Theory and Critical Research I

Theory and Critical Research I
This research seminar introduces students to cutting edge research, with specific focus on a cartographic approach to the genre of ‘feminist theories’ (used here as umbrella term for the fields of feminist, queer, critical race, postcolonial studies perspectives). This course explores the most important strands of feminist theorizing in the last decades up to today. The course opens with a situating of the ideas that helped to shape the project of Gender Studies in Europe such as we know it today. The seminar then investigates into the multiple domains in which race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class and ability shape our daily experience and how they can be accounted for in research work. Central topics to be explored are: deconstruction of binary oppositions structuring (Western) thought; deconstructiong of eurocentrism; the debate of essentialism vs. (social) constructionism; decolonial knowledges in feminist research; trans*, queer, and posthuman(ist) challenges to the sex/gender matrix in Gender Studies.