Syllabus

===
DOWNLOAD FINAL ASSIGNMENT, LEARNING ANALYSIS, HERE

Download Syllabus and first two weekly assignments here
Download Info Sheet here

DOWNLOAD LOGBOOK TEMPLATE HERE IN WORD FROM GOOGLE DOC CAN FILL IN
DOWLOAD SAMPLES IN PDF: SAMPLE ONE LOGBOOK 1 & SAMPLE TWO LOGBOOK 3

===
Welcome to Feminist Theory!

WMST 400: Tu 3:30pm - 6:00pm at SQH 2120; Fall 2016 UMD
Professor: Katie King
KK’s Office: 2101C Woods Hall, University of Maryland, College Park

Katie’s office hours: Weds 10-11:30 am by appointment only: email me to make appointment and then email again on Tuesday afternoon to confirm. Use katking@umd.edu
Office phone: 301.405.7294 (voice mail; but email to katking@umd.edu is best way to contact)
Email: katking@umd.edu ; USE THIS ONE FOR COMMUNICATIONS (I only look at gmail for assignments).
IF YOU SUBMIT ANY ATTACHMENTS BY EMAIL DO IT ONLY TO: katiekin@gmail.com (notice “kin” NOT “king”)
KK’s website with MESSAGES: http://katiekin.weebly.com/
You can follow Katie on Twitter @katkingumd

Class Website at: http://femtheo16.blogspot.com
WE USE CANVAS ONLY FOR LIBRARY RESERVES, NOT FOR COURSEWORK
Notice that you can see the main course site posts on a smartphone as well.

===



course description: What is feminist theory good for?

It is Worlding that is at stake here. We gather together for this something feminists and others call Worlding: keeping our planet going, caring for flourishing and justice.

And we find these all here in playful and speculative thinking about thinking. This also includes practices feminists call intersectional: where social identities, structures of injustice, ways of changing worlds (including ourselves), are understood as complexly interconnected.

What does this approach to feminist theory also have to teach us about learning and its possibilities, about individual and cultural change, about arts of protest, about shifting among broken realities? When do biting off as much (or more) than you can chew comfortably and playing with confusion and frustration actually become “fun”? Art, sports, music all require a kind of trial and error practice that opens up skills over time. Activisms and deep thinking with others also require collective sympathies and even create festivals of public happiness. How do we learn from these how to turn frustration into a care for precision and detail? How do they help us open up confusion as the very motivation for connecting with others, for wondering together about the big questions that humans have faced for centuries? How do these all aid our caring for flourishing and justice?

We will share together the multiplicity of feminist theories that have been developed to explain power, social change, justice movements, and identity. In book circles we will delve into current and past feminist writings and their cultural contexts, connecting these to activist traditions. We will analyze how and why feminist theory is made, and imagine its possibilities for the issues that matter the most to us individually, as a class, and with groups we care about.

Being, doing, making. And stories. World crafting in particular is a special skill that we will explore in this class, and it comes here in some forms of transmedia storytelling. Such “new materialities” are making changes in what feminisms see and shape, how we approach justice, and how we understand that learning is a form of play, even fun! that worlding with broken realities needs our care now!



To create our own community of thinkers, makers, doers, of scholars and activists, we want to all get to know each other and work with each other. Ours here is an active and ambitious learning community visioning and revisioning together.

All students please do come to office hours to just talk. I want to get to know each of you personally! I want to know how the class is working for you, what touches and excites you, how your projects are going.

Let me know in office hours or after class when you need help, or any special accommodations, the sooner the better. Folks with disabilities or who need time from class to observe religious holidays, please contact Katie ASAP to make any arrangements necessary. If you are experiencing difficulties in keeping up with the academic demands of this or any other course, you can also contact the Learning Assistance Service, 2202 Shoemaker Building, 301-314-7693. They have educational counselors who can help with time management, reading, math learning skills, note-taking and exam preparation skills. All their services are free to UMD students.

===
explore our required readings and put them into transmedia networks: all this is much more than just words on their pages….

Our books are ordered at the University Bookstore. All readings are also on reserve at McKeldin Library. All will be on 24 hr. reserve. Library instructions are here. You are required to read these books, not to buy them, or even to own them. Share them, rent them, borrow them, xerox them, scan them. Fair use means producing copies for your own private research use. Of course you can help others in obtaining originals for such fair use copying. Be sure to locate them long before you need to read them! ISBN numbers are included to make ordering them easier if you wish to buy them.

