Mediating Reproduction: Feminism, Art, Activism MCM 0900, crosslisted in Gender & Sexuality Studies and Theatre & Performance Studies. Instructor: Beth Capper Office Hours: Tuesdays 1.303.30 PM, and by appt.
[email protected] Location: 155 George Street, rm. 202 Seminar time: T/R 10.3011.50 AM Screenings: Mondays, 710 PM Location: Production 2, 135 Thayer Street Location: Henkle Room, 155 George Street How have feminist cultural producers and activists imagined and transformed the politics of reproduction? This course explores the complex meanings of “reproduction” across media, performance, and public culture, with a focus on questions of sexuality, race, labor, and aesthetic practice. Situating reproduction in an expanded frame, we will consider the relationship between biological reproduction and the gendered labor of reproducing social life (e.g., domestic labor, sex work, care work). We will examine how ideas about reproduction have been central to the regeneration of race and nation; how the gendering of labor reproduces capitalist social relations; and how feminists have variously theorized and practiced alternative conceptions of reproduction in relation to the politics of labor, difference, and community. Throughout, we will pay special attention to the entanglements of artistic labor with women's reproductive labor. Topics include: eugenics, housework/welfare rights activism, art workers movements, biotechnologies, queer kinship, and feminist utopias. Artists include: Betye Saar, Mierle Ladermann Ukeles, Ursula Biemann, Andrea Fraser, Suzanne Lacy, SubRosa, and María Magdalena CamposPons. Required Books: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland. Course Requirements Attendance and Participation: Your attendance and participation are crucial to the success of this seminar. You are expected to come to class prepared to contribute meaningfully to our discussions with your own questions and critical commentaries on course materials. Participation, however, does not only require talking but also actively listening to your peers and respectfully engaging them in discussion. I also understand that students participate in different and unique ways. If you are concerned about your participation in seminar, it is your right and responsibility to meet with me. Readings: You are responsible for completing all required readings. This means carefully reading course materials at least once before seminar. You must bring paper copies of all assigned readings with you to seminar. If you anticipate having trouble printing the readings due to financial concerns, please speak with me no later than January 28th to make alternative arrangements. Other than the required book, all readings are available on canvas. Please note that readings and screenings are subject to change based on the needs and interests of the class. Changes, if any, will be announced in seminar and through email. Screenings: Most films for this course will be made available via OCRA. In additions, there
will be public screenings for the course held on Mondays on weeks that films are discussed. You must come prepared to discuss these texts during either Tuesday or Thursday meetings, depending on the week’s readings. Blogs: Each week you are required to post a brief (approx. 250 words) response to course materials on the course blog. The blog is intended to provide a forum for you to raise questions about course materials, pursue passages that you find confusing/compelling/problematic, test out arguments that may later develop into paper topics, and share your critiques with the class before we meet. While you are encouraged to draw on screenings and previous readings in your blog posts, you must engage at least one of the readings assigned for that day in your response. Blog posts are due at midnight the day of class. It is my hope that you will also read the discussion board before coming to seminar. ● IMPORTANT: The class will be divided into two groups (A and B). On weeks marked on the syllabus as “A” weeks, students in Group A will blog in response to Tuesday’s materials and students in Group B will blog in response to Thursday’s materials. On weeks marked on the syllabus as “B” weeks, students in Group B will blog in response to Tuesday’s materials and students in Group A will blog in response to Thursday’s materials. We will divide into groups on Tuesday 2/2. All students must blog for Thursday 2/4. Presentations: You are required to present on class materials once during the course of the semester. These presentations will form part of your overall final grade for the course. This involves coming prepared with 45 questions about the week’s readings, two passages that the class might turn to for close reading and, if there is a screening the week you present, one short clip to be screened in class. On the week you choose to present you will not have to write a blog post but I would like you to post your presentation questions and passages on the blog after you have presented. Papers: Students are expected to write two papers: a midterm (56 pp.) and a final (810 pp.). I will hand out suggested paper prompts for the midterm (drawing on readings, screenings, class discussions, and blog posts). The final paper will be on a topic of your own choosing so as to allow you to pursue your own interests within the framework of the seminar. Grading Breakdown: Participation 20% Midterm 20% Blogs 15% Final 25% Presentation 20% Laptop Policy: With the exception of students with a documented need for accommodations, laptop use is not permitted during either seminar or screenings. Communication: My email address is
[email protected]. I will make every effort to respond to messages sent during the week (Monday to Friday) within 24 hours. I am also available to meet during my office hours on Tuesdays from 1.303.30PM in 155 George Street Room 202 and by appointment.
