Schedule 2020/21

Term 1
Week 4	Hallowe'en special We will discuss: Netflix's Rebecca (2020 - released 21 October) to compare with Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca (1938) (there are limited library copies here and here). Online readable version via I nternet Archive here. Additional Reading: Joanna Russ. 1973. ‘Somebody’s Trying to Kill Me and I Think It’s My Husband: The Modern Gothic’. The Journal of Popular Culture 6 (4): 666–91. pdf here. Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik. 2000. ‘Daphne Du Maurier and Gothic Signatures: Rebecca as Vamp(Ire)’. In Body Matters: Feminism, Textuality, Corporeality, edited by Avril Horner and Angela Keane, 209–22. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pdf here.
Week 5	Meanings ascribed to raced and gendered bodies in art and literature CW: Discussions of genitalia throughout the readings, racism and racialised abuse in Gilman. We will discuss Cardi B. and Megan Thee Stallion's WAP music video through the lens of the following: Kate Lister. 2020. A Curious History of Sex. Unbound. Extracts: 'Introduction', ''Tis Pity She's a Whore: The 'Whore' in Whores of Yore', and 'A Nasty Name for a Nasty Thing: A History of Cunt'. Catherine Hodge McCoid and Leroy D. McDermott. 1996. ‘Toward Decolonizing Gender: Female Vision in the Upper Paleolithic’. American Anthropologist 98 (2): 319–26. Sander L. Gilman, “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature”, in Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed. “Race”, Writing, and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
Week 6 (Reading Week)	[No group this week]
Week 7	It comes in waves: the feminist wave model To Watch: Netflix's Feminists: What were they thinking? (2018) To Read: Hewitt, Nancy A. 2012. ‘Feminist Frequencies: Regenerating the Wave Metaphor’. Feminist Studies 38 (3): 658–80. Additional reading: Lear, Martha Weinman. 1968. ‘The Second Feminist Wave’. The New York Times, 10 March 1968. British Library Archive and Features on Spare Rib magazine here.
Week 8	Intersectionality and decolonisation CW: Racism To Watch: Kimberlee Crenshaw's On Intersectionality (Women of the World Festival 2016 keynote): To Read: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. 1988. ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, 271–313. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education. Chandra Talpade Mohanty. 2003. Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. London: Duke University Press. Excerpt: 'Chapter 1 - Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses'
Week 9	"Angry Feminism" CW: Sexual violence, assault Mona Eltahawy. 2019. The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls. Boston: Beacon Press. Excerpts: 'Introduction: Defying, Disobeying, and Disrupting the Patriarchy', 'Anger', and 'Violence'.
Week 10	Housework and emotional labour CW: Suicidal ideation in Emma's comic, miscarriage in Federici To Read: Emma, 'The gender wars of household chores: a feminist comic', The Guardian (2017) link here. Silvia Federici. 1975. Wages against Housework. Bristol: Falling Wall Pr.
Term 2
Week 2	The evolution of drag Special Guest: Nick Cherryman, Sociology To Watch: Paris is Burning (1990) (YouTube here) To Read: Nick Cherryman, 2020. 'The Tranimal Throwing Gender out of Drag?', Contemporary Drag Practices and Performers: Drag in a Changing Scene Volume 1. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 145 - 157 Bonus: bell hooks, 1990. 'Is Paris Burning?', Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press. pp. 145 - 156.
Week 3	[No group this week - do check out the Gothic Reading Group this week!]
Week 4	Valentine's Day special: Love, Romance, and Lust Firestone, Shulamith. 1970. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. London; New York: Verso. Excerpts: 'Love', and 'The Culture of Romance' Mona Eltahawy. 2019. The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls. Boston: Beacon Press. Excerpt: 'Lust'
Week 5	[No group this week - do check out the Gothic Reading Group this week!]
Week 6	Reading Week
Week 7	[No group this week - do check out the Gothic Reading Group this week!]
