HUM 201IH (“Introduction to Feminist Theory and Methodology”)

Walter Metz

Fall 2004

Study Sheet for Midterm Exam

Lectures

1. Introduction to the Course: The Sex-Gender System, Social Construction, Essentialism, Humanism, Post-structuralism, a feminist critique of True Lies

2. Men and Feminism: Tania Modleski’s Feminism Without Women, a feminist critique of Saving Private Ryan, Susan Faludi’s 1980s Backlash, the New Male Melodrama

3. First Wave Feminism: Abolitionism, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Suffragette Movement, the Nineteenth Amendment, Discourse of True Womanhood, New Womanhood, a feminist critique of the Brinks Home Security System ad, why Trifles is a first wave feminist text, A Question of Silence as a second wave feminist text

4. Third Wave Feminism: a feminist critique of She’s Gotta Have It

5. Post-Feminism: A feminist reading of Mona Lisa Smile, A feminist critique of The Graduate, A post-feminist reinvention of masculinity

Reading

1. Tong, “Introduction”: rejection of a “father’s” history, disagreements between feminists, respect instead of neutrality, feminisms instead of feminism

2. Tong, “Conclusion”: the sameness and difference of women, ecofeminism over socialist feminism regarding inclusivity, kaleidoscopic nature of feminst thought

3. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Declaration of Sentiments”: parody of the Declaration of Independence

4. Gloria Steinem, “If Men Could Menstruate”: “womb envy”

5. Tong, “Liberal Feminism”: Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, National Organization of Women, 1848 Seneca Falls meeting, women’s liberation groups, women’s rights groups, second wave feminism, 1967 Bill of Rights for Women, the sameness-different debate, Zillah Eisenstein’s critique of flextime, androcentrism, sexual equality/gender justice, welfare liberal feminists, monoandrogyny vs. polyandrogyny, Jean Bethke Elshtain

6. Tong, “Radical Feminism”: Libertarian vs. Culturalist, a feminist critique of pornography and rape culture, the endorsement of androgyny, lesbian separatism, critique of and defense of artificial reproductive technologies

7. Stephen Heath, “Male Feminism”: “Men’s relation to feminism is an impossible one,” men’s colonization of women, critique of sympathy, “some of my best friends” are feminists, Irigaray’s embrace of irrationalism vs. “male” theory, model of admiration, critique in afterword of using his elderly mother as a defense

8. Michael Awkward, “A Black Man’s Place in Feminist Criticism”: Alice Jardine’s men can’t be feminists because they don’t know women’s pain, anti-essentialist critique of Stephen Heath’s position, reading of African-American women’s literature, do feminist work

9. Susan Glaspell, Trifles: men investigate upstairs, women solve the crime downstairs by attending to the “trifles” of the domestic space

10. Betty Friedan, “The Problem That Has No Name”: Simone DeBeauvoir’s The Second Sex, analysis of pop magazine coverage, listening to housewives’ voices. “The Happy Housewife Heroine”: critique of “Kinder, Kuche, Kirche,” the New Woman in the pop magazines, post-war transformation in women’s magazines, analysis of happy housewives in pop magazine coverage

11. “No More Miss America!”: essentialism (male reporters will be refused interviews), Second Wave critique of objectification

12. Anne Koedt, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm”: critique of Freud’s privileging of the vaginal orgasm as more mature, critique of cliterodectomy

13. Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement”: why the need for a “black” feminism?

14. Audre Lorde, “I Am Your Sister”: the collision of racism and homophobia

15. Bell hooks, “Whose Pussy Is This?”: analysis of rape scene, problems with Nola being identified primarily as sexual via her bed

16. Sarah Projansky, “The Postfeminist Context”: 5 definitions of postfeminism (linear, backlash, equality and choice, (hetero)sex-positive, men can be feminists too)

17. Charlotte Brunsdon, “Post-Feminism and Shopping Films”: 1970s modernist vs. 1990s postmodernist feminism, 1970s puritanical anti-consumption feminism, Pretty Woman’s shopping sequence

18. Walter Metz, “Consuming The Graduate”: Katie Roiphe’s The Morning After, Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Germaine Greer’s The Whole Woman, Susan Faludi’s Stiffed

19. Mary Daly, “Gyn/Ecology”: “hag/crone-ography,” flux of Nazi doctors from Germany to United States in post-war period, Nazi experimentation vs. American gynecological practice

20. Jane Caputi, “Jaws as Patriarchal Myth”: the fish goddess, male vanquishment of the female as patriarchal myth, dread and loathing of the female, creation myths, the Terrible Mother of Death, feminist reading of Moby-Dick, the opening as a cinematic rape, vagina dentata, the devouring womb

21. Carol Clover, “Her Body/Himself”: Freud’s “The Uncanny,” The Graduate and Psycho, the fantastic, the slasher film, the terrible place, primeval weapons, The Final Girl, do male viewers identify with the killer?, the horrible monster as feminine, slasher films are not feminist-they signify male experience by using women, gender identity play in the slasher film, “better” horror films punish women more aggressively

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This page was last updated on September 30, 2004

Questions or comments?  Please phone me at (406) 994-6403 or send e-mail to:  metz@montana.edu

Walter Metz, Department of Media and Theater Arts, Montana State University--Bozeman