English

3

Not applicable.

Of all faculties

Students gain elementary knowledge about feminism and feminist thinking.

A keen interest in feminism and social justice issues.

Not applicable.

Lectures, discussions, sessions with invited speakers.

Credits awarded on the basis of home preparation (reading of recommended texts) and lecture and seminar participation. In case of a number of absences: writing a paper on one of the feminist issues discussed in seminars.

1. Introductory meeting — identity and representation, intersectionality, coalitional politics, feminist theory as a world-building tool.
In the first meeting, feminism is introduced as a coalitional struggle against multiple systems of oppression. Sexism, heteronormativity, racism, class discrimination, ableism, ageism and environmental violence are explained as interlocking forces that do not operate on their own but are experienced together. We look at feminist strategies to oppose unevenly distributed intersectional injustice and discuss feminist theory as a radical world-building tool.
2. Social Construction of Gender — origins of sex inequality, heteronormativity, straight mind, sex and gender, one is not born a woman, gender performativity, technologies of gender, construction of difference in psychoanalysis.
The second seminar looks at how feminist authors conceive of gender difference: what is gender difference and how is it constructed? How are gendered bodies produced? What is the relationship between sex and gender? What strategies are proposed for overcoming oppression linked to gender difference?
3. Social Reproduction — reproduction of everyday life, reproduction of social systems, production and reproduction, division of labour, reproductive strike, “feminization” of labour, affective labour, commons, communities of care, making kin.
Social reproduction in feminist theory refers to processes that sustain life on everyday basis and intergenerationally — the processes of biological reproduction, but also providing food, clothing and shelter, sanitation, education, healthcare and even emotional support or sex. Under capitalism, social reproduction is an unpaid or underpaid work that nurtures future workers, regenerates the current work force and takes care of those who cannot work. In the seminar, we look at how gender, race and class inequalities are embedded in political systems and their economic functioning and ask to what extent the self-perpetuation of social structures hinges on reproduction of gendered, raced and classed individuals. We discuss practices of care and their undervalued status in capitalist societies and think about how to create a more caring world — one capable of sustaining and nourishing all forms of life.
4. Technoreproduction — feminism and biopolitics, (re)production of life, reproductive justice, assisted reproduction, ectogenesis, surrogacy, seizing the means of reproduction, the figure of the cyborg, genealogy and kinship.
In the fourth seminar, we consider the shift from feminist focus on discursively constructed category of gender to material feminisms concerned with matter, material bodies and biopolitics. We examine biotechnological means of (re)production and discuss feminist biopolitics. As sexed, racialized and classed bodies are produced by biotechnological means, how can we seize the control of these means and resist the exploitative biocapitalist governance?
5. Feminisms for the Anthropocene — material feminisms, posthuman feminisms, anthropocene feminism, xenofeminism, object-oriented feminism
What does the Anthropocene stand for and how is it represented? In what ways does the notion of the Anthropocene inform feminist theory and practices? What kinds of feminism are needed to confront the accelerated deterioration of living conditions on the planet?
6. Invited Lecture
7. Invited Lecture

Not applicable.

The course aspires to initiate a debate about social justice issues and how to address them in art, theory and activism.

Lectures and seminars take place at the premisses of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Brno University of Technology every other week at designated times. Two absences are tolerated.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Costanza-Chock, Sasha. 2018. Design Justice: Towards an Intersectional Feminist Framework for Design Theory and Practice. Proceedings of the Design Research Society, June 3. (EN)
Butler, Judith. 1999. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire. In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 3–44. New York and London: Routledge. First published in 1990. (EN)
Federici, Silvia. 2004. Caliban and the Witch. New York: Autonomedia. (EN)
Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Making Kin: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene. In Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, 99—103. Durham and London: Duke University Press. (EN)

