DRAFT

Gender, Politics, and Nationalism, MIT Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies

Spring 2007 – Thursdays, 5:30 to 8:30 PM (MIT Campus, building/room TBA)

Elora Chowdhury (Elora.chowdhury@umb.edu, 617.287.6764)

Rhonda Frederick (frederir@bc.edu, 617.552.3717)

OFFICE HOURS: Thursdays, 3:30 to 4:30, LOCATION

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course investigates the myriad ways religion, race/color, and the “idea” of woman shape women’s lives within national and transnational contexts. Specifically, “Gender, Politics, and Nationalism” explores the contested relationship between women and the nation-state as the latter is informed by religious and racial/color politics in South Asia and the Caribbean. This course examines how religious- and racially-informed gender identities intersect with national ones in the emergence of social movements in South Asia and theories about nation-state and citizenship formation in the Caribbean. To achieve these ends, the course explores the uses to which nations put gender as they define and practice religiosity, citizenship, and political perspectives; at the same time, our course highlights the complex ways that nationalist politics has created opportunities for women’s activism while simultaneously undermining their autonomy. We aim to understand the many negotiations, compromises, and concessions women enter into with dominant nationalisms to shape their political agendas and negotiate “woman’s” symbolic uses and women’s “non-symbolic” realities.

This course will be conducted as a seminar and is divided into an introduction and three thematic modules. In MODULE ONE, “Colonialism, Nationalism, and the Woman Question,” we examine debates around anti-colonial and nationalist movements, ideas, and theories. We investigate how nationalist movements and discourses imagine and construct national identities in specific gendered, sexual, and raced terms over time and space. In using gender and race as analytic lenses to re-evaluate nationalist politics, we seek to understand how masculine, feminine, and racial ideals are constantly reworked to project images of strong, healthy, virile, and morally pure nations. MODULE TWO, “Rethinking Theories of Nationalism,” builds upon Module One through an examination of how nationalist discourses imagine and construct identities in specific historical, classed, religious, and community terms. Finally, MODULE THREE, “Globalization, Development, Citizenship,” challenges any hegemonic understanding of globalization’s equalizing effects by investigating new alliances, complexities, formations of power, and women’s agency enabled and disabled by them.

Questions to consider:

1. What are the competing narrations of nationhood? How do systems of power determine how these different narrations are categorized?
2. Why has the intersection of gender and nation been a particularly pertinent one for feminism and for understanding how gender functions within theories of emergent nation-states?
3. How can we complicate the binary of feminism as oppositional to or restitutive of nationalist agendas?
4. Is the “nation” an adequate vehicle through which to envision and realize gender-just societies in national and transnational contexts?

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Attendance: Since the work of this seminar depends upon engaged class discussion, attendance is mandatory. Attendance will be taken at the beginning of each class and late arrivals will be recorded. Each student must come to each class on time and prepared with the required reading and/or writing assignment. If, due to extreme circumstances, you must miss two consecutive weeks of class (2 classes), you should seriously consider withdrawing from the course. Excessive absence (a total of 3 or more unexcused absences) will result in a failing grade. As per university guidelines, we can only excuse absences accompanied by a note from your dean or your doctor.

Class Participation/Position Papers: Your final grade for the course will reflect your engaged participation in class (or lack thereof), therefore each student is responsible for completing the assigned readings, taking detailed reading and class notes, and sharing her/his insights discovered in our required readings. In-class discussion will be greatly enabled by position papers prepared for each class; these 2-page papers, required for February 8^th through the end of the semester, should describe the arguments of each assigned text and offer your critique of them, supported by connections you make between their arguments. In addition to revealing varied interpretations of course materials, enthusiastic verbal and written class participation can provide material for informed and thoughtful essays.

Weekly Discussant: Every week (except for the first one), a discussant will be responsible for that week’s readings. This responsibility entails using your thorough understanding of each required text to lead the class through critical discourse with the material. Discussants may find it useful to prepare several questions that provoke conversation about our readings’ theses and key points. Students will be asked to select a week on the first day of class. (PLEASE NOTE: the number of presenters per week will depend upon the total number of students enrolled in the class.)

