Midterm Outline

Briefly describe your research option, intention (inquiry), readings you are going to reference (how may they help you to understand the topic), what will you need for crafting the project/research, what are you expecting at the end of the project? How may the project help you toward the final project?

• Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege

• I want to explore intersectionality with feminism and how the patriarchy still exists in our world today.

• I would love to make some digital photos showing the struggles of women especially of different races, sexualities, classes, and nationalities. I have seen too many people claim that sexism is non-existent, and that racism is non-existent in this day and age. To explore that and prove that it does indeed still exist, and make it very hard for women even today would be a satisfying inquiry.

• I used photoshop because I am a graphic design major, and I have a lot of skill in the adobe programs. I want to explore taking real photos and ones that I create myself to make something new. Something along the lines of posters that show the struggles of women, the sexism and racism they endure daily, and maybe even replacing men's lives with women to show how strange it would be if their roles were reversed. By reversing roles I think it could shed light on how we grow up with the patriarchy, and are so used to its effects that it has become the default. Everything is based off of this “default” of male hierarchy and thus throws us into this spiral of misogyny.

Sources

Bernstein, Sara. “The Metaphysics of Intersectionality.” Philosophical Studies 177, no. 2 (February 2020): 321–35. doi:10.1007/s11098-019-01394-x.

This paper develops and articulates a metaphysics of intersectionality, the idea that multiple axes of social oppression cross-cut each other. Though intersectionality is often described through metaphor, theories of intersectionality can be formulated using the tools of contemporary analytic metaphysics. A central tenet of intersectionality theory, that intersectional identities are inseparable, can be framed in terms of explanatory unity. Further, intersectionality is best understood as metaphysical and explanatory priority of the intersectional category over its constituents, akin to metaphysical priority of the whole over its parts.

Kim, Marlene. “Intersectionality and Gendered Racism in the United States: A New Theoretical Framework.” Review of Radical Political Economics 52, no. 4 (Winter 2020): 616–25. doi:10.1177/0486613420926299.

I introduce a new theoretical framework to explain intersectionality and economic disparities by gender and race in the United States. I examine patterns of economic outcomes by race and gender, review explanations for them, and assess the extent to which theories explain the intersection of race and gender in these outcomes. I explore gendered racism as the only concept that can explain these patterns by gender, race, and intersectionality.

Rice, Carla, Karleen Pendleton Jiménez, Elisabeth Harrison, Margaret Robinson, Jen Rinaldi, Andrea LaMarre, and Jill Andrew. “Bodies at the Intersections: Refiguring Intersectionality through Queer Women’s Complex Embodiments.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 46, no. 1 (October 2020): 177–200. doi:10.1086/709219.

In this article we examine the challenges and possibilities of mobilizing intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological construct through a collaborative, arts-based research project. This project, Through Thick and Thin , explored how persons in queer communities who identify (partially or wholly) as women and who claim multiple intersecting positions negotiate, are affected by, and resist body ideals and body management expectations. We present and analyze a selection of multimedia stories (videos) that feature assemblages of queer sexuality, gender expression and identity, and other identifications (race, class, indigeneity, ability, age, etc.)

Fields, Jill. “Frontiers in Feminist Art History.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 33, no. 2 (June 2012): 1–21. doi:10.5250/fronjwomestud.33.2.0001.

The article examines the field of feminist art history. Particular focus is given to the history of separatist organizations and to themes of collaboration, process, and innovation. According to the author, feminist art history has aims and origins which are distinct from traditional art history and which involve the process of reclaiming women's forgotten contributions to art and achieving personal, political, and academic growth. Details on the relationship between feminist art history and the women's movement are presented. Other topics include gender essentialism, the role of the female body in feminist art, and feminist theory.

Withers, Josephine. “All Representation Is Political: Feminist Art Past and Present.” Feminist Studies 34, no. 3 (Fall 2008): 456–75. https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy2.library.colostate.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,url,cpid&custid=s4640792&db=aph&AN=36546436&site=ehost-live.

This essay critiques several exhibitions on feminist art in the U.S., including "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution" at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., "Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art" at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and "Claiming Space: Some American Feminist Originators at the American University Museum, Washington, D.C.