EAS1338H: Asian Feminist Epistemologies: Theory and Embodiment

This seminar probes “feminism” as an epistemological construct, where “woman” and other minoritized subjects are imagined differently in an array of “feminisms” from mid-twentieth to early twenty-first-century Asia and Asian America. Rather than a survey on women's histories, the readings center on exploring a range of methodological and philosophical approaches, from theories of yellow femininity to feminist science studies and queer theory. Against the backdrop of the Cold War and new technologies of social control, the readings think through new regimes of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity, and the politics of articulating difference differently. Working toward an intellectual history of difference as a concept and practice, we move from questions of visibility and representation to the temporalities and geopolitics of transnational feminist histories, and end with texts that extend the life of feminist and queer studies beyond liberal humanism.

St. George