Student Information Cards 1.Name, year, major 2.In what other terms do you define yourself? 3.Where were you born? Where did you grow up? Where do you live now? 4.What do you expect to learn from this class? Why are you taking it? 5.What do you like to do outside of class? 6.What is one thing about yourself that would surprise people?

Reassemblage, Trinh T. Minh-ha Write down at least one phrase or sound that you hear that catches your interest. What is on the image on the screen at the moment that you hear this phrase or sound?

Reassemblage, Trinh T. Minh-ha Scarcely twenty years were enough to make two billion people define themselves as underdeveloped I do not intend to speak about / Just speak near by A film about what? my friends ask. A film about Senegal; but what in Senegal? In numerous tales / Woman is depicted as the one who possessed the fire / Only she knew how to make fire / She kept it in diverse places The habit of imposing a meaning to every single sign

Reassemblage, Trinh T. Minh-ha What does the filmmaker convey about the politics of representation? What do she take apart and reassemble? How? Is this a feminist film? In an international context? Why or why not? How does it depict gender difference?

Small Group Discussion Reporter, Timekeeper, Gate Keeper, Recorder, Task Master What is feminism? Try to formulate a short working definition or one or two central concepts or problems. Come up with a group statement (even if it the statement itself might reflect differences).

U.S. Feminist Waves First Wave Feminist movement in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century Primary focus on gaining the right of women’s suffrage. (suffragette: a woman who advocates extension of suffrage esp. to women; suffragist: one who advocates extension of suffrage esp. to women) Key concerns included education, employment, the marriage laws, and the plight of intelligent middle-class single women. African American women fought for recognition, revealing the presumed white norm of this wave; former slave and suffrage activist Sojourner Truth demands, “Ain’t I a woman?”

U.S. Feminist Waves Second Wave Period of feminist thought that originated around the Primary focus on independence and greater political action to improve women's rights. Rose out of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in which women, disillusioned with their second-class status within these movements, began to band together to contend against discrimination. Concerned with issues such as economic equality between the genders. Again, the white norm of this wave is challenged by women of color activists insist on the importance of gender’s intersection with other forms of discriminatory experience such as race, class, and nationality.

U.S. Feminist Waves Third Wave: Ongoing conflict and collaboration Roughly beginning in the 1990s Some key influences include queer theory, women- of-color consciousness, post-colonialism, critical theory,transnationalism Emphasis on how the categories of sex/gender distinction are defined in different ways in specific societies; we can no longer take them as pre- existing, universal categories upon which particular relations of gender hierarchy are constructed

How have the authors we read for today felt excluded by conventional or mainstream waves of feminist movements in the US? How might we extend this tension between feminisms and feminists to Third World women’s experience with Western feminists who claim to act in their name under the banner of “universal sisterhood”? Why do they have trouble with the idea of “universal sisterhood”? Second Wave: Audre Lorde’s response and call to action Third Wave: Rebecca Hurdis and Susan Darraj’s responses and queries

Audre Lorde, “The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives.” (Poetry Is Not a Luxury)

Why is she writing to Mary Daly? What is the problem of representation she addresses? What are the implications? How would you describe her tone? What problems and strategies does she identify in “The Master’s Tools” essay?

“Homework” & Herstories How and why we enter the conversation Feminism for whom? Where? When? What do Lorde, Hurdis, and Darraj show us about the international complexities of US feminism?