Notice how many of the books are available on the Kindle, an ebook reader. You do not need the Kindle device to read these, but can download an app for your computer/laptop or smart phone or iPad to read them without one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=sa_menu_karl3?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771 Some are available as Google eBooks. To learn how to read these on your computer, look at: http://books.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=185545&hl=en Usually the price is a bit lower for each of these, many available for less than $10, although you cannot resell such books. Please ensure access to as many of our course books as you can, bring those you have obtained or notes about them to the first class.

===
Everyone will read these four books (in whole or parts to be assigned): 

• Collins. 2016. Intersectionality. Wiley. Paper ISBN: 9780745684499
• Gibson-Graham. 2013. Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities. Minnesota. Paper ISBN: 9780816676071 Kindle ASIN: B00D02BM5M
• Haraway. 2016. Manifestly Haraway. Minnesota. Paper ISBN: 9780816650484 Kindle ASIN: B01D406H7M
• Keating. 2012. Transformation Now!: Toward a Post-Oppositional Politics of Change. Illinois. Paper ISBN: 9780252079399 Kindle ASIN: B00HFGIR66 Google ebook

===
Book circles will be responsible for exploring the transmedia networks and stories each of these texts opens out among and presenting about these to the class. 

Everyone will also read another fifth book, chosen from the following list of recommended texts.

Book circles will decide if • everyone will read their own chosen book, or if • the circle will pick a few for that group to choose among, or if • everyone in the circle will read the same fifth book. Consider which option most attracts you and which additional book would most interest you!



• Bechdel. 2013. Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Paper ISBN: 9780544002234 Kindle ASIN: B005LVR75Y Also Google ebook
• Calvo. 2015. Decolonize your Diet. Arsenal. Paper ISBN: 9781551525921 Kindle ASIN: B019M8J9KM
• Chen. 2012. Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Duke. Paper ISBN: 9780822352723 Kindle ASIN: B00B9AQC2K
• Imarisha. 2015. Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. AK Press. ISBN: 9781849352093 Kindle ASIN: B00USBMIOC Audible ASIN: B01DPSB46M Also Google ebook
• Shotwell. 2011. Knowing Otherwise: Race, Gender, and Implicit Understanding. Penn State. Paper ISBN: 9780271037646 Kindle ASIN: B0158ZEAUC Also Google ebook
• Wilson. 2015. Gut Feminism. Duke. Paper ISBN: 9780822359708 Kindle ASIN: B01569VG6Q Also Google ebook

===
We will also have chapters from other books to read as assigned (for example the essay by Noël Sturgeon embedded on the first post on the class website: Sturgeon, N. 1995. Theorizing Movements. In Cultural Politics and Social Movements, pp. 35-51. Darnovsky, M.; B. Epstein, R. Flacks (Eds.) Temple.)

And websites and talksites too (for example the talksite for "Worlds-becoming: diabetes, mood, gut feminisms, new materialist SF." Katie King's paper for "The Diseased Posthuman," a Posthumanities International Network (PIN) symposium at Tema Genus (Dept. of Gender Studies), Linköping University, Sweden, 6-7 June 2016. http://newmatsf.blogspot.com )

===
how the class will be organized

This will be a media and technology intensive course and also hands-on crafty! Making, or so-called constructionist learning and collaboration open up our analysis of interconnections among activism, and feminist theory and knowledge worlds, and the cognitive structures and ecologies they alter and interact with. Bring your own laptop, netbook or iPad if you can, to connect across media, to become increasingly savvy about web resources, and to use data visualizations and virtual environments for cognition and collaboration. We will also do some crafty drawing and making things that are not electronic. Throughout the course we will share resources for all these. Of course, all uses of electronic media during class should be class related. You may be asked during class to search for materials on the web and share them during seminar, or otherwise participate in class activities using your electronic media. Be prepared to respond quickly and appropriately, and to demonstrate that your use of electronic media is for class and even allows you to attend more intensively and creatively.

It turns out that we remember and learn in the spaces between attentions. So shifts of focus can be good, yet you need to pay attention and notice them for them to work for you. You need to learn what your best learning practices are as well: we will not all learn best in the same ways. For example, for one person knitting during a presentation may make it easier to concentrate: that's how their brain works. For another person doing that would mean their mind would drift and lose focus. You need to know which sort of mind you have in this and other examples. Does handwriting help you remember? Or do you need to reread typed notes instead? Are you a top-down learner who needs to read the computer documentation first, or do you jump in and just start trying things out? Such questions are part of what we now study as new materialisms in media studies, cognitive science, and learning. 

