- Department: English and Related Literature
- Module co-ordinator: Dr. Hannah Roche
- Credit value: 10 credits
- Credit level: C
- Academic year of delivery: 2021-22
- See module specification for other years: 2022-23
What do we mean when we talk about intersectionality? Law professor and critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term in 1989, explains that ‘intersectionality isn’t so much a grand theory: it’s a prism for understanding certain kinds of problems’.
This module applies the prism of intersectionality to feminist ideologies and texts from the 1960s to the present day. Beginning with North America’s National Organization for Women (NOW), we will chart the ways in which Black, LGBTQ+, and working-class activists forced key feminist movements – which initially privileged certain identities and experiences over others – to become increasingly inclusive and diverse. Why was writer and activist Rita Mae Brown ‘thrown out’ of NOW after she demanded attention to social issues affecting lesbians, women of colour, and those with different accents? How does the multilingual, hybrid satire of Fran Ross interrogate the essentialisms of ‘blackness’ and ‘woman’ inherent in the Black Power movement and Women’s Lib? How are contemporary writers working in the wake of, but also building on, reframing, or resisting, the legacies of this work? Are we, as Jennifer Nash ponders, post-intersectionality?
To quote Crenshaw, this module will show why identity is ‘not a self-contained unit: it is a relationship between people in history, and people in communities’.
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Summer Term 2021-22 |
The aim of this module is to explore intersectional feminism, its critical vocabularies, and negotiations with post-1960s literary culture.
On successful completion of this module, you should be able to:
Task | Length | % of module mark |
---|---|---|
Oral presentation/seminar/exam Team Presentation |
N/A | 100 |
None
Task | Length | % of module mark |
---|---|---|
Oral presentation/seminar/exam Team Presentation |
N/A | 100 |
You will receive feedback on all assessed work within the University deadline, and will often receive it more quickly. The purpose of feedback is to inform your future work; it is provided in a pedagogical spirit, and the Department also offers you help in learning from your feedback. If you would like to discuss your feedback, please consult your tutor or your supervisor, during their Open Office Hours.
Key texts may include:
Fran Ross, Oreo (1974)
Rita Mae Brown, In Her Day (1976)
Barbara Smith, Akasha Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott eds. All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us are Brave: Black Women’s Studies (1982)
Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983)
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’. Feminist Review 30 (1988): 61-88
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (1984)
Karla Jay, Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation (1999)
Cristina Garza Rivera, The Iliac Crest (2002)
Mary Dore (dir.), She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry (2014)
Kimberlé Crenshaw, On Intersectionality: Essential Writings (2017)
Jennifer Nash, Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality (2018)