WGS.615  Feminist Inquiry

Feminist Inquiry is a seminar designed to investigate the conceptual frameworks that inform practices of feminist interrogation, critique, analysis, and research across a range of disciplines.  We will focus on epistemology and methodology:  the types of questions asked, the assumptions that serve as foundation, the frameworks that structure the method of inquiry, the values and power relations inherent in particular approached, and the criteria used to determine what constitutes knowledge.  Over the last 30 years, feminist epistemologists, theorists, and researchers have developed profound critiques of traditional constructions of Western knowledge and knowledge seeking. How are feminists to construct methods of inquiry that give voice to the multiply located perspectives of the marginalized without replicating the masculinist, racist, classist conceptual structures and methodologies that constitute traditional Western epistemologies?  Different questions require different modes of inquiry. In this seminar we will examine the various paths explored by feminist scholars.