Intersectionality: Principles & Praxis Notes

Getting Started

  • All non-indigenous folks in America are settlers on unceded native territories.
  • From The Muwekma Foundation, their vision includes:
    • Reestablishing their sacred connection to their ancestral land.
    • Stewardship of the land.
    • Ensuring clean water, clean air, and healthy soil.
    • Reviving and protecting their culture, languages, and traditions.
    • Honoring their ancestors through their work.
    • Achieving sovereign recognition and treatment with dignity and respect.

SCU Policies

  • Academic integrity is paramount; do not cheat, steal, or lie.
  • Academic resources are available for students who are struggling.
  • Reasonable accommodations will be made for everyone who needs them.
  • Respect for each other is paramount.
  • Take care of your body, soul, and community. Wellness resources are available.

Course Overview

  • This course introduces intersectionality as a theoretical frame, a description of lived experience, and a method of praxis.
  • It examines the history and application of intersectionality in the United States.
  • Starting from Black women's movements of the 1970s.
  • Its codification in legal theory.
  • To current scholarship and activism that have intersectionality and intersectional experiences at their core.
  • This course fulfills the Diversity Core and Social Science Core requirements.

Course Evaluations

  • Seminar Engagement: 10 points
  • Annotations: 14 points (2 points each x 7)
  • Critical Memos: 30 points (5 points each x 6)
  • Term Exam: 16 points (Week 7)
  • Podcast Project: 20 points (Scaffolded dates, final due Wednesday, June 5th)
  • Student Facilitation: 10 points
  • Total: 100 points

Engagement and Annotations

  • Engagement (10 points):
    • Students are expected to be in class, on time, having read all the material.
    • Thursday student-facilitated discussions will be partially evaluated on engagement.
  • Annotations (14 points total, 7 week’s worth):
    • Use the Perusall tool to annotate texts and A/V materials.
    • Graded for completion. Students must contribute at least 2 annotations per text for full credit.
    • Complete annotations for any week that you prefer. You must have at least 7 weeks-worth done by the end of the quarter.

Critical Memos and Exam

  • Critical Memo (30 points, 6 week’s worth):
    • Summarize the text’s main arguments
    • Analyze how they connect to other texts in the class
    • Reflect on the text’s themes in the wider world.
    • Memos are 2-3 double-spaced pages and are due at the end of each week.
  • Term Exam (16 points) May 15th:
    • Cumulative, short essay and multiple choice.

Student Discussion Facilitation

  • In teams of 2, students will facilitate a Thursday discussion section (10 points).
  • Sign up for Discussion Facilitation via the link on Camino (first come, first served).
  • Three major parts:
    • Prep for the class: A 2-page handout with approximately 6-10 discussion questions.
    • Lead the class: Provide a 3-5 minute overview of the themes of the week, then facilitate a discussion.
    • Self-Evaluation: Within 2 days, submit a self-report reflecting on your experience. Answer the questions on the Discussion Facilitation Assignment (on Camino).

Quarter's Themes

  • Week 1: Class Introduction and the power of pop theory
  • Week 2: Early Intersectionality and Raced Feminisms
  • Week 3: Crenshaw’s Legal Frame
  • Week 4: Intersectionality in Theory (Crip studies)
  • Week 5: Intersectionality Theory (Trans studies)
  • Week 6: Intersectionality Theory (White Women)
  • Week 7: Researching Intersectionality
  • Week 8: Intersectional Praxis (Immigration)
  • Week 9: Intersectional Praxis (Disability and Reproduction)
  • Week 10: Intersectional Praxis (Coalition Building)

Podcast Project

  • Podcast Project (20 points)
    • In teams of 2-3, develop, record, and produce a short podcast on a case study of your choice.
  • Scaffolded dates:
    • Pitch Deck: Week 3, (April 17th)
    • Script Draft: Week 6 (May 15th)
    • Podcast Draft: Week 9 (Wednesday, May 28th)
    • Final Podcast: Week 10 (Wednesday, June 4th)
    • Self-Peer Review: June 10th

Other Class Policies

  • Lateness:
    • There is a 2-point penalty for lateness; it’s always worth it to turn something in late.
  • Absences:
    • Two “unexcused” absences are allowed before grade devaluation. Please be mindful when others are depending on you.
  • Tech in the classroom:
    • Student technology is more likely to be distracting rather than helpful.
    • Typing notes is faster, but writing notes is better for retention and learning.
    • Lectures will be posted at the end of the week, so don’t waste time typing up the slides.

