This course examines the origins, history, and present-day circulations of “intersectionality,” a concept first introduced into feminism’s critical lexicon in 1989 by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. For Crenshaw, “intersectionality” made visible the overlap and convergence of gender- and race-based structures of oppression through which Black women’s specific experiences of discrimination were frequently illegible and thus invisible to courts who understood legal claims of discrimination on the basis of race and sex through the experiences of African American men and white women, respectively. Since Crenshaw’s now classic essay first appeared, “intersectionality” has come to dominate U.S. feminism as an interpretive paradigm in academic research and teaching and as a powerful tool for feminist social critique and activism beyond the academy. Intersectionality is also today a major force for aesthetic and narrative innovation in the wider public sphere, as reflected in influential art and literature, popular music, and film and television of the recent decade.
 

In tracing this history, we will revisit Crenshaw’s foundational writings, some of the race-conscious legal theories and prior women-of-color feminisms that informed her interventions, and later Black feminist writing that took up this new critical paradigm. We will also attend to the wide theoretical reach of Crenshaw’s original concept, which scholars have deployed to understand the intersections of race and gender with other axes of difference—such as sexual orientation, disability, and immigration status—and to illuminate the complex operations of social oppressions beyond race- and gender-based discrimination, including Islamophobia, transphobia, homophobia, and ableism. Students will also engage intersectionality’s wider impact through several cultural objects and discourses that index this history. The course will conclude by looking at academic debates over intersectionality, which has faced critiques from within Black feminist thought, and Crenshaw’s most recent writings, including her response to intersectionality’s critics.

Location

Online Room 20 (ASE) (MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)