Anthro 287a: Feminist Ethnographies
also Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) 387a

Instructor: Karen Nakamura
Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 - 3:45 (note time change)
77 Prospect Street Room A002 (note location change)
Yale Classes V2 Server

Brief Course Description

Explores developments in feminist anthropology through examination of ethnography and documentary film produced in the past twenty years. Focus on both feminist research methods as well as questions surrounding authority, reproduction, emotionality, and agency.

Extended Course Description

This course explores central feminist works written in the past two decades. We will look at the status of women cross-culturally, agency and resistance, gender and emotion, technologies of the body, and new feminist and post-modern ethnographies.

We will primarily be reading through ten key feminist ethnographic texts including classics such as The Thrice Told Tale and The Managed Heart as well as recent works such as Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations and Politics of Piety . We will also screen works by feminist filmmakers such as Trinh Minh-ha and Born into Brothels . Students will submit short weekly response papers in lieu of a midterm and final research paper.

Prerequisites and Requirements

This course is targeted towards advanced sophomores, juniors, and seniors in Anthropology and WGSS.

Textbooks and Course Readings

The required textbooks will be available at the Yale bookstore. Course readings in the forms of articles will be distributed in class and also available through the classes V2 server.

Main Ethnographies / Books:

• Abu-Lughod, Lila (1993). Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories. University of California Press.
• Davis-Floyd, Robbie (1992/2003). Birth as an American rite of passage. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Hochschild, Arlie Russell (1983/2003). The managed heart: commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley, University of California Press.
• Kondo, Dorinne K. (1990). Crafting selves: power, gender, and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.
• Layne, Linda L. (2003) Motherhood lost: a feminist account of pregnancy loss in America. New York: Routledge.
• Mahmood, Saba (2005). Politics of piety: the Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691086958 (pb alk. paper).
• Radway, Janice A. (1991). Reading the romance : women, patriarchy, and popular literature. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press.
• Salzinger, Leslie (2003). Genders in production: making workers in Mexico's global factories. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Wolf, Margery (1992). A thrice told tale: feminism, postmodernism & ethnographic responsibility. Stanford, Stanford University Press.

Ethnographies under consideration:

• Feeding Anorexia by Helen Gremillion
• "If each comes halfway" by Kathryn March

Excerpts from:

• Abu-Lughod, Lila (1986). Veiled sentiments: honor and poetry in a Bedouin society, University of California Press.
• Boddy, Janice (1990). Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan. University of Wisconsin Press.
• Lutz, Catherine (1988). Unnatural emotions: everyday sentiments on a Micronesian atoll & their challenge to western theory. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
• Moore, Henrietta L. (1988). Feminism and anthropology.Cambridge, UK, Polity Press. Check amazon.com
• Ong, Aihwa (1987). Spirits of resistance and capitalist discipline : factory women in Malaysia. Albany, State University of New York Press.
• Rapp, Rayna (2000). Testing Women, Testing the Fetus : The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America. New York: Routledge.
• Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (1992). Death without weeping: the violence of everyday life in Brazil. Berkeley, University of California Press. Check amazon.com
• Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt (1993). In the realm of the diamond queen : marginality in an out-of-the-way place. Princeton, Princeton University Press. Check amazon.com

Useful Links

• Anthropology in the News (Texas A&M)
• Feminist Theory Website
• Overview of Feminist Anthropology
• Feminist Anthropology Syllabi
• Feminist Anthropology Hotlist

Library Resources

• Course Reserve List
• How to cite references:
  • Anthropology Style Guide
  • Citing Electronic Resources