Calling graduate students, faculty, and friends to join the Feminist Reading Group at NYU!
On January 21, 2017, women across the world took to the streets—in protest, in advocacy, in solidarity. The occasion of the Women’s March provided a platform for an enormous range of causes and concerns, and in its aftermath critiques and debates surrounding its meaning and efficacy have pointed to both the strengths and the limits of (perceived) global solidarity. In other words, whatever else it did, the Women’s March highlighted the untenability of a singular “feminism” and reiterated the question of “feminisms,” plural.
This semester, the Feminist Reading Group will take as our theme “The Question of Feminisms.” We will be interrogating what “feminism” means and has meant across time and space and context, looking at feminisms which have developed around or in response to a specific, local situation as well as feminisms which have developed as international(ist) or transnational movements. We will ask such questions as: How are feminisms inflected by their specific histories and contexts? Is “woman” insidious or salvageable as a category of global solidarity? Does “feminism” have a responsibility to tend towards the universal? To shy away from it? What happens when one feminism encounters another?
FRG was founded in the Fall of 2015 by a group of graduate students in the Comparative Literature department at NYU looking to enrich their scholarly work and their personal lives with readings in feminist theory. Past semesters’ themes include “Socialist Feminisms,” “Feminist Porn Wars,” “Feminist Killjoys,” and, most recently, “Feminist Futures,” which featured a wide variety of theoretical and literary readings engaging with questions of futurity, fugivity, and utopia.
Readings may include texts by Lila Abu-Lughod, Flavia Agnes, Malathi de Alwis, Tani Barlow, Rey Chow, Inderpal Grewal, Gayatri Gopinath, Cheryl Higashida, Kumari Jayawardena, Licia Fiol-Matta, Saba Mahmood, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Mrinalini Sinha, Ashwini Sukthankar, Millie Thayer, He-Yin Zhen, and others – including your suggestions!
Our first reading will be Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s classic 1984 essay “Under Western Eyes,” which is already available on our website here.
This semester we will be meeting:
Every other Monday
(Sept. 11, Sept. 25, Oct. 16, Oct. 30, Nov. 13, Nov. 27, Dec. 11)
6:30-8:00 PM
The Jordan Center (2nd Floor, 19 University Place)
FRG is open to graduate students, faculty, and unaffiliated folks. As always, tasteful refreshments will be provided at every meeting.
For more information, visit our website frgnyu.wordpress.com or contact Andrea Chu at alc626@nyu.edu