[Please note: This is NOT the new four-hour course listed in the offerings for fall of 2002 as WS221/PHIL221. As soon as time permits, a syllabus for that course will be posted here. For more information, email Dr. McWhorter.]

Calendar of Readings

PHIL 258/WS 221
Dr. McWhorter
Fall, 1999

August 24:
First Class Day; background on Locke and Classical Liberalism.

August 26:
Mary Wollstonecraft, Feminist Papers (FP), 25-85. There is information online about Mary Wollstonecraft. You can read A Vindication of the Rights of Woman online in its entirety.

August 31:
John Stuart Mill, FP, 183-238; NOW Bill of Rights, FF, 150-159. You can access several of John Stuart Mill's books online, including The Subjection of Women in its entirety. You can learn more about the National Organization for Women at the NOW webpage.

September 2:
Angela Davis, "Class and Race in the Early Women's Rights Campaign," in Women, Race and Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), pp. 46-68. (This text is on reserve in the library; it is also available online for students in this course.) Davis talks a lot about Sojourner Truth in this essay. You can read Sojourner Truth's famous speech "Ain't I a Woman?" online.

September 7:
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, FP, 566-98. You can read some of Gilman's works online: Herland (a feminist fantasy novel) and a short story called "The Yellow Wallpaper."

September 9:
Friedrich Engels, FP, 478-95; Karen Sacks, "Engels Revisited: Women, the Organization of Production, and Private Property," in Toward an Anthropology of Women, pp. 211-234. (This text is on reserve in the library.)

September 14:
Simone de Beauvoir, FP, 672-705. You can get information online about de Beauvoir's life and writings.

September 16:
QUIZ on Liberalism and Socialism.

September 21:
Gayle Rubin, "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex," in Toward an Anthropology of Women, pp. 157-83. (This text is on reserve in the library.)

September 23:
Rubin, continued, pp. 184-210.

September 28:
Shiva, "Development, Ecology, and Women," in Healing the Wounds, 80-90. (This text is on reserve in the library; it is also available online for students in this course.) Ehrenreich and Fuentes, "Women in the Global Factory," FF, 359-66. You can learn lots more about Barbara Ehrenreich online.

September 30:
EXAM ON POLITICAL THEORY

Unit Two: Hermeneutic Theory

October 5:
Mitchell, "Freud and Lacan: Psychoanalytic Theories of Sexual Difference," in Woman: The Longest Revolution, 248-77. (This text is on reserve in the library.)

October 7:
NO CLASS: Meetings of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. By October 19, students are expected to view Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, which is available in the UR media resource center and at most video rental stores. You can read Roger Ebert's review of Vertigo online. You can learn more about Alfred Hitchcock's life and work by visiting the Hitchcock Page or Hitchcock, Master of Suspense.

October 12:
NO CLASS: Fall Break.

October 14:
Benjamin, "A Desire of One's Own: Psychoanalytic Feminism and Intersubjective Space," in Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, 78-101. (This text is on reserve in the library. It is also available online for students in this course.)

October 19:
Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," in Issues in Feminist Film Criticism, 28-34. (This text is on reserve in the library. It is also online for students in this course.) Modleski, "Femininity By Design," in The Women Who Knew Too Much, 87-136. (This text is on reserve in the library. It is also available online for students in this course.) Visit Tania Modleski's faculty page or personal home page.

October 21:
Freud, "Femininity," FF, 127-34. You can read "Femininity" in its entirety online. You can also learn a lot more about Sigmund Freud by visiting the Freud Archives. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, 13-73.

October 26:
Irigaray, 73-129. Take home exam will be distributed.

October 28:
No Class; reading day for take home exam.

November 2:
Christian, "The Race for Theory," Cultural Critique 6 (Spring, 1987), 51-63. (This text is on reserve in the library.)

Unit Three: Epistemological Theories

November 4:
Frye, FF, 103-12.

November 8:
NOT A CLASS DAY, BUT... Take Home Exam Due.

November 9:
Dalmiya and Alcoff, "Are 'Old Wives' Tales' Justified?" in Feminist Epistemologies (FE), 217-44.

November 11:
Collins, "Toward an Afro-centric Feminist Epistemology," FF, 93-103.

November 16:
Harding, "Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology," FE, 49-82.

November 18:
Keller, A Feeling for the Organism, chapters 1-6. You can learn more about Barbara McClintock's work online.

November 23:
Keller, chapters 7-12.

November 25:
NO CLASS: Thanksgiving Break.

November 30:
Longino, "Subjects, Power, and Knowledge: Description and Prescription in Feminist Philosophies of Science," FE, 101-20.

December 2:
Potter, "Gender and Epistemic Negotiation," FE, 161-86.

December 7:
Make-up day; discussion of final exam.

December 12:
2:00: COMPREHENSIVE FINAL EXAM!

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