Writing (PLEASE NOTE: no late writing or emailed assignments will be accepted):

Module Response Papers (MRPs) – see course schedule for MRP due dates.

Each student must write one response paper (5 to 7 type-written pages) for each course module. In these, you must:

· Create a thesis that identifies and explores a theme/issue (or themes/issues) in the given module

· Use required readings, class discussion, and your own analyses to support your thesis about the module

These short assignments, as well as the final essay, should employ Chicago Manual of Style format.

Final Paper – Conference Paper or Article-length Essay

While you may choose your own topic/thesis for this essay, final essays must examine a theme (or module) of the course, an issue raised in lecture/class discussion, or an issue in your own analyses. This research essay must draw on at least two supplemental sources in addition to your primary source. Finally, this essay should be considered a conference paper and thus contain no more than 10 pages. If your primary area of study is Caribbean, Post-colonial, South Asian, or Women’s Studies, you may choose to write one article-length essay (25-30 pages); no MRPs are required if you choose to write an article-length essay. Proposals for the article-length essay are due mid-semester and must include a description of your thesis; citation, quotation, and brief discussion of relevant quotations; and an annotated bibliography that describes sources to be used.

Grading:

MRPs 35% Article Proposal 30%

Conf. Paper 40% Article 45%

Particip./Position Pprs. 25% Particip./Position Pprs. 25%

100% 100%

REQUIRED READINGS (Books will be available at …; articles and selected chapters will be provided by …) Please be aware that some readings may be added or revised throughout the semester.

Books

• Bhasin, Kamla and Ritu Menon (2000). Borders & Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition. Rutgers University Press.
• Cezair-Thompson, Margaret. A True History of Paradise: A Novel. NY: Plume Books, 2000.
• Cruz, Angie. Soledad: A Novel. NY: Scribner Paperback Fiction/Simon & Schuster, 2001.
• Ferré, Rosario. Selected stories, The Youngest Doll. Foreword by Jean Franco. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.
• Kabeer, Naila (2000). The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labour Market Decisions in London and Dhaka. Verso.
• Nunez, Elizabeth. Bruised Hibiscus. NY: Ballantine Books, 2000.
• Panjabi, Kavita (2004). Old Maps and New: Legacies of the Partition. Seagull Books.
• Powell, Patricia. The Pagoda. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.
• Rosario, Nelly. Song of the Water Saints. NY: Pantheon Books, 2002.

Articles/Selected Chapters

• Alam, S.M. Shamsul. “Women in the Era of Modernity and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Case of Taslima Nasreen of Bangladesh.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 1998 Vol 23 No. 2.
• Alexander, Jacqui. “Not Just (Any) Body Can Be a Citizen: The Politics of Law, Sexuality and Postcoloniality in Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas.” Feminist Review 48 (Autumn) 1994: 5-23.
• Anderson, Benedict. “Introduction” and “Cultural Roots.” Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. NY: Verso, 1991.
• Bose, Sugata and Jalal, Ayesha. Modern South Asia (Routledge: 1998) Chapters 16 – 20 (pp.165-244).
• Brennan, Timothy. “The National Longing for Form.” Nation and Narration. Edited by Homi K. Bhabha. London: Routledge, 1994: 44-70.
• Chatterjee, Partha. “Nationalist Resolution of the Woman’s Question,” in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, eds. Recasting Women (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989): 233-253.
• D’Costa, Bina. “Coming to Terms with the Past in Bangladesh: Naming Women’s Truths.” Feminist Politics, Activism and Vision. Ricciatelli, Miles, McFadden, eds. Innang 2004. (18 pages).
• Gardner, Katy. “Women and Islamic Revivalism in a Bangladeshi Community.” Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia. Patricia Jeffery and Amrita Basu, eds. NY: Routledge, 1998. (pp. 203-220).

