PHR 322 Radical Women of Color Thought in the U.S.
The writings by American third world feminists in the U.S. inaugurated what has come to be known as intersectionality. What began as a discussion about racial politics within the feminist movement led to a paradigmatic shift in feminist analyses and a watershed moment in the history of the liberal arts more generally. In this course we look at the argument by American third world feminists that forces such as race, class, and gender, frequently understood to be discrete and independent of each other, are not constituted singularly or independently but through the interlocking vectors of oppression. We also study the enduring intellectual and political impact of their writings on the development of queer theoretical perspectives and the emergence of decentralized political mobilizations that remain poorly understood.