The course will involve both taking things in, absorbing them and learning to put them in context; and also actively using what we come to know, sharing it others, thinking on one's feet, brainstorming and speculating, figuring out how it all fits together. Both require careful preparation before class and keeping up with the reading. Some educators call these forms passive and active learning. One can take in and absorb more complicated stuff than one can work with and work out, at least at first. We do both in the class, but we also realize that active learning requires patience and imagination, a bit of courage to try things out without knowing something for sure yet, and a willingness to play around with being right and wrong, guessing and a lot of redoing.

The website for our entire class is located at: http://femtheo16.blogspot.com

This is where graphics, mini-lecture materials and notes, communications and assignment help, and other vital class information and presentations are displayed. You can complete your assignments properly only if you stay very familiar with this website. Bookmark it immediately! Plan on visiting our blog site and reading email every couple of days, and not just a few minutes before class. These are class requirements. If you have any difficulties getting access to these resources come and talk to me as soon as possible. Any announcements about cancellations due to weather or other considerations, and general class requirements will be sent out on coursemail and you need to see them quickly. To get help go to OIT's Help Desk at the Computer and Space Sciences Building, Rm. 1400, or checkout the help desk webpage at: http://www.helpdesk.umd.edu/

Get to know everyone in the class, share contact information, and support each other if in emergencies anyone must be absent with class notes and discussion. Everyone should also have several class buddies too. We will introduce ourselves early in the semester, and buddies in your book circle too can help each other brainstorm projects, edit each others’ work, provide feedback before assignments are due, and help each other work in drafts, starting projects early and completing them in good time.



===
graded assignments: paper, poster, learning analysis, logbook, prototyping 

Five kinds of assignments are required in this class: 
• a research paper with visual handout for workshop display (enough handout print-outs for all in class), • a research poster for workshop display, documented with digital pictures (hardcopy in class, electronic to be emailed), • a final learning analysis, • a logbook, • some techno-crafty prototyping activities, some done during class

The first three: paper, poster, learning analysis, allow you to position the work for the class in various frameworks, or knowledge worlds. In each of these you will work on research, analysis, and critical thinking. Some of this will be in traditional academic forms, some in emerging scholarly practices, but it is possible to combine these also with the techno-crafty delights activist art workshops have always shown off as well. And papers and poster projects may be done with partners or individually, as you choose.

The book circle reports will steer collaborative discussion, analysis and preparation, allowing circles to synthesize understandings from the work and insights of all its members.

The logbook will help you organize your projects: when you started them, how many drafts you completed, who you worked with, where you are in what you have done, and what still needs to be done.

It will be turned in four times during the semester (the first in time for early warning grades), and you won’t get credit for any assignments until the final version is turned in on the last day of class with the final version of the learning analysis. You can download a template for the logbook at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzmKs1Fz7m9uTE12d1czWFk5NEU/view?usp=sharing The examples in this TEMPLATE show info for a different class in a different semester, so replace all such information with the information from our class. UPDATE: TEMPLATE FOR OUR CLASS LOGBOOK HERE ON GOOGLE DOCS: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzmKs1Fz7m9uRDJmMzgtSGFvUDA/view  



Prototyping activities during some of our class times introduce you to multimodal learning, what some call “flipping the class” or how to include “making” as a kind of learning. We will be making both posters and websites. If you are new to making the kind of posters that enhance critical thinking and cognitive skills, or want some ideas about how to craft them well, see the wonderful slideshow by Leeann Hunter here: http://multimodal.wsu.edu/blog/?p=97  If you have never made a website, you might start off with a Blogger version: https://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g. Blogger is what I use for the class website. I use Weebly for my professional website: http://education.weebly.com/ Both of these are very simple. Or you might like to build a site on Word Press: http://en.support.wordpress.com/using-wordpress-to-create-a-website/  If you have already begun crafting websites, pick your favorite platform for something new, or enhance what you already have going with projects from our course.



Two times during the semester we will be creating class workshops together. For each workshop you will do either a paper or a poster. Which one you will do when will be determined by lot. You cannot get full credit for either assignment until after you also present them in the workshop sessions, and participate in follow-ups.

In other words, just the written paper or the poster does not in itself complete the assignment. If an emergency or illness kept you from participation either or both days that week, to get full credit you will have to 1) meet in a mini-workshop with three other students from our class that you make happen, contacting and preparing for, to share your work and their work outside class together, and 2) write up the experience and what you learned from it to complete the participation portion of that grade. 

DO NOT MAKE OTHER PLANS FOR THOSE DAYS: BUILD THEM CAREFULLY INTO YOUR SCHEDULE FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE TERM! Put them into your logbook from the beginning so that attending them will always be at the forefront of your term plans. This is also true of the final day of class, when you discuss your learning analysis with everyone else. Full credit for the learning analysis also requires attendance and participation on that last day.