Articles/Selected Chapters (continued)

• Guhathakurta, Meghna. “Two Women, One Family, Divided Nations.” No Woman’s Land: Women from Pakistan, India & Bangladesh Write on the Partition of India. Ritu Menon, Ed. New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2004. (pp. 98-120).
• _________. “Women Negotiating Change: The Structure and Transformation of Gendered Violence in Bangladesh.” Cultural Dynamics 16 (2/3):193-211. 2004.
• Hashmi, Taj. “NGOs and Empowerment of Women: Some Problematic Prognoses.” Women and Islam in Bangladesh: Beyond Subjection and Tyranny. NY: Palgrave, 2000. (pp.134-179).
• James, CLR. “Triumph.” (FULL CITATION FROM SAUNDERS): 31-40 (pp. 34 and 36 missing [advertisements]).
• __________. “Discovering Literature in Trinidad: the Nineteen-Thirties.” Savacou 2 (September 1970): 54-60.
• Jeffery, Patricia. “Agency Activism and Agendas.” Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia. Patricia Jeffery and Amrita Basu, eds. NY: Routledge, 1998. (pp. 221-243).
• Joseph, Saud. “The Public/Private – The Imagined Boundary in the Imagined Nation/State/Community: The Lebanese Case.” Feminist Review 57 (August 1997): 73-92.
• Kabeer, Naila. “The Quest for National Identity: Women, Islam and the State in Bangladesh” Feminist Review 37 (Spring 1991): 38-58.
• Karim, Lamia. “Democratizing Bangladesh: State, NGOs, and Militant Islam” Cultural Dynamics 16 (2/3): 292 – 318. 2004.
• McClintock, Anne. “No Longer in a Future Heaven: Nationalism, Gender and Race.” Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. NY: Routledge, 1995: 352-389.
• Mahmood, Saba. “Feminist Theory, Agency and the Liberatory Subject.” Shifting Ground: Muslim Women in the Global Era. Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone, ed. NY: Feminist Press, 2005. (pp. 111-152).
• Mendes, Alfred H. “The Turbulent Thirties in Trinidad: An Interview with Alfred H. Mendes, Port of Spain, 6 Oct. 1972.” (FULL CITATION FROM SAUNDERS): 66-79.
• Rahman, Aminur. “Micro-Credit for Women in Rural Bangladesh: Retrenchment of Patriarchal Hegemony as a Consequence. Chicago Anthropology Exchange 23 (Spring): 6-22.
• Renan, Ernest: “What is a Nation?” Nation and Narration. Edited by Homi K. Bhabha. London: Routledge, 1994: 8-22.
• Riaz, Ali. “Persecuted Minorities and the Enemy Within.” God Willing: The Politics of Islamism in Bangladesh. NY: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. (pp. 49-72).
• __________. “Three Battles of the Secularists.” God Willing: The Politics of Islamism in Bangladesh.. NY: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. (pp. 89-132).
• Robinson, Tracy, “Fictions of Citizenship: Bodies Without Sex: The Production and Effacement of Gender in Law.” Small Axe 7 – Special Issue, Gender and Sexualities (March 2000): 1-27.
• Saunders, Patricia. “Is Not Everything Good to Eat, Good to Talk: Sexual Economy and Dancehall Music in the Global Marketplace.” Small Axe 13 (3/2003): 95-115.
• Sharify-Funk, Meena. “Women and the Dynamics of Transnational Networks.” Shifting Ground. Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone, ed. NY: Feminist Press, 2005. (pp.248-266).

Articles/Selected Chapters (continued)

• Shehabuddin, Elora. “Contesting the Illicit: Gender and the Politics of Fatwas in Bangladesh.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1999, vol 24, no.4.
• Yuval-Davis, Nira. “Theorizing Gender and Nation,” Gender and Nation (London: Sage, 1997). 1 - 25

Films

• “The Clay Bird” (DVD, 94 minutes, directed by Tareque Masud, Audiovision, 2002).
• “Life and Debt” (DVD, 86 minutes, directed by Stephanie Black, New Yorker Video, 2001).
• “Silent Waters” (DVD, 99 minutes, directed by Sabiha Sumar, First Run Features, 2003).
• “Women and War” (VHS, 25 minutes, directed by Tareque Masud & Catherine Masud, ASK & Audiovision).

