On Framing the Rest of the Semester

This is definitely a good list, but there seems to be a distinct lack of fiction in most of the postings. Does any one have an fiction suggestions for any of the topics at hand? Because I know I don't, but I think it'd be good to hear, because I would love to explore more literature. And I don't know if I want to read weeks and week of feminist theory in a literature-focused English class.

On that subject, what does one mean by "basics of feminism?" I feel like the structure of this class is designed in a very feminist way, and doing a lesson on "the basics" could be problematic.  As dchin said, I think that a "feminism 101" course could force us to focus on a few "main theories" or "prominant feminists," an idea that is inherently un-feminist and harkens back to Mcintosh's Phase 2 - something I feel like Anne has actively tried to avoid in this class.  There is something very patriarchal in trying to "define" feminism by a select few theories and in giving someone's theory more credence than anothers, creating a heirarchy.  Also, I'm not entirely sure how to go about selecting works we would study as a part of the "basics."

I particularly like the end of this list, and how it brings it back to Bryn Mawr. This class has been very self-reflecting and I think it's an excellent idea to keep up with that theme. 

We have already touched upon the documentary form briefly, so maybe doing another documentary/discussing that form again would be overkill on that subject? But I definitely want to explore more with sex workers. I suppose I'm not against watching another documentary, but dedicating an entire week to it is a little much.

What about "Men's Rights Movement" would we explore? 

I would like to suggest that instead of spending three days on non-women or maybe include it as a part of the fairy tales or as a follow up to that, perhaps dedicating a day or more to feminism in pop culture or mass media, with some sort of focus on youth or young adult issues?

Day 1: When discussing the "basics" of feminism, who will we look at? Which texts will we read? How will we choose who/what to look at? Would we be looking at western femininism? When you say "basics" of feminism, I'm interpreting that as choosing select women who are prominent in history/usually discussed in feminist studies. Are we ok with the idea that if we study the "basics" of feminism as I'm understanding it, then we'd be doing what McIntosh called phase 2 revision; we'd be studying the exceptional few at the cost of holding all women as authorities on their experiences.

Day 3: Who is a sex worker? How will we define that?

I agree that this is a very "do-able" schedule.  Is it possible to add a view on modern feminism in mass media? I also like that there is a class to just go over the basics of feminism. 

I really like the idea of bringing in Judith Butler, because I know that I didn't fully appreciate how cool it was that she came to Bryn Mawr to speak because I was so unfamiliar with gender studies. I like the idea of looking at feminists who are not women, because that's something we haven't really addressed yet. I think the question of whether men can be feminists is something we could look at (Refusing to Be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice by John Stoltenberg, Warren Farrell also writes about men and women's issues).