Decentering, world-traveling: Application paper
Due November 30, 2001
rules and opportunities
Guidelines for using "I" in academic writing
Write Place consultant Gina Matturi: plaidtie9@yahoo.com or x3000
Special Option: Consider collaborative writing...
Requirements
1500-1800 words (5-6 pages)
A minimum of 4 sources, including at least one of the sources for the Talking Paper and at least three additional web or print sources
Application paper
The purpose of this assignment is two-fold:
To apply methods and guidelines for "decentering" that we have explored earlier in the course, particularly in the Talking Paper assignment, to a new topic
To use those guidelines in conducting, organizing, and analyzing research for your group presentation
Within the group's broad topic area, each group member should develop a specific focus for their contribution. The topic for your application paper will be the same as the topic for your contribution to the group presentation.
Approach
As you develop your research, use the basic guidelines for 'world-traveling' and decentering to identify what kind of knowledge you need to seek about your topic and how you'll present your discoveries. Think, too, about what the goal might be of approaching your topic in this way, and what the next step might be if you were to carry the study further. What possibilities does this approach allow for both appreciating and celebrating cultural differences and confronting the consequences of longstanding differences of power? What kinds of difficulties do you encounter in trying to carry out a 'world-traveling' approach?
As always, aim to take an educated stand rather than simply compiling information or expressing an opinion. Go for new flashes of insight based on surprises in your research rather than relying on familiar formulas. And please ask for clarification where the assignment is unclear.
CONSIDER COLLABORATIVE WRITING
This paper is about crossing between differences and making connections, so it makes sense to try to do that as part of your writing method. Consider co-authoring the paper with one or two other class members.
The requirements for a collaborative project are the requirements for the project multiplied by the number of people involved; so, for this project, for example, the length requirement for a two-person collaboration would be double that for one author (3000-3600 words).
Your process is up to you, but here are some guiding questions:
Please contact me at gray@tcnj.edu if you'd like a copy of one of these packets. The duplicating cost is $2.00.
Packet 1: Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, "Introduction: Why We Wrote this Book Together" (pp. 1-21) and Maria Mies, Chapter 20, "The Need for a New Vision: The Subsistence Perspective" (pp. 297-324) from Ecofeminism, 1993.
Packet 2: Maria Lugones, "Playfulness, 'World'-Traveling, and Loving Perception" (pp. 148-159) from Feminist Social Thought and Alison Bailey, "Locating Traitorous Identities: Toward a View of Privilege-Cognizant White Character" (pp. 283-298) from Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multiculural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World, 2000.
Packet 3: Uma Narayan, Chapter 2. "Restoring History and Politics to 'Third-World Traditions': Contrasting the Colonialist Stance and Contemporary Contestations of Sati" (pp. 41-80) from Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism, 1997.
Packet 4: Chilla Bulbeck, Chapter 2. "Individual versus Community" (pp. 57-96) from Reorienting Western Feminisms: Women's Diversity in a Postcolonial World, 1998.
Packet 5: Isabelle R. Gunning, "Arrogant Perception, World-Traveling, and Multicultural Feminism: The Case of Female Genital Surgeries" and Hope Lewis, "Between Irua and 'Female Genital Mutilation': Feminist Human Rights Discourse and the Cultural Divide" (pp. 352-371) from Critical Race Feminism: A Reader; Leslye Amede Obiora, "Bridges and Barricades: Rethinking Polemics and Intransigence in the Campaign Against Female Circumcision" and Isabelle R. Gunning, "Uneasy Alliances and Solid Sisterhood: A Response to Professor Obiora's 'Bridges and Barricades'" (pp. 260-284), from Global Critical Race Feminism: An International Reader, 2000.
Packet 6: Cynthia Peters, "Where are the Afghan Women?" (from ZNet); Cynthia Enloe, "'Womenandchildren': Propaganda Tools of Patriarchy" from Mobilizing Democracy (1991); "When Soldiers Rape" from Maneuvers: the international politics of militarizing women's lives, 2000.