Website

• Selections from Drishtipat website on Women of 1971 http://www.drishtipat.org/1971/war.htm

(Strongly) Recommended Readings (relevant module[s] in parentheses)

• Edmondson, Belinda. Selected Chapters. Making Men: Gender, Literary Authority, and Women’s Writing in Caribbean Narrative. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. (Introduction, Module One)
• Feldman, Shelley. “NGOs and Civil Society: (Un)stated Contradictions.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol.554, (Nov. 1997), 46-65. (Module Three)
• Goetz, A.M. and Sengupta. 1996. "Who takes the credit?: Gender, Power and Control Over Loan Use in Rural Credit Programs in Bangladesh." World Development Vol. 24(1), pp. 45-64 (Module Three)
• Goetz, Anne Marie. Women Development Workers. Sage, 2001. Chapter 3 & 6 (103 – 155; 258 – 290) (Module Three)
• Hashemi, S., S.R. Schuler and A.P. Riley. 1996. "Rural credit programs and women's empowerment in Bangladesh." World Development, Vol. 24(4), pp.635-53 (Module Three)
• Hashmi, Taj. “Militant Feminism, Islam and Patriarchy: Taslima Nasreen, Ulama and the Polity.” Women and Islam in Bangladesh: Beyond Subjection and Tyranny. NY: Palgrave, 2000.(180-204) (Module Three)
• Hintzen, Percy C. “Creoleness and Nationalism in Guyanese Anticolonialism and Postcolonial Formation.” Small Axe 15 (March 2004): 106-122. (Introduction)
• Kempadoo, Kamala. Chapters, One, Three, and Six. Sexing the Caribbean: Gender, Race, and Sexual Labor. NY: Routledge, 2004. (Module Three)
• _________ and Jo Doezema (editors). Chapters Nine, Eleven, and Part Three. Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition. NY: Routledge, 1998. (Module Three)
• Rogozinski. Parts One, Two, and Five. A Brief History of the Caribbean: From the Arawak and Carib to the Present. NY: Plume – Penguin, 1999.
• Siddiqi, Dina M. “In the Name of Islam? Gender, Politics and Women’s Rights in Bangladesh.” Harvard Asia Quarterly. http://www.asiaquarterly.com/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=165&pop=… (accessed 8/9/2006)
• Thompson, Krista A. “‘Black Skin, Blue Eyes’: Visualizing Blackness in Jamaican Art, 1922-1944.” Small Axe 16 (September 2004): 1-31. (Introduction)
• Trotz, D. Alissa. “Between Despair and Hope: Women and Violence in Contemporary Guyana.” Small Axe 15 (March 2004): 1-20. (Introduction, Module Three)

COURSE SCHEDULE

Course Overview and Introduction

February 1^st

• Ernst Renan: “What is a Nation?”
• Benedict Anderson, “Introduction,” & “Cultural Roots”
• Suad Joseph, “The Public/Private – The Imagined Boundary in the Imagined Nation/State/Community: The Lebanese Case”
• Anne McClintock, “No Longer in a Future Heaven: Nationalism, Gender and Race”
• Timothy Brennan, “The National Longing for Form”

Module One: Colonialism, Nationalism, and the Woman Question

February 8^th

• MORE READINGS ON GENERAL CARIBBEAN (colonialism, nationalism)
• Nira Yuval-Davis, “Theorizing Gender and Nation,” Gender and Nation (London: Sage, 1997). 1 - 25
• Partha Chatterjee, “Nationalist Resolution of the Woman’s Question,” in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, eds. Recasting Women (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989): 233 – 253.
• Jacqui Alexander, “Not Just (Any) Body Can Be a Citizen”
• Alfred Mendes, “The Turbulent Thirties in Trinidad”
• CLR James, “Discovering Literature in Trinidad: the Nineteen-Thirties”

February 15^th

• Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia (Routledge: 1998) Chapters 16 – 20 (pp.165 – 244)
• CLR James, “Triumph”
• Film: “Silent Waters”

February 22^nd

• Menon & Bhasin, Borders & Boundaries (260 pages)
• READINGS ON PUERTO RICO (colonialism, imperialism, aristocracy)
• Rosario Ferré, “The Youngest Doll,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “When Women Love Men”

