Browse Hierarchy COM6214: Intersectional Feminist Writing

The first wave of feminism that occurred throughout the Western world in the 19th and 20th century has been widely criticised for focusing only on white, middle-class women, thus overlooking discrimination against Black and women of colour, migrant women or women from the working class. Taking this as a point of departure, the module aims to highlight questions of intersectionality in women¿s writing on race, gender, class, and religion. We will discuss novels, essays, and other hybrid genres by Black women and other women of colour as well as the work of Jewish writers, feminist Muslim writers, and writing by queer writers of colour. How does literature reflect or shape questions of intersectionality? Does intersectionality lead to the creation of new aesthetics, genres, or stylistic devices? What affects are evoked in intersectional feminist writing? How does intersectional feminist writing re-read and respond to Eurocentrism and patriarchy? How can feminist writing sometimes become complicit in adapting and reproducing the same discrimination mechanisms that it criticises and writes against? These are some of the questions the course aims to tackle.