Accessibility: If you have or think you may have a disability, you may want to let me know. If you choose to do so, I encourage you to address any special needs or accommodations with me at the beginning of the semester so as to ensure your full participation in our seminar. To obtain proper documentation, contact the Office of Student and Employee Accessibility Services at 401.863.9588. Also, if you wish to be called by a different name or addressed with a different pronoun than the one with which you are officially enrolled, do let me know and I will gladly oblige. COURSE SCHEDULE R 1/28: Introductions • Aliza Shvarts, “Shvarts explains her ‘repeated selfinduced miscarriages,’” Yale Daily News (April 18, 2008). WEEK 1. Feminist Utopias (I) T 2/2 • Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (London: Penguin Classics, 2009 [1915]). • Alys Eve Weinbaum, “Introduction,” Wayward Reproductions: Genealogies of Race and Nation in Transatlantic Modern Thought (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 17. R 2/4 • Dorothy Roberts, “Margaret Sanger and the Racial Origins of the Birth Control Movement,” in Racially Writing the Republic: Racists, Race Rebels, and Transformations of American Identity, eds. Bruce Baum and Duchess Harris (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 196214. • Asha Nadkarni, “Eugenic Feminism: Asian Reproduction in the U.S. National Imaginary,” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 39.2 (Spring 2006), 221244. Reminder: All students must blog for 2/4. WEEK 2. Reproducing “Women,” Reproducing the Nation T 2/9 (A) • Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” diacritics 17.2 (1987), 6481. R 2/11 (B) • Uri McMillan, “MammyMemory: The Curious Case of Joice Heth, The Ancient Negress,” Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 2365. • Kimberly Juanita Brown, “Fragmented Figurations of the Maternal,” The Repeating Body: Slavery’s Visual Resonance in the Contemporary (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), selections. WEEK 3. Sex Life / Sex Work Screening: Performing the Border (Ursula Biemann, 1999), 42 min. No blog posts for this week! T 2/16 • Silvia Federici, “Why Sexuality is Work (1975),” Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle (Oakland and Brooklyn: PM Press, 2012), 2328. • Elizabeth Bernstein, “The Privatization of Public Women,” Temporarily Yours: Intimacy,
Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 70111.
R 2/18 • Melissa W. Wright, “Public Women, Profit, and Femicide in Northern Mexico,” South Atlantic Quarterly 105.4 (2006), 681698. • Julia BryanWilson, “Dirty Commerce: Art Work and Sex Work Since the 1970s,” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 23.2 (2012), 71112. PLEASE ALSO READ: • Silvia Federici, “Wages Against Housework,” Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle (Oakland and Brooklyn: PM Press, 2012), 1522. WEEK 4. Mediating Reproductive Rights No blog posts for this week! T 2/23 No Class! R 2/25 • Lauren Berlant, “America, ‘Fat,’ the Fetus,” boundry 2 21.3 (1994), 145195. • Shilyh Warren, Abortion, Abortion, Abortion, Still: Documentary Show and Tell,” South Atlantic Quarterly 114.4 (October 2015), 755779. • Ruby C. Tapia, “Prodigal (Non)Citizens: Teen Pregnancy and Public Health at the Border,” American Pietas: Visions of Race, Death, and the Maternal (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 91108. WEEK 5. Reproducing the Family Screening: Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingstone, 1990), 71 min. T 3/1 (B) • Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex,” in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory Volume 1 , ed, Linda J. Nicholson (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), 2763. R 3/3 (A) • Chandan Reddy, “Homes, Houses, NonIdentity: Paris is Burning ,” in Burning Down the House: Recycling Domesticity, ed. Rosemary Marangoly George (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), 355379. • David L. Eng, “The Language of Kinship,” The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 93137. WEEK 6. Domestic Unrest (I): Movements Screening: Bush Mama (Haile Gerima, 1979), 97 min; Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden, 1983) 80 min. T 3/8 (A) • Selma James and Mariarosa Dallacosta, The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (London: Falling Wall Press, 1975). • Premilla Nadasen, “Expanding the Boundaries of the Women’s Movement: Black Feminism and the Struggle for Welfare Rights,” Feminist Studies 28.2 (2002), 270301.
