2014-2015 Academic Catalog

May 17, 2024

2014-2015 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

IDCE 358 - Advanced Topics in ID: International Feminist Thinking

This course will expose students to contemporary debates among and between feminist theorists and within selected women’s feminist movements, and will examine the relationship between both. The course draws upon both academic readings and other forms of knowledge produced by individual women and by feminist and women’s movements in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Latin America, and in the Diaspora. It also draws upon literature, art, and film.

Through specific case studies, students will examine knowledge produced by, and will reflect critically on, strategies that women’s organizations and feminist movements have used since the early 1990s to ensure that “women’s rights are human rights”; to “mainstream” gender into development; to ensure women are active participants in peace-building and post-conflict reconstruction and in environmental debates; to address gender-based violence; and to engender the HIV response.

Students will participate in part of the 57th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (New York, March 2013). They will prepare a strategy for participation; attend selected sessions and activities; engage in dialogs; network with young participants, women’s organizations, movements, UN agencies, and other stakeholders from around the world, especially from the Global South; and learn about the current priorities and activities of women’s groups worldwide. Upon returning to Clark, students will reflect on their experience at the CSW, follow up with at least one of the organizations and networks they have contacted, and use some of the information they have learned or gathered to complement their term papers.