March 1^st

• READINGS ON TRINIDAD (gender, violence)
• Elizabeth Nunez, Bruised Hibiscus (read all)

Module Two: Rethinking Theories of Nationalism

March 8^th (March 5-9, 2006 Boston College Spring Break)

• Module One RRP due
• Selections from Drishtipat website on Women of 1971 http://www.drishtipat.org/1971/war.htm
• Bina D’Costa, “Coming to Terms with the Past in Bangladesh: Naming Women’s Truths” (18 pages)
• Patricia Powell, The Pagoda, pp. 1-123 (first half)
• Film: “Women and War”

March 15^th

• Kavita Panjabi, Old Maps and New (80 pages)
• Meghna Guhathakurta, “Two Women, One Family, Divided Nations” (22 pages)
• Naila Kabeer, “The Quest for National Identity: Women, Islam and the State in Bangladesh”
• Patricia Powell, The Pagoda, pp. 124-end (second half)
• Film: “The Clay Bird”

March 22^nd (DATES, 2006 UMass, Boston Spring Break)

• READINGS ON JAMAICA (EMPHASIS ON COURSE THEMES, RACIAL/ETHNIC GROUPS, POLITICAL VIOLENCE)
• Margaret Cezair-Thompson, A True History of Paradise, pp. 1-176 (first half)

March 29^th

• Margaret Cezair-Thompson, A True History of Paradise, pp. 177-end (second half)
• Rosario Ferré, “The Poisoned Story”
• Taj Hashmi, “NGOs and Empowerment of Women: Some Problematic Prognoses” (pp.134 – 179)

Module Three: Globalization, Development, Citizenship

April 5^th (March 5-9, 2006 Boston College Easter Break)

• Module Two RRP due
• Naila Kabeer, Preface & Chapters 3, 4, 5 , The Power to Choose. (pp. 54 – 192)
• Patricia Saunders, “Is Not Everything Good to Eat, Good to Talk”
• Tracy Robinson, “Fictions of Citizenship: Bodies Without Sex”
• Rosario Ferré, “Amalia,” “The Fox Fur Coat,” “Mercedes Benz 220 SL”

April 12^th

• Ali Riaz, “Persecuted Minorities and the Enemy Within” (pp.49 – 72)
• Elora Shehabuddin, “Contesting the Illicit: Gender and the Politics of Fatwas in Bangladesh” (pp.201 – 234)
• Katy Gardner, “Women and Islamic Revivalism in a Bangladesh Community” (pp.203 – 220)
• ONE OF KEMPADOO READINGS ON DOMINICAN REPUBLIC; READINGS ON GLOBALIZATION, SEX/SEXUALITY, AND SEX WORK
• Angie Cruz, Soledad, pp. 1-115 (first half)

April 19^th

• Lamia Karim, “Democratizing Bangladesh: State, NGOs, and Militant Islam”
• Ali Riaz, “Three Battles of the Secularists” (pp89 – 132)
• S.M. Shamsul Alam, “Women in the Era of Modernity and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Case of Taslima Nasreen of Bangladesh” (pp235 – 268)
• Angie Cruz, Soledad, pp. 116-end (second half)

April 26^th

• Naila Kabeer, Chapters 6 – 10 (pp193 – 363) (some chapters as rec.?)
• Aminur Rahman, “Micro-Credit for women in Rural Bangladesh: Retrenchment of Patriarchal Hegemony as a Consequence”
• Nelly Rosario, Song of the Water Saints, pp. 1-121 (first half)

May 3^rd

• Patricia Jeffery, “Agency Activism and Agendas” (221 – 243)
• Meghna Guhathakurta, “Women Negotiating Change: The Structure and Transformation of Gendered Violence in Bangladesh”
• Saba Mahmood, “Feminist Theory, Agency and the Liberatory Subject” (111 – 152)
• Meena Sharify-Funk, “Women and the Dynamics of Transnational Networks” (248 – 266)
• Nelly Rosario, Song of the Water Saints, pp. 122-end (second half)

May 10^th

• Module Three RRP due
• Film: “Life and Debt”
• Closing Comments

DATE

Final Essay Due