Courses

Comparative Women's and Gender Studies in Europe consists of four courses:

• Situated Feminisms: Socio-Political Systems and Women's Lives
  
• Issues in Feminist Methodologies
  
• Comparative Feminist Theories
  
• Independent Field Research

Summer Preparation
A large part of the reading and some written assignments are completed during the preceding summer. Readings introduce the main comparative themes of the program and are the basis for preparatory assignments. The readings present a dynamic mix of scholarship, journalism, and partisan opinion, and are assigned for the NOISE Summer School, scheduled seminars, site visits, and lectures.

(4 semester credits)
This course examines the historical emergence and contemporary conditions of feminist movements in the Europe. While women's movements have flourished all over the world, they have evolved through the particular conditions and contexts in which the various groups of women find themselves. We must be attentive to the situated nature of women's experiences, both in the nature of their aspirations and oppressions, but also through their experiences of race/ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender identity, age, etc.

We examine the impact of the West's colonial heritage/s on the lives of women in various communities, as well as the continuing legacies of the Second World War in Europe and the gendered dimensions of recent conflicts on the European continent. We examine a variety of topics, including but not limited to prostitution, trafficking, reproductive rights, immigrant/refugee issues, LGBT and queer politics, various dimensions of violence, and globalization.

At the end of this experience, students will be able to use an informed feminist critique and apply a variety of theories, research methods, models, and concepts to analyze feminist formations in context and to deploy coalition-building skills.

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(4 semester credits)
This course is devoted to questions of theory and practice of feminist research in the social sciences and the humanities. We will consider the following: What is the relationship between methodology and knowledge claims in feminist research? How do language and narrative shape experience? How do the practices of interpretation intersect with questions of the authority of the researching subject and her respondents? How is the traditional social science relationship between the researcher and the examined object (e.g., the texts of oral histories, photographs, paintings, sincere data, etc.) redefined within frameworks of feminist research? How are feminist study methods impacting traditional constructions of arts and sciences?

Through discussion workshops and individual research projects, students will evaluate research approaches that reflect the feminist goal of equalizing poser relations between researcher and respondent. Participants will also consider action-based research as a site for activist coalitions.

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(4 semester credits)
This course frames several of the central debates in continental feminist theory in the context of emerging local and global pressures on women's movements. Exploring subjectivity, interpersonal relations, and community as mobile sites of knowledge and power formations, students will become conversant with contemporary feminist theory as we consider affinities and divergences among different theory models. Students will evaluate frameworks for political intervention, questioning the ability to transfer feminist concepts across cultures and languages.

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(4 semester credits)
The program is structured to offer students the opportunity to conduct on-site academic research, generating a comparative analysis within the contemporary European social, political, and economic framework. Students will select a topic of interest that can be explored in the context of the program, develop and execute research method(s), and present their work in both written and oral forms.

Using readings and field research to record observations and experiences, including critical examination of the researcher's positionality, students take part in continual discussion and analysis of their research. Through this experience, students will develop independent research skills, approaches for interpreting results, and tools for analyzing and evaluating research effectiveness.

Previous topics include:

• Gender Identity and Gender-Segregated Bathrooms
• Women asylum seekers and refugees
• Gender performance: drag queens and kings
• Sex Education and Hetero-Normativity
• Public Art Addressing Violence Against Women
• Feminist presses
• Sex work, legalization and trafficking
• Sexual and reproductive health & rights
• New European Anti-Semitism
• Domestic Violence Shelters in Europe
• Alternative magazines for Women

The Program Director supervises the planning of each research project. Student initiative is emphasized in both design and execution. The project culminates in a group presentation and final written paper, submitted when the student returns to the U.S. in January.

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Gender Theories

• Gabrielle Griffin & Rosi Braidotti, eds.  Thinking Differently: A Reader in European Women’s Studies.  Zed Books, 2002.
• Rosi Braidotti.  Metamorphoses: Towards a Feminist Theory of Becoming.  Polity Press, 2002 (excerpts).
• Judith Butler.  Undoing Gender.  Routledge, 2004 (excerpts).
• Helma Lutz, Ann Phoenix &  Nira Yuval Davis, eds. Crossfires: Nationalism, Racism, and Gender in Europe.  Pluto Press, 1995 (excerpts).

Situated Feminism

• Gabriele Griffin, ed. Women’s Employment, Women’s Studies, and Equal Opportunities 1945-2001.  University of Hull, 2002 (excerpts).
• Jacqui True.  Gender, Globalization, and Post-Socialism.  Columbia UP, 2003 (excerpts).
• Susan Gal & Gail Kligman.  The Politics of Gender after Socialism.  Princeton UP, 2000 (excerpts).
• Polish Women in the 90’s: The Report by the Women’s Rights Center.  Warsaw, 2000.
• Barbara Ehrenreich.  Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy.  Metropolitan Books, 2003.
• H. S. Mirza.  Black British Feminism.  Routledge, 1997.
• Marianne Marchand, Julian Reid & Boukje Berents.  “Migration, (Im)mobility, and Modernity: Towards a Feminist Understanding of the Global Prostitution Scene in Amsterdam.”  Millenium: Journal of International Studies 27:4 (1998): 955-981.
• Fuszara, Malgorzata, “Abortion and the Formation of the Public Sphere in Poland.” From Nanette Funk & Magda Mueller, eds.  Gender Politics and Post-Communism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.  Routledge, 1993.

Feminist Methodology

• Ramazanoglu, Caroline. “Choices and Decisions: Doing a Feminist Research Project.”  From Ramazanoglu, Caroline & Janet Holland, eds. Feminist Methodology: Challenges and Choices (Sage, 2002).
• Diane L. Wolf, ed.  Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork.  Westview Press, 1996 (excerpts).
• Reinharz, Shulamit.  Feminist Methods in Social Research.  Oxford UP, 1992 (excerpts).
• Sherna Berger Gluck & Daphne Patai.  Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History.  Routhledge, 1991 (excerpts).