Feminist cities
Objectives
The main objective of this course is for the students to be able to do the following:
Explain the key debates in feminist urban geography.
Apply a feminist geographic perspective to evaluate the workings of cities.
Imagine experiences other than their own and empathize with other human experiences.
Understand and articulate the major debates about gender in urban geography.
Observe and identify feminist geographic perspectives in their research and other subjects that they study.
Demonstrate an ability to read, comprehend, and analyze work in the academy.
Course description
How can a city be feminist? With more and more people living in urban spaces in the world, women’s lives in cities have become an important topic of debate in geography and other fields like sociology, anthropology, planning, and political science. This course is designed to get you to think about gender in relation to urban life. Looking at cities from the U.S and around the world, we will explore how gender is inscribed into the landscape, how it is experienced, and how it is reproduced. We will also explore intersectionality of gender with race, class, geography, and sexuality.
Assignments
1. Attendance and participation:
20%. The course works best for you if you are present in class and engage in discussions - I strongly encourage you to attend unless you have a very compelling reason not to. If you are not attending class for medical reasons, send me an email and let me know. However, if you struggle with verbal participation in the class, you can let me know and we can figure out other ways for you to participate. For example, you can email your thoughts to me, and I can share them, you can ask a friend in the class to share them, or you can respond to the discussion posts. You will get extra credit for attendance on the days of the mid-term presentations.
2. Discussion posts:
20%. Every week before class, you need to post a 500-750 word ‘reaction’ to the readings of that week. Do not simply summarize the readings but engage with them. Ask yourselves what the readings make you feel, and how they might be relevant in your life. Personal anecdotes, contextualizing the readings to your own ongoing research projects or other classes are welcome! Please note that on days when we watch a movie or have a guest lecture, the discussion posts will be due after the class. We have twelve classes with discussion posts this semester, you can choose any 10 weeks to write these posts. If you write for all 12 weeks, I will count the best ten for your final grade.
3. Midterm project:
30%. For the mid-term project, you will be exploring the built environment in the city, using walking methods, and presenting your findings to the class. We will discuss the details of this method in the class, but briefly, you will select a part of the city, walk in it, and document your experience of the area. You can select as big or as small an area that you think you can walk back and forth in and go back to if needed. You are welcome to work with a colleague in the class, but you must document your experiences separately. You can choose any part of the city that you are comfortable being in, and a time that you feel comfortable being out - however, you must explain your choice of location and time, so be attentive to your thoughts even before going into the field. You can document your walk anyway you want, take notes, voice recording, take photographs, sketch. Just be creative and have fun with it. The presentation is the same way: you can make a PowerPoint, build a model, make a website, or use story maps (I will give you more details about this in the class). There is no one right way to do it, and you can pick a mode of presentation that works best for you.
4. Final essay:
30%. You will write a final paper for the course that is 1500-2000 words in length. You can choose any topic that you find interesting, as long as it relates to the course. You need to use the readings from the syllabus and make a strong and coherent argument. Pay attention to not just the findings in the readings of the class, but how the authors are doing feminist urban research. Before you start writing your final paper, make sure to meet and discuss your idea with me - you can either come to office hours, or send me an email to set up a 10–15-minute meeting. This meeting will be worth 5% of the grade. I want the final essay to be useful for you: it can be a review of the work we did in class, an extension of your mid-term project, or an idea you are also exploring for another class. The goal is to think deeply about the feminist city.
Course schedule / readings
Read in the order listed each week. Remember, I have accounted for reading to be consistent all weeks (page numbers, writing styles etc.), but some weeks might feel harder than others. It is okay, just read as much as you can to prepare for class. Even on the weeks you do not do the discussion post, you need to read the assigned readings to participate. I will ask questions! For each week, I provide the readings, the reasoning and the expected in class discussion (which will of course not be in an actual syllabus, but I thought this was the most efficient way to communicate my thoughts about running the class).
Part I: Violence, fear, and exclusion
Week 1: Introduction to course, and ‘feminist city.’
Readings: Leslie Kern. 2020. “Do cities have to be so sexist?” and Leslie Kern. 2021. “Is it time to build feminist cities?"
Reasoning: These two readings summarize the main debates of the book: Feminist city by Leslie Kern, the book that in recent times, made this a buzzword. They are easy to read and understand for the first day of class.
In class: The first half of the class, I will go through the syllabus, some details about me and my work, and co-create a common set of ground rules to follow in the class (which I will later update in the syllabus). I will also provide examples of microaggressions, and urge students to be respectful, in class discussions and outside of it. The second half of the class we will discuss the articles and what we all take away from them.
