Global Feminisms

Proposal for collaborative project

Learning about 9-11:  
Decentering the Current Crisis

I propose that the eight members of the Current Crisis group in Global Feminisms collaborate in producing an article, which I will compile, edit, and submit for publication in a scholarly journal.  The article will offer an example, drawing on your own experience, of learning about the global situation surrounding the crisis.  

The methodological basis for this work will be based on a packet of readings on critical decentering that the whole class will share.  While the rest of the class will be applying those readings to female "circumcision," eating disorders, and other topics of their choice, you will be concentrating wholly on learning about the crisis.  The idea is to get well beyond the mainstream coverage of the events and gather knowledge that will be of use to you well past the end of the course.

Since this is a course in Global Feminisms, I propose that we launch this project with a viewing of Sonia Shah's documentary, "Beyond the Veil," which has been aired on CNN several times recently.  This documentary will immediately shift our perspectives to the lives of Afghan women under the Taliban and the work of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan--an issue that received very little attention from the West until the attacks on September 11.  

Each participant in the Current Crisis group will develop a research log, recounting, reflecting on, and organizing your learning process.  The log should include at least ten sources--whether websites, articles, or broadcasts.  At least one of the sources should be a book.  I will develop guidelines for this log, which will serve as the raw material for the published article.

The group, either individually or as a whole, should decide on what the book will be.  It may be useful to "jigsaw" this aspect of the assignment, as we did the essays in Global Feminisms.  Or perhaps everyone could read one common text, or the larger group could be broken into two or three smaller groups, each with a common central text.  Surrounding that common text, each member of the group can develop her or his own focus.  

Some possibilities for group and individual focus:

1.  Affective learning:  What makes this educational experience different from others?  Psychologically, cognitively?  (I have materials on affective education that I can share with anyone interested in this focus.)

2.  Women in war and peace:  What have women's roles been in waging war, in building peace?  Historically, in different national settings?  There are quite a few related sources for this topic in the library.  An excellent source for others is Womenink.org--see their catalog section on Armed Conflict and the Peace Process at http://www.womenink.org/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=books&Category_Code=arm 

3.  Afghanistan:  How did it get where it is today?  Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban (on reserve for this course) is a good source. 

4.  Gender and Islam:  is Islam necessarily oppressive to women?  Several sources are available on this, including Windows of Faith:  Muslim women scholar-activists in North America, ed. Gisela Webb, on reserve for this course.  Another possibility is to read about norms and ideals of masculinity in the Middle East:  Imagined masculinities:  male identity and culture in the modern Middle East, ed. Mai Ghoussoub and Emma Sinclair-Webb, available in the library.

5.  Decentering economics, foreign policy, gender:  An excellent resource for this is the writing of Cynthia Enloe, especially her newest:  Maneuvers : the international politics of militarizing women's lives, which is available in the library.

6.  Critiquing the media:  What gender issues are being played out in the mainstream media coverage of the crisis?  Where do you hear "man-talk," "woman-talk"?  Who are the spokespeople?  What cultural myths are being cultivated or played out?  A good resource is Gendering War Talk, ed. Miriam Cooke and Angela Woollacott, in the library.

I'll be glad to consider other focuses as well. 

In addition to developing research logs, the group will spend a week toward the end of the semester teaching the class about what they've learned.  You might consider whether to stage a "teach-in" of your own (like the faculty's, only better) at a special time and invite others on campus to attend. 

Please e-mail me your questions, etc.:  gray@tcnj.edu

With thanks to Juda Bennett for his help in brainstorming this idea.