• Johnnie Tillmon, “Welfare is a Women’s Issue (1972),” in Welfare in the United States: A History with Documents, 1935–1996, eds. Premilla Nadasen, et al. (New York and London: Routledge, 2009), 177179. R 3/10 (B) • Angela Y. Davis, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves (1971),” in The Angela Y. Davis Reader , ed. Joy James (New York: Blackwell, 1998), 111128. • Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “You Have Dislodged a Boulder: Mothers and Children in the PostKeynesian California Landscape,” Transforming Anthropology 8.12 (1999), 1238. • Nick Mitchell, “On Audre Lorde’s Legacy and the “Self” of SelfCare,” Low End Theory (May 2013). WEEK 7. Domestic Unrest (II): Media Screening: Shorts program (tbd) T 3/15 (B) • Thomas Streeter and Wendy Wahl, “Audience Theory and Feminism: Property, Gender, and the Television Audience,” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 33/34 (1994), 243261. • Nicole R. Fleetwood, “Posing in Prison: Family Photographs, Emotional Labor, and Carceral Intimacy,” Public Culture 27.3 (2015), 487511. R 3/17 (A) • Eden Osucha, “The Whiteness of Privacy: Race, Media, Law,” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 70 (2009), 66107. • Laura Wexler, “Seeing Sentiment: Photography, Race, and the Innocent Eye,” Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U.S. Imperialism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 5293. WEEK 8. Performing the Social Factory: Virtuosity and Biopolitics Screening: Paper Dolls (Tomer Heymann, 2006), 80 min. T 3/22 (A) • Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude : For An Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2004), 4966; 8184. • Angela Dimitrakaki, “Labour, Ethics, Sex, and Capital: On Biopolitical Production in Contemporary Art,” n. paradoxa: international feminist art journal 28 (2011), 515. R 3/24 (B) • Neferti X. M. Tadiar, “LifeTimes in Fate Playing,” South Atlantic Quarterly 111.4 (2012), 783802. • Aren Z. Aizura, “Trans Feminine Value, Racialized Others, and the Limits of Necropolitics,” in Queer Necropolitics , eds, Jin Haritaworn, Adi Kuntsman, and Silvia Posocco (New York: Routledge, 2014), 129148. > Spring Break! WEEK 9. No Class! Instructor away. Please try and attend Yvonne Rainer’s artist talk and screening on 4/6.
WEEK 10. Late Capitalist Aesthetics Screening: Vessel (Diana Whitten, 2014), 90 min; I Love Lucy (episode tbd). T 4/12 (B) • Sianne Ngai, “The Zany Science,” Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2012), 174232. • Shannon Jackson, “JustinTime: Performance and the Aesthetics of Precarity,” TDR: The Drama Review 56.4 (Winter 2012), 1031. R 4/14 (A) • Shannon Jackson, “High Maintenance: The Sanitation Aesthetics of Mierle Laderman Ukeles,” Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2011), 1142. • Carrie LambertBeatty, “Twelve Miles: Boundaries of the New Art Activism,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 33.2 (2008), 309327. • Mierle Laderman Ukeles, “Manifesto for Maintenance Art” (1969), in Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object , ed. Lucy Lippard (New York: NYU Press, 1979), 220221. WEEK 11. Biopolitical Labor in the Integrated Circuit T 4/19 (A) • Michelle Murphy, “Immodest Witnessing, Affective Economies, and Objectivity,” Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience . (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 68101. • Shulamith Firestone, “The Ultimate Revolution: Demands and Speculations,” The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1970), 175216. • SubRosa, “Bodies Unlimited: A decade of SubRosa’s art practice,” n. paradoxa: international feminist art journal 28 (2011), 1625. R 4/21 (B) • Lisa Nakamura, “Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture,” American Quarterly 66.4 (December 2014), 919941. • Kalindi Vora, “Limits of ‘Labor’: Accounting for Affect and the Biological in Transnational Surrogacy and Service Work,” South Atlantic Quarterly 111.4 (2012), 681700. • Collected authors, “This Tweet Called My Back,” Model View Culture (2014). WEEK 12. No Future? (Queer) Feminism and AntiReproduction Screening: S.C.U.M Manifesto (Carole Roussopoulos & Delphine Seyrig, 1976), 26 min. T 4/26 (B) • Valerie Solanas, The S.C.U.M. Manifesto (London and New York: Verso, 2004 [1967]). • Jack Halberstam, “Shadow Feminisms: Queer Negativity and Radical Passivity,” The Queer Art of Failure (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011), 123145. R 4/28 (A) • Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “‘We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves’: A Dialogically Produced Audience and Black Feminist Publishing 1979 to the ‘Present’,” Gender Forum: An Internet Journal for Gender Studies 22 (2008).
• Jennifer C. Nash, “Black Anality,” GLQ: A Journal of Gay & Lesbian Studies 20.4 (2014), 439460. WEEK 13. Feminist Utopias (II) Screening: Wildness (Wu Tsang, 2012), 74 min. T 5/3 (A) • José Esteban Muñoz, “Stages: Queers, Punks, and the Utopian Performative,” Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: NYU Press, 2009), 97114. • Juana María Rodríguez, “Gesture in Mambo Time,” Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings (New York: NYU Press, 2014), 99138. R 5/5 (B) • Kathi Weeks, “Working Demands: From Wages for Housework to Basic Income,” The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Durham: Duke UP, 2011), 113150. • Alys Eve Weinbaum, “Gendering the General Strike: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction and Black Feminism’s ‘Propaganda of History,’” South Atlantic Quarterly 112.3 (2013), 437463.