Week 2: Gender and fear
Reading: Valentine, G. (1989). The Geography of Women’s Fear. Area, 21(4), 385–390; and Pratt, Geraldine (2009) “Gender” AND “Feminist geographies,” in Ron J. Johnston,
Derek Gregory, Geraldine Pratt, and Michael Watts (eds.) The Dictionary of Human
Geography, (Fifth Edition), Blackwell: Oxford, UK and Cambridge, USA.
Optional: Massey, D. (1994). Space, Place, and Gender. In Space, Place, and Gender (NED-New edition). University of Minnesota Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.cttttw2z
Reasoning: Both ‘gender’ and ‘fear’ are important categories of analysis that I think need to be defined and established as useful for understanding the feminist city. The dictionary definitions provide brief overviews of the concepts of gender and the field of feminist geography, while Valentine’s canonical piece is a short but powerful reading that centers ‘fear.’
In class: I will make a presentation on the readings of the week, highlighting the main points I want them to take away and discuss what they understood from the readings, contextualizing them to their own lives and experiences of the city.
Week 3: Violence and the global city
Reading: Annavarapu, S. (2022). Risky Routes, Safe Suspicions: Gender, Class, and Cabs in Hyderabad, India. Social Problems, 69(3), 761–780. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spab008
Optional: Govinda, Radhika., 2020. From the taxi drivers’ rear-view mirror: masculinity, marginality and sexual violence in India’s capital city, Delhi. Gender, Place & Culture, 27(1), pp.69-85.
Reasoning: This reading is set in an Indian city that looks specifically at gendered violence and what it does to the city: women, urban planning, and men. It has a thick description of the country and the city it studies (Hyderabad!) and a focus on relations of power.
In class: I will make a presentation explaining theories and concepts that the author uses but does not directly address, and then have a discussion contextualizing these theories to a U.S city to be able to draw parallels.
Week 4: Doing feminist geography.
Reading: Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–99. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066
Optional: Sultana, Farhana. “Embodied Intersectionalities of Urban Citizenship: Water, Infrastructure, and Gender in the Global South.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 110, no. 5 (September 2, 2020): 1407–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2020.1715193
Reasoning: Haraway’s situated knowledge is a canonical piece that highlights the need to do subjective research and to start from a place. As a first ‘methodological’ piece, it is a great starting point from which to understand how to frame our research.
In class: I will briefly explain the piece by Haraway and then present other research articles and statements of positionality. We will deconstruct different positionalities and how they would impact research in the U.S and elsewhere. I will ask the students to draft a positionality statement that they can use in their midterm projects.
Week 5: The Big City (discussion post due after class)
Reading: No reading. We will watch a movie in class and discuss it. The movie is called ‘The Big City’ directed by Satyjit Ray.
Reasoning: With remarkable sensitivity and attention to the details of everyday working-class life, Ray builds a powerful human drama that is hopeful and is a commentary on the identity of the modern Indian woman. It is a wonderful portrayal of working-class life and its intersection with family, gender and ‘the big city.’ Though it is older, it highlights some of the themes from week three as well.
In class: I will show the movie for two hours in the class and then we can have a quick discussion about it.
Part II: Infrastructure, mobility, and policy
Week 6: Bodies as urban infrastructure
Reading: Truelove, Y., & Ruszczyk, H. A. (2022). Bodies as urban infrastructure: Gender, intimate infrastructures, and slow infrastructural violence. Political Geography, 92, 102492. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102492
Optional: Siemiatycki, M., Enright, T., & Valverde, M. (2020). Gendered production of infrastructure. Progress in Human Geography, 44(2), 297–314. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132519828458
Reasoning: This article introduced me to embodied infrastructures and is an easy to read description of urban infrastructure and their gendered roles.
In class: The article itself is quite simple to understand but gendered infrastructure is a big concept to grasp immediately. So, I will break down the article into smaller concepts. In a discussion format, I will take the students through some examples of gendered infrastructural research by Truelove and some other researchers, focusing on North American examples.
Week 7: Gendered mobility
Reading: Doherty, J. (2021). Mobilizing social reproduction: Gendered mobility and everyday infrastructure in Abidjan. Mobilities, 16(5), 758–774. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2021.1944288
Optional: Dobbs, L. (2005). Wedded to the car: Women, employment, and the importance of private transport. Transport Policy, 12(3), 266–278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2005.02.004
Reasoning: Doherty’s piece is a fantastic reading to understand how everyday mobilities are gendered, classed, and racialized. He also provides descriptions of methods that can be extremely useful in studying these concepts - since we will not be having a methodological reading in this part (for the theme of infrastructure, mobility, and materiality), this paper fulfills that requirement also.
In class: I will make a brief presentation about the paper itself and define the concepts that Doherty draws upon and the major debates in studying gendered mobility. We will then co-create a ‘feminist mobility diary’ and do an exercise of filling out the diary that we create.
Week 8: Experiencing infrastructures.