Summary of assignments:
Weekly book circle reports turned in 4 times with each of 4 Logbooks: last logbook must be turned in for any individual person to get any credit for the course
Prototypes: 3 class posters, 2 website versions
======================================
Book circle reports: 1/4 grade
Event 1: research poster & pics or paper & handout & workshop attendance: 1/4 grade
Event 2: research poster & pics or paper & handout & workshop attendance: 1/4 grade
Final Learning Analysis & attendance last day: logbooks & prototypes all together: 1/4 grade

===
Workshops and themes 

• Change is happening: What and Who are changed and make change? How do we take on Power? 

Tuesday 11 October:

"Change is happening" is inspired by "The Diseased Posthuman" workshop, part of a seminar series organized by the Posthumanities International Network. Formed in partnership between The Posthumanities Hub at the Linköping University; Centre for the Humanities at University of Utrecht; Digital Culture Unit of Goldsmiths, University of London; and Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick, PIN brings together scholars invested in post-conventional humanities and provides a flexible platform for further research and collaboration. The workshop took place at Linköping University, Sweden, 6-7 June 2016. The Program is located here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fvj51bq6kyc2j7b/AABAVoDYQQMhaVli11OhNCLTa/PIN%20symposium%20programme.%20June%206%20-7.pdf?dl=0

For Change is Happening you will create either a paper (with enough handouts for each member of the class) or a poster (and document it with digital pics): which one determined by lot early in the semester. You may work on these individually or with a partner.

With the help of two books (Gibson-Graham & Keating) and your research among our recommended texts and appropriate web sites, you will map out what current changes you find yourself affected by: that is, how changes can be understood from the point of view of 1) yourself individually, 2) yourself and groups you identify with or work with, and 3) yourself with others you do not know, who perhaps are even forces, animals, objects, events. We will explore what feminists mean by "affect," "agency" and "identity." ALWAYS make a point of connecting projects to class readings, activities, and discussions. ALWAYS use a standard model for citation and bibliography, even on posters.

During the first part of class on workshop day, we will meet during class time to share our projects, displaying posters and handouts on the walls of our room, walk and talk one-on-one with each other, share questions, observations, excitements! In the second part of class time we will continue to work with the energy generated by our interactions, collectively coming up with reflective analysis and more ideas for what comes next!

Full credit for this assignment requires: • having begun work several weeks ahead of time, • writing and postering in several drafts, • displaying paper & handout or poster during worshop and • actively participating in interactions and reflections, • turning in electronic copies of poster pics or paper and handout to Katie’s gmail account, • and documenting each piece of the assignment as completed in your logbook, which must be turned in electronically with everything else by the evening after the workshop for credit. If for any reason whatsoever you miss any piece of this, you will need to document that in your logbook, with explanations, and perhaps notes of any discussions you have with Katie about it all. If you miss any workshop, you will need to arrange with three fellow students your own little mini-workshop, where you all meet together outside class to share your work and discuss it, and you write a two-page report on your meeting and discussion. 

• Worlding: keeping our planet going, caring for flourishing and justice 

 Tuesday 15 November:

“Worlding” is inspired by "Care - maintenance, repair and mending in a time of post-industrialism," a symposium at Umeå Institute of Design," 12-14 June 2016. "How do we practice care as we relate to feminist new materialisms and posthumanities, which recognise partiality and situatedness and actively encourage collaboration across disciplinary boundaries?" The main organisers were Kristina Lindström and Åsa Ståhl, postdocs at Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University and co-authors of Patchworking publics-in-the-making: http://muep.mah.se/handle/2043/16093 Together they are working now on a project entitled Hybrid Matters together with Nordic artist and scholars: http://www.hybridmatters.net/pages/about

For Worlding you will create either a paper (with enough handouts for each member of the class) or a poster, and document it with digital pics (which determined by lot earlier, whichever one you did not do for Change is Happening). You may work on these individually or with a partner.

With the help of Haraway & Collins (you must show how you worked with these texts), and referring to Gibson-Graham & Keating, and also to two of the recommended texts, you will analyze feminist processes of worlding as activist actions. You will either begin from • 1) the most urgent feminist issue you care about, exploring activist practices that might speak to it; or you will begin from • 2) your own most valued activist actions, and analyze their possibilities for the feminist values you most care to embody. ALWAYS make a point of connecting projects to class readings, activities, and discussions. ALWAYS use a standard model for citation and bibliography, even on posters. You may also want to use the web to follow-up or look in greater detail at the kinds of worldings feminisms explore today and ways all of these are promoted in popular and scholarly media. 

