Department of English

This seminar will consider the possibilities of feminist theory in the wake of the resurgence of feminist politics in recent years, amidst the #MeToo and Black Live Matter movements and the prominence in the media of such issues as campus sexual assault and transgender rights. For a while in the first decade of the new millennium, academic journals and books were lamenting the demise of feminist criticism; the work published in the past decade has proven this demise illusory. Numerous important studies that engaged explicitly and directly with feminism has continued to appear, many of which brought feminism into dialogue with queer, trans*, affect, critical race, postcolonial, and new materialist theory. In this course, we will examine the interchange between popular and academic feminism, considering how recent feminist work at once engages with contemporary political questions and extends the purview of feminist theory. All students will write a conference-length paper and oral presentation.