SOC 244 / FGSS 244 – Feminist and Queer Theories of Social Reproduction

This course will introduce students to the study of social reproduction and power with an emphasis on feminist, queer, and transnational approaches to inquiry and action. We will begin by exploring key methodologies and theoretical framings for understanding contemporary “American” cultural, social, and political formations both within and beyond the territorial U.S., focusing on the effectiveness of discursive and historical modes of critical analysis. The subsequent sections of the course will turn to three case studies of the historical routes and transnational implications of U.S.-based political discourses around (1) population control and reproductive justice, (2) abolition and the prison-industrial complex, and (3) debt and higher education. By engaging with each area of inquiry through theoretical, historical, and grounded activist texts, we will think through the possibilities for utilizing academic work in concert with movement-based engaged scholarship to address the uneven distribution of life chances and the potential of imagining the world otherwise.