Studying at York
Feminist Cultural Activism - WOM00006M
- Department: Centre for Women's Studies
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: M
- Academic year of delivery: 2022-23
- See module specification for other years: 2023-24
Module summary
This module will explore the vast multimedia scope of feminist DIY cultures across borders, alongside the vibrant, evolving interdisciplinary field of creative/artistic research methods. We will engage with a broad selection of performance art works, photographs, films, music, comics, and other underground cultural artefacts such as zines, posters, badges, and other feminist paraphernalia in order to: complicate our understanding of the meaning and potential impact of global feminist art-activism; critically reflect on the varying contexts in which feminist art-activism materialises (including how it politicises our classroom!); and explore creative methodologies of generating and voicing feminist ideas. Each week, we will focus on a specific artform or art-activist action and reflect on how the crossover between artistic practice, thought, and embodiment can produce new approaches to knowledge, as well as to our relationships with others, ourselves, and our environments.
Ultimately, this module is about mobilising creativity to enable thinking beyond conventions and borders. Through study, seminar discussion, and collaborative/creative activities, we will work to reimagine how we think and how we can practice our intellectual and political work differently. In addition to the traditional seminar discussion format, seminars will also create a safe space where students can experiment with using creative methods (inspired by the primary material) to test new embodied approaches to feminist thought. The module features a starting reading list compiled by the convenor but this will be evolved collaboratively in the course of term, as students make their own contributions to it weekly based on their unique cultural and personal backgrounds, experiences, and interests, thereby fostering a genuinely collaborative and non-hierarchical mode of learning.
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Autumn Term 2022-23 |
Module aims
This module ranges across cultural production, theory and activism. We will:
- make - try out a variety of activities, e.g. zines/pamphlets, photographs, performance;
- imagine - through practicing art and crafts we will challenge our own beliefs and opinions,
- think - evaluate perspectives on cultural production in various settings and societies;
- activate - produce our own feminist cultural activist material in response to specific issues. and develop creative ways of effecting political change;
Key questions to think about
What constitutes “feminist activism” or “feminist research,” and what, if any, are the limits of these definitions? How does art become (political) action and a way of knowing? What risks, privileges, and ethical responsibilities do activists, artists, thinkers, and participants bear in an art-action’s given context? How can we incorporate the legacy of feminist cultural activism into our own daily feminist praxis as well as our academic methodologies?
Module learning outcomes
After successfully completing this module, students should:
• Be able to demonstrate a critical, nuanced understanding of feminist cultural activism in multiple global and interdisciplinary contexts.
• Have broadened and deepened their understanding of the ways in which feminist theory and art can materialise as both political action and intellectual praxis.
• Be able to critically interlink advanced theoretical concepts in feminist and queer scholarship with activist, artistic, and academic practice.
• Have enhanced their skills at oral presentation, essay writing, collaborative teamwork, and creative, political, and self-expression.
Module content
Indicative Programme
Week 2 Introduction: Creative practice as political/intellectual action.
Film screening in preparation for week 3: Act & Punishment (2015, about Pussy Riot).
Week 3 Punk in the streets: Riot Grrrl Cultures Across Borders. Artform: zines, patches, badges, iron jackets.
Week 4 Vulnerability as Resistance: Exploring & Protesting Violence through Performance Art
Week 5 Queer Photography as Anti-Fascist Resistance in World War 2: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore
Week 6 READING WEEK.
Week 7 Speaking the unspeakable: Migrant and refugee women’s histories in spoken word. Primary works by: Warsan Shire, Rafeef Ziadah, and Marlene NourbeSe Philip.
Week 8 Feminist comics in the digital age. Primary works: Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis, Alison Bechdel, Dykes to Watch Out For (selected comics), and student selections of comic/graphic novel artworks.
Film screening in preparation for week 9: Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette (2017)
Week 9 When the personal becomes political: Storytelling as a form of activism. Primary works: The Coming Out Monologues (Budapest 2012) and Hannah Gadsby, Nanette.
Week 10 Student presentations and reflective group discussion.
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Module feedback
Provisional feedback (subject to external examiners' confirmation) by week 6 of the spring term.
