English 240-002
Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture: Feminist Theory and Embodied Writing
Instr: Piwoni, Jodi
Office: CRT 482; 229-2710
e-mail: jodeenp@yahoo.com
Office hours: TBA
Course Information: TR; 3:30-4:45pm; HLT G84
Course Description
Feminist Theory and Embodied Writing will attempt to examine the historical developments and current controversies surrounding the exciting research and interdisciplinary inquiry of "the body" as a site of contestation and potential resistance within the dominant Western intellectual tradition. Covering a range of writing from a wide variety of areas (not all necessarily within the academy), we will trace the writing of second-wave feminist activists for whom the biological body was the focus of patriarchal power plays up to present, more post-conventional theorizing wherein the very concept of bodies and embodiment asks for rethinking. In addition to the subject matter of these writings, we will pay particular attention to the ways by which these writers self-consciously manipulate and arrange language structures in order to create a politically and socially significant "body" of knowledge.
Primary Texts:
Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, Eds. Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury
Embodied Practices: Feminist Perspectives on the Body, Ed. Kathy Davis
Bodies that Matter, Judith Butler
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: the Reinvention of Nature, Donna Haraway
The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde
Carnal Acts: Essays, Nancy Mairs
Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women, Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar
The Rejected Body, Susan Wendell
Course Requirements:
Attendance, Participation, and Preparation – 25%
Weekly Critical Analyses and Response Papers – 25%
Writing Journals – 10%
Two Formal Essays – 15%
Final Project – 25%