de Beauvoir, Simone. 2011. Conclusion. In Second Sex, 848–863. New York: Vintage Books. First published in 1949 in French. (EN)
Cixous, Hélène. 1976. The Laugh of the Medusa. Signs, 1(4), 875–893. (EN)
Creed, Barbara. 1993. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London and New York: Routledge. (EN)
Irigaray, Luce. 1985. This Sex Which Is Not One. In This Sex Which Is Not One, 23–33. New York: Cornell University Press. First published in 1977 in French. (EN)
Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Approaching Abjection. In Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, 1–31. New York: Columbia University Press. First published in 1980 in French. (EN)
de Lauretis, Teresa. 1987. The Technology of Gender. In Technologies of Gender, 1–30. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (EN)
Wittig, Monique. 1990. Straight Mind. In Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures edited by Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Félix González-Torres, and Cornel West, 51–57. New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts: New Museum of Contemporary Art and MIT Press. First published in 1979 in French. (EN)
Wittig, Monique. 1993. One Is Not Born a Woman. In The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader edited by Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin, 103–109. New York and London: Routledge. First published in 1981 in French. (EN)
Edelman, Lee. 2004. The Future Is Kid Stuff. In No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, 1–31. Durham and London: Duke University Press. (EN)
Federici, Silvia. 2019. Feminism and the Politics of the Commons in an Era of Primitive Accumulation. In Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. Oakland: PM Press. (EN)
Hester, Helen. 2017. Promethean Labors and Domestic Realism. e-flux, September 27. (EN)
Hester, Helen. 2018. Xenofeminist Futurities. In Xenofeminism, 33–69. Cambridge and Medford: Polity. (EN)
The Care Collective. 2020. The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence. London and New York: Verso. (EN)
Firestone, Shulamith. 1972. The Ultimate Revolution. In The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, 205–245. New York: Bantam Book. (EN)
Franklin, Sarah. 2013. Relatively Biological. In Biological Relatives: IVF, Stem Cells and the Future of Kinship, 1–29. Durham and London: Duke University Press. (EN)
Latimer, Heather. 2011. Reproductive Technologies, Fetal Icons, and Genetic Freaks: Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl and the Limits and Possibilities of Donna Haraway's Cyborg. MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 57(2), 318–335. (EN)
Lewis, Sophie. 2019. Full Surrogacy Now. e-flux, Journal #99, April. (EN)
Mahjouri, Nadia. 2004. Techno-Maternity: Rethinking the Possibilities of Reproductive Technologies. third space: A Journal of Feminist Theory & Culture, 4(1). (EN)
Murphy, Michelle. 2012. Feminism in/as Biopolitics. In Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health and Technoscience, 11–24. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Alaimo, Stacy. 2017. Your Shell on Acid: Material Immersion, Anthropocene Dissolves. In Anthropocene Feminism edited by Richard Grusin. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (EN)
Alaimo, Stacy and Susan Hekman. 2018. Emerging Models of Materiality in Feminist Theory. In Material Feminisms edited by Stacy Alaimo, and Susan Hekman, 1–19. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. (EN)
Barad, Karen. 2018. Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. In Material Feminisms edited by Stacy Alaimo, and Susan Hekman, 120–154. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. (EN)
Behar, Katherine. 2016. An Introduction to OOF. In Object-Oriented Feminism edited by Katherine Behar. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (EN)
Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge and Malden: Polity. (EN)
Davis, Heather, and Etienne Turpin. 2015. Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies. London: Open Humanities Press. (EN)
Demos, T. J. 2017. Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today. (EN)
Grusin, Richard. 2017. Anthropocene Feminism: An Experiment in Collaborative Theorizing. In Anthropocene Feminism edited by Richard Grusin. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (EN)
Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene. In Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, 30–57. Durham and London: Duke University Press. (EN)
Hester, Helen. 2018. What is Xenofeminism? In Xenofeminism, 6–32. Cambridge and Medford: Polity. (EN)
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt, Nils Bubandt, Elaine Gan, and Heather Anne Swanson, eds. 2017. Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (EN)
Yusoff, Kathryn. 2017. Epochal Aesthetics: Affectual Infrastructures of the Anthropocene. e-flux, Accumulation, March 29. (EN)

8 hours, compulsory