Indicative reading
Ahmed, Sara. Living a Feminist Life. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.
Buser, Michael, and Jane Arthurs. “Cultural Activism in the Community: Creative Practice, Activism and Place-Identities.” UWE Bristol Research Projects (blog), October 2012. shorturl.at/dpSUV
Butler, Judith, Zeynep Gambetti, and Leticia Sabsay, eds. Vulnerability in Resistance. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
Chilton, Gioia. “Altered Inquiry: Discovering Arts-Based Research Through an Altered Book.” IJQM: International Journal of Qualitative Methods, no. 12 (2013): 457–77.
Claycomb, Ryan. "Performative Lives, Performed Selves: Autobiography in Feminist Performance." In Lives in Play: Autobiography and Biography on the Feminist Stage, 27-54. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012.
Cole, Julie. “Review: Art, Activism, and Feminisms: Sites of Confrontation and Change.” NWSA Journal, Feminist Activist Art, 19, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 175–80.
Cvetkovich, Ann. An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
Darms, Lisa, ed. The Riot Grrrl Collection. New York: Feminist Press, 2013.
Davis, Angela Y. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. Haymarket Books, 2016.
Firat, Begüm Özden, and Aylin Kuryel, eds. Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas, and Possibilities. Thamyris/Intersecting: Place, Sex and Race 21. Amsterdam; New York, NY: Rodopi, 2011.
Fox, Oriana. "Once More with Feeling: An Abbreviated History of Feminist Performance Art." Feminist Review, no. 96 (2010): 107-21.
Garlough, C.L. “On the Political Uses of Folklore: Performance and Grassroots Feminist Activism in India.” Journal of American Folklore, 121, 480, 2008, pp.167-191.
Gauntlett, D. Making is connecting: the social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011.
Grosz, E. A. Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Guerrilla Girls website: http://www.guerrillagirls.com
Halberstam, Judith. “Imagined Violence/Queer Violence: Representation, Rage, and Resistance.” Social Text, no. 37 (1993): 187–201.
Harris, A., ed. Next Wave Cultures: Feminism, Subcultures, Activism. London: Routledge, 2008.
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press.
Manfredi, Julia Monteiro. “Performed Stories of Social Justice.” In Taking Risks: Feminist Activism and Research in the Americas, edited by Julie D. Shayne and Margaret Randall, 115–18. SUNY Series, Praxis: Theory in Action. Albany: SUNY Press, 2014.
O’Neill, Maggie. “Transnational Refugees: The Transformative Role of Art?” FQS: Forum: Qualitative Social Research 9, no. 2 (May 2008).
O’Neill, Maggie, and Phil Hubbard. “Walking, Sensing, Belonging: Ethno-Mimesis as Performative Praxis.” Visual Studies 25, no. 1 (March 23, 2010): 46–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725861003606878.
Powell, Kimberly, Joe Norris, and Kakali Bhattacharya. “Embodying Moral Discourses Through Arts-Based Methodologies: Poetry, Visual Arts, Movement, Sounds, and Performance.” Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies 20, no. 1 (February 2020): 3–6.
Marcus, Sara. Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. 1st ed. New York: HarperPerennial, 2010.
Miller, K. “Iconographies of Gender, Poverty, and Power in Contemporary South African Visual Culture.” Feminist Formations 19 (1), 2007: 118-136.
Miner, V. “Writing Feminist Fiction: Solitary Genesis or Collective Criticism?” Frontiers, no. 6, 1/2, 1981.
Mullin, A. “Feminist Art and the Political Imagination.” Hypatia, vol 18, no. 4, 2003, pp 189-213.
Piepmeier, A. Girl Zines: Making media, doing feminism. New York: New York UP, 2009.
Schultz, Laura Luise. “The Archive Is Here and Now: Reframing Political Events as Theatre.” In Performing Archives: Archives of Performance, edited by Gunhild Borggreen and Rune Gade, 199–217. Performance Studies International. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013.
Spence, J. & J Solomon. What Can a Woman Do With a Camera? London: Scarlet Press, 1995.