This is the seminar website for feminist speculation – FMST 201 (feminist method) at UC-Santa Cruz, Spring 2017.

Logistics

Meetings: Tue 5-8pm, Humanities 1 #320
Office Hours: Tue 1030-1130am and by appointment, Hum 1 #441
Gender-neutral restrooms available in nearby buildings
Facilitator: Neel Ahuja (neel@ucsc.edu; ahuja.sites.ucsc.edu)
Books: Literary Guillotine downtown Santa Cruz

Guiding Questions and Themes

What tactics exist for developing non-binary methods of world-building? Activist mobilizing against violent attacks on trans and third-gender people, as well as the more widely publicized struggles over the policing of bathroom use in schools and universities, offer indications of the urgency of this question for the futures of feminism, queer and trans liberation, and other forms of radical social mobilization. In an era in which the binary colonial sex system is called upon to organize emergent practices of accumulation, militarism, and environmental rehabilitation, the terms upon which feminist theory grounds its accounts of body, matter, and time determine the extent to which it can generate emancipatory forms of relation. At the same time, speculative approaches to embodiment operate on a risky terrain in which utopianism regularly collapses back onto forms of neoliberal crisis governance. Given the dynamic linking of the keywords matter, crisis, and speculation, our discussions will explore emerging debates around feminist futures as well as methods of study, art, and politics that envision a revolutionary, nonbinary materialism.

Format

The form of the conversations and intellectual labor we conduct remains open for discussion at our first meeting on April 4. I think it could be great to have a blog where people post ideas, provocations, questions, and links related to the weekly content. It could also be cool to use one of the open weeks (May 16 or June 6) to do some kind of collective labor spurred by the seminar material. I have developed a possible list of texts for exploration (full books marked with a star*) which is subject to revision by the group on the Schedule page.

Accommodations

I strive to make this seminar open to all of you regardless of illness, disability status, gender identity, or language background. Please let me know if there is any way I can facilitate your participation, including through specific classroom accommodations. Feel free to also contact the Disability Resource Center as appropriate.

Thought Experiment

With a partner, think about the following task:

It is your responsibility to design a class that does not replicate a binary/two-bodied system of gender. What obstacles would you encounter? What starting points or resources would you need? What would look different than your current experiences in graduate school?