Imagining Feminist Futures

From The Handmaid’s Tale to contemporary Abolition Feminism, feminist writers and activists have offered critiques of male authoritarian control over our communities, our homes, and our bodies. At today’s juncture between dystopian futures and decolonial worldviews, feminists, leftists, and queer theorists have formulated visions of what alternative, liberated futures might look like.

Drawing on feminist literature, political economy and liberatory theory and practice, this program will explore what it means to imagine and embody the world we are trying to create. We’ll probe the question: what does our collective liberation look like? How can we imagine a world beyond oppressive systems of militarized violence, deepening capitalist crisis and economic inequality, and the control of bodies constructed as “the other”? And we’ll learn about local to global movements, from the US to Palestine, to understand the creative ways that people have courageously fought back against authoritarian control and intersecting systems of domination.

Through critical engagement with literature, films, historical movements, and current events, students will gain skills in intersectional feminist analysis, political economy, media and literary analysis, writing, and anti-oppression education. We’ll explore feminist and decolonial utopian visions and their complexities, how they may subvert or reproduce systems of domination, exploitation and exclusion, confound essentialist notions of identity, or promote more expansive solidarities. We’ll also visit museums and community spaces to examine how art and activism help us to envision a futurity of life-affirming possibilities that embraces our global connectedness, justice, dignity, and the right to life and freedom for all peoples.

Students may enroll for 16 or 12 credits. Students enrolled for 16 credits will engage in a 4-credit media analysis collaborative project, or a research paper or creative project related to imagining liberatory futures.

Anticipated Credit Equivalencies:

4 - Transnational Feminism: Cultural & Decolonial Theory

4 - Feminist Political Economy

4 - Literature: Utopias and Dystopias

4 - Media Research or Creative Project (16 credit students)