During the first part of class on workshop day, we will meet during class time to share our projects, displaying posters and handouts on the walls of our room, walk and talk one-on-one with each other, share questions, observations, excitements! In the second part of class time we will continue to work with the energy generated by our interactions, collectively coming up with reflective analysis and more ideas for what comes next!

Full credit for this assignment requires: • having begun work several weeks ahead of time, • writing and postering in several drafts, • displaying paper & handout or poster during worshop and • actively participating in interactions and reflections, • turning in electronic copies of poster pics or paper and handout to Katie’s gmail account, • and documenting each piece of the assignment as completed in your logbook, which must be turned in electronically with everything else by the evening after the workshop for credit. If for any reason whatsoever you miss any piece of this, you will need to document that in your logbook, with explanations, and perhaps notes of any discussions you have with Katie about it all. If you miss any workshop, you will need to arrange with three fellow students your own little mini-workshop, where you all meet together outside class to share your work and discuss it, and you write a two-page report on your meeting and discussion. 

Exploring these topics and themes in a workshop means that by attending and listening we will all benefit from the hard work of everyone. Notice that both sorts of projects in both workshops should be begun several weeks ahead of their due dates. Not only do you need this time to do any additional research or reading, but to get good grades you need to • write papers in at least three drafts, and • plan out posters carefully to demonstrate both the results of your research and also how you got to those results.

Obviously attending class faithfully and taking good notes will make all this work a lot easier. Lecture materials are displayed on the class website, to be reviewed at any time. In college courses ALWAYS use your projects to demonstrate how you uniquely put together, or synthesize, class readings, mini-lectures and discussion. Make a point of displaying that you are doing all the reading and attending all the classes. Doing this clearly and carefully will demonstrate that this is your own work, and ensure your credit for honesty and for real engagement with the course.

Wondering how grades are determined? What they mean on your paper? 

A work is excellent, unusually creative and/or analytically striking
B is fine work of high quality, though not as skilled, ambitious, or carefully edited as A
C is average work fulfilling the assignment; may be hasty, drafted once, showing difficulties with grammar, spelling, word choice
D work is below average or incomplete; shows many difficulties or cannot follow instructions
F work is not sufficient to pass; unwillingness to do the work, or so many difficulties unable to complete

Remember, you can always talk to Katie about grades and your evaluation concerns during office hours anytime. But also note that you are expected to be learning how to evaluate your own work, and to put it into perspective with the work of others, learning from what others do. This means learning how to motivate and understand your own work, not depending solely on what others tell you to do, or how they judge it. Remember: don’t eat the menu (grades) instead of the meal (learning)!

===
what to do when you must unavoidably miss class, for emergency or perhaps for illness:  

TALK TO AT LEAST TWO CLASS BUDDIES IMMEDIATELY. Before you even come back to class, call them up or email them and find out if any special assignments are due the day you return, and make sure that you know about any changes in the syllabus. Try to have done the reading and be as prepared as possible to participate in class when you return.
MAKE A DATE TO MEET WITH CLASS BUDDY TO GET NOTES AND DISCUSS WHAT WENT ON IN CLASS WHILE YOU WERE GONE. You are responsible for what happened in class while you were gone. As soon as possible, get caught up with notes, with discussions with buddies and finally with all the readings and assignments. Always talk with class buddies first. This is the most important way to know what went on when you were gone and what you should do.
AFTER YOU HAVE GOTTEN CLASS NOTES AND TALKED ABOUT WHAT WENT ON IN CLASS WITH BUDDIES, THEN MAKE APPOINTMENT TO SEE KATIE. If you just miss one class, getting the notes and such should be enough. But if you've been absent for more than a week, be sure you make an appointment with Katie, and come in and discuss what is going on. She wants to know how you are doing and how she can help. Or, while you are out, if it's as long as a week, send Katie email at katking@umd.edu and let her know what is happening with you, so she can figure out what sort of help is needed.
IF YOU ARE OUT FOR ANY EXTENDED TIME be sure you contact Katie. Keep her up to date on what is happening, so that any arrangements necessary can be made. If you miss too much class you will have to retake the course at another time. But if you keep in contact, depending on the situation, perhaps accommodations can be made. Since attendance is crucial for all assignments and thus for your final grade, don't leave this until the end. LET KATIE KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING so that she can help as much and as soon as possible.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN EXCUSED ABSENCE AND ANYTHING ELSE: generally speaking you are only allowed to make up work you missed if you have an excused absence. That the absence is excused does not mean you are excused from doing the work you missed, but that you allowed to make it up. I usually permit people to make up any work they miss, and do not generally require documentation for absences. Be sure to give explanations in your logbook and do make up all work you have missed.

===