Week 8	'Chick Lit' CW: Racism, childhood neglect, body image, mental health, sexual violence To Read: Carty-Williams, Candice. 2019. Queenie. London: Trapeze. Note: you should be able to find a second hand (or new if you prefer!) copy of Queenie fairly easily, however, this is a text which is not available via the library. If you would like to join this week and have any barrier(s) to accessing a copy please email me (R.Douglas.2@warwick.ac.uk) and I will help. Optional to watch (for comparison): Bridget Jones' Diary (2001). (CW: disordered eating and discussions of dieting/weight) - available for free through Box of Broadcast
Week 9	[No group this week - do check out the Gothic Reading Group this week!]
Week 10	End of term special: Gothic takeover! Bluebeard through time... This week we team up with the Gothic Reading Group to end the term by enjoying some short stories based on 'Bluebeard', we will be thinking about the feminist responses to and retellings of fairy tales, and feminism's special relationship to the gothic genre. To Read: The Brothers Grimm, 'Bluebeard', The Complete Fairy Tales. London: Vintage. pp 816 - 819. Carter, Angela, 'The Bloody Chamber', The Bloody Chamber. 1979. London: Vintage. pp. 1-42. (available digitally via the library) Sullivan, Deirdre, 'The Tender Weight', Tangleweed and Brine. 2017. Dublin: Little Island. pp 98 - 115.
Term 3
Week 2	*Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and Desire in the Age of Consent* by Katherine Angel CW: sexual violence, sexuality We will be reading the first chapter from Angel's Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again to engage with her argument that our current understanding of consent puts pressure on women to mitigate against assault and to come to sexual encounters with clear boundaries and knowledge of what they do and do not want.
Week 3	[No group this week - do check out the Gothic Reading Group this week!]
Week 4	Motherhood This session will be led by Karen Burns (Sociology). To Read: Hollway W., (2020) “Gender and Maternal Identities”, Studies in the Maternal 13(1). p.4 Chapter 20 of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - library access here
Week 5	[No group this week - do check out the Gothic Reading Group this week!]
Week 6	Reading Week
Week 7	She Works Hard - Working Class Feminism CW: medical abuse and racism in Rowena Arshad This week we will take a look at the 1968 Dagenham Ford factory women's strike for equal pay. Heralded as one of the founding moments of the Women's Liberation Movement, we will compare the sensibilities and activism represented in the fictionalised film alongside some of the archival material in the British Library's 'Sisterhood and After' online archive. We will engage with oral histories to think about working-class women's place in the Women's Liberation Movement and the value of oral histories to women's histories. To watch: Made in Dagenham (2010) - available here via Box of Broadcast (use your Warwick login) Additional short videos to watch: Rowena Arshad discusses contraception and controlling poor women's bodies (CW) Rowena Arshad discusses equal pay for women To investigate further: https://www.bl.uk/sisterhood - have a click around on what interests you!
Week 8 & 9	[No group these weeks - do check out the Gothic Reading Group this week!]
Week 10	Fat Is a Feminist Issue - from the 1980s to now CW: Dieting, eating disorders, discussion of weight, body dysmorphia As all of our bodies have changed over the pandemic, questions about feminist relationships to health, wellness and dieting re-emerge. This week we will read the Prologue to Susie Orbach's 1978 Fat is a Feminist Issue and compare it to contemporary movements against dieting and towards body acceptance. To Read: Susie Orbach, 'Prologue', Fat is a Feminist Issue, London: Arrow, 2016 [1978]. pp. 5-22. Amy Turner, 'Fat and Proud: Calling out fatphobia', Writing into the Ether: https://www.writingintotheether.com/fat-and-proud-calling-out-fatphobia/ To investigate: 'The Anti-Diet Riot Club': https://www.instagram.com/antidietriotclub and https://antidietriotclub.co.uk/ Bonus Reading: 'Everything you know about obesity is wrong': https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/ Susie Orbach, 'FIFI Today', Fat is a Feminist Issue, London: Arrow, 2016 [1978]. pp. v-xxvi.

Schedule 2020/21

Term 1

Term 2

Term 3