Reading: Datta, A., & Ahmed, N. (2020). Intimate infrastructures: The rubrics of gendered safety and urban violence in Kerala, India. Geoforum, 110, 67–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.01.016
Reasoning: This is a slightly heavy reading, but it is a very feminist theoretical approach to urban infrastructure and the paper also describes ‘how to theorize’ which I think is valuable to understand. Unlike traditional theories that students might come across in the academy, this reading theorizes from the global South, and does so without generalizing to everywhere and everyone.
In class: Since the paper is heavy, I will spend some time going over the main concepts and arguments and explain it to the students and then have an open discussion. I will also allocate some time in this class to discuss their mid-term projects and if they have any doubts, clarify them.
Week 9: Mid-term presentations I (no discussion post, extra credit for attendance)
In class: The students will present their mid-term projects.
Week 10: Mid-term presentations II (no discussion post, extra credit for attendance)
In class: The students will present their mid-term projects. Of course, this depends on the number of students. If we do not need two classes for presentations, I will screen a movie related to urban transportation infrastructure and we can spend time discussing connections between people’s midterm projects and the movie. The movie I have in mind is ‘End of the line’ by Emmett Adler. It dramatizes the New York subway crisis. The timing for the presentations depends on how many students are in the class.
Part III: Pleasure, intimacy, and emancipation
Week 11: Queering feminist geography
Reading: Doan, Petra L. (2007). Queers in the American city: Transgendered perceptions of urban space.” Gender, Place and Culture 14: 57-74
Optional: Adeyemi, Kemi., 2019. The Practice of Slowness: Black Queer Women and the Right to the City. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 25(4), pp.545-567.
Reasoning: Queer geographies have been marginalized even within feminist geographies, but queer perspectives on cities have always been radical and emancipatory in nature and this article provides a great insight into transgender perspectives of American cities (using a survey approach).
In class: I will introduce queer feminist geographies and briefly discuss the paper. We will then discuss strategies of queering feminist geography and how such perspectives can lead to emancipatory approaches to our cities.
Week 12: Belonging in the city.
Reading: Fenster, T. (2005). The Right to the Gendered City: Different Formations of Belonging in Everyday Life. Journal of Gender Studies, 14(3), 217–231. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589230500264109
Optional: Podmore, Julie.A., 2006. Gone ‘underground’? Lesbian visibility and the consolidation of queer space in Montréal. Social & Cultural Geography, 7(4), pp.595-625.
Reasoning: Fenster looks at London and Jerusalem, examining women’s feelings of belonging - but she does this from a rights-based perspective which we do not really engage with in the class until now.
In class: We will spend time discussing the ‘gendered right to the city.’ It is a very vague concept, and it is a useful exercise to try and define it, based on all the readings we did in class till date. This will give the students an opportunity to create their own vocabulary to define the concept and approach to the study of cities.
Week 13: Fun and pleasure
Reading: ‘In Search of Pleasure’ in Phadke, S., Khan, S., & Ranade, S. (2011). Why Loiter? Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets. Penguin Books India.
Optional: YouTube video titled ‘why loiter’ by Shilpa Phadke.
Reasoning: Why loiter is a book that was canonical in Indian women’s studies and geography because it theorizes that a truly emancipatory city is a city where one can take risks, and subsumes access, safety, and other feminist debates into ‘risk.’ One way of taking risks in Mumbai is for women to loiter on the streets. The concept of risk and loitering are both new to the students and this reading will help destigmatize and reclaim both.
In class: I will lead the discussion on the various aspects of the chapter. Because the authors cover religion, class, informality, gender presentation, age, morality and respect, there is a lot to discuss and unpack. We will do a small mapping exercise on where and when we as a group have fun - and try to unpack what these spaces mean to us.
Week 14: Utopia
Reading: City of Possibility in Kern, L. (2020). Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World. Verso.
Reasoning: Kern does a fantastic job of ‘concluding’ the book on feminist city. Continuing the theme of emancipatory possibilities of the feminist city, she identifies ways of making a city truly feminist and not just gender responsive.
In class: I will briefly summarize the book, because she draws on concepts she writes in other chapters for the conclusion, and we will discuss the book. As the last activity in the class, we will imagine a utopian city and co-create the characteristics of this imaginary city based on the readings and discussions through the semester.
Week 15: Final reflection and wrap up (shorter class)
Reading: No reading
Reasoning: I want to use this class to summarize the whole semester and remind everyone of the big concepts we engaged with - and to remind them what a feminist city is!
In class: It will be a short presentation covering the whole semester, and then a ‘social’ where the students can spend time together and talk to each other, ask questions, and make plans for the future. Since it is going to be a shorter class, they can use the remaining time to work on their final projects too.
University guidelines: Communication guidelines, office hours, attendance policy, grading details, university policies, and other required information is available on the ‘Further details’ page.