Curiosity and Well-Being Research

  • Research focus: How does environment-focused engaged learning develop intra- and inter-personal benefits for students?
  • Curiosity: The 5-Dimensional Curiosity Scale-Revised (5DCR)
    • Joyous Exploration
    • Deprivation Sensitivity
    • Stress Tolerance
    • Thrill Seeking
    • Social Curiosity
      • Overt
      • Covert
  • Wellbeing: PERMA-Profile
    • Positive (and negative) emotion
    • Engagement
    • Relationships
    • Meaning
    • Accomplishment
  • Presence and Mindfulness: Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS)
    • Evaluating trends of attention and sensitive awareness to the present.
  • Methodology:
    • Collecting self-reported data via questionnaires at the beginning and end of the term.
    • Confidential (though not totally anonymous) data. Anonymized results will focus on aggregate patterns of change (or not).
    • Results will dictate how the course is developed and refined.

The danger of a single story

  • Single axis analytical frames.
    • The problem with a single story is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. (Adichie)
  • "Ar’n’t I Woman?" –Sojourner Truth at the 1851 Women’s Convention (Akron).Transcribed and recorded by Marius Robinson.
    • After listening to Sojourner Truth, what is her general argument? How does this connect with the idea of a single story/axes?
  • Frances Dana Gage (a white stranger, but friends with Anthony and Stanton) published her version 12 years later.
    • What are the similarities and differences between this and Robinson’s version?
    • What do you think is going on with the transcription? (Truth was born in NY, unlikely to have an accent like that)

Equality With Men?

  • Context for the Women’s Lib movement:
    • 13th Amendment (1865): Slavery is only legal in the context of punishment for a crime.
    • 14th Amendment (1868): Everyone born in the US are citizens of the US (exceptions for Indigenous Americans).
    • 15th Amendment (1870): The right of (male) citizens to vote should not be impeded (unenforced and actively ignored until the Voting Rights Act of 1968).
    • 19th Amendment (1920): The right of (white) women to vote (full representational citizenship).
  • Feminism: Major patterns of inequality are based on gender. Struggles for equality must focus on gender mechanisms in order to achieve true equality.
    • Mainstream feminism: All women are essentially the same (status, experience, outcomes).
    • The goal is “equality” with men. But, which men?

The Wage Gap

  • Median hourly earnings of US women, as a percentage of median hourly earnings of White men (Pew 2023).
  • 1982:
    • White: 0.560.56
    • Black: 0.560.56
    • Hispanic: 0.650.65
    • Asian:
  • 2002:
    • White: 0.750.75
    • Black: 0.650.65
    • Hispanic: 0.700.70
    • Asian:
  • 2022:
    • White: 0.830.83
    • Black: 0.750.75
    • Hispanic: 0.620.62
    • Asian: 0.930.93

Why is intersectionality is popular right now?

  • Sept 2020:
    • BLM protests hit their 100th night
    • COVID
    • Breonna Taylor police indictment
  • Feb 2023: ?

Shapiro’s argument?

  • “I would define intersectionality as…a hierarchy of victimhood in which people are considered members of a victim class by virtue of membership in a particular groups, and at the intersection of various groups lies the ascent on the hierarchy” (Shapiro 2020)
  • Hierarchy of opinions/perspectives
  • Victim-status comparisons, “oppression Olympics”
  • Ivory tower theory
  • Connections and alliances across groups
  • Creates ”us” vs. “them” (straight white men), when we are naturally all individuals.

How do we come to know things?

  • Sociology of Science/Sociology of Knowledge: the study of how we know what we know.
  • Essentialism ß àSocial Constructionism
    • (Materialist) Essentialism: phenomena are categorical (discrete, and binary), measurable, and consistent (across time and space).
      • Is gender essential?
    • Social Constructionism: phenomena are contextual, socially reproduced, and made through (interpretation of) behaviors.
      • Is gender socially constructed?
    • Post-modernism: categories themselves are contextual, contested, and flexible. There is no “whole” phenomena (”race” is flexible in meaning and action), breaking down categories.