disguise)? Discuss the fact that Orsino ends up marrying Viola, a person that he had just thought was his best buddy Cesario. Does this relationship fit into our current idea of sexual binaries? Do you believe that all people fit into sexual binaries? Discuss Sebastian.

B) Sonnet 20. Discuss the phrase “master-mistress of my passion”. What are your ideas about male and female beauty of the young man and in general? When the poet tells the young man to love him and have sex with women, does this disobey the sexual binary (heterosexual/homosexual or heterosexual/LGBTQ)?

C) Sedgwick’s “Christmas Effects”. Discuss the elements of sexual identity categories. Do these elements often not line up as expected by our culture?

D) Butler’s “Imitation and Gender Insubordination”. Discuss “femme” and “butch” lesbians and if they are imitating straight people. Discuss how children learn to be a boy or a girl by imitating others or norms, and whether we imitate others to fit into categories of male, female, straight, gay, etc. Discuss Butler’s claim that all gender is a drag impersonation for which there is no original. If there is no “original” real man or real women, can we construct progressive gender models?

E) Hay’s “Who Counts as a Woman?” Hay stresses that in the past feminism has had an implicit model of a woman as a straight white well-to-do female. Is feminism now more welcoming of minority and poor women? Should feminism welcome trans-women as sister feminists?

Topic for Group IV: Relationships, Marriage, Romance, and Love

A) Joyce’s “A Painful Case”. Discuss how and when Duffy values and does not value his relationship with Mrs Sinico. What is there to value in intimacy? How is intimacy related to sex?

B) Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Discuss how Orsino and Cesario’s intimate friendship turns into Orsino and Viola’s marriage. Discuss how Olivia has power over her household and would seem to continue to command in marriage as well. Discuss Olivia and Sebastian’s relationship. Then you may discuss power relations in marriage apart from the play.

C) Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138. Discuss Sonnet 138 and non-ideal relationships. Discuss the “false subtleties” (line 4) and the pun on the word lie (lines 13-14): the poet accepts that she cheats on him, she accepts he is old, and they continue the sexual relationship. Is “seeming” to “trust” (line 11) necessary in relationships? Discuss compromise in relationships.

D) Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. Discuss the poet’s comparison of a summer day to his love. How does such imagery in Sonnet 18 affect us when we read it? How would such imagery affect us if we heard a lover say it? Discuss idealizations in love.

E) Mirabelli, “Notes on Historical Developments in Marriage and Intimate Relationships”.

Discuss marriage and relationships in ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the 1800s, the early and middle 1900s. What do you think of the changes since the 1960s, which created our Postmodern Relationship system? Discuss living together without marrying, out-of-wedlock births (& the disuse of the word “bastard”), rise in divorce rate, men doing more housework, marriage. Discuss weddings as a sign that a couple made it financially, emotionally, and are in a stable relationship.