Global Feminisms Collaborative

Introduction to an emerging field

By referring to "feminisms", we mean to be committed to noting the potential for power to obfuscate diversity and to silence difference. Global feminists not only study the power of power, we also use our critical tools to reflect on the ways in which we practice that which we study in our scholarship. Global feminisms is at once a field of study and a process of study, a research question, a research ethic, and a research methodology.

Global feminisms is an ethical perspective. Global feminisms perceives of ethics as a collective project, attentive to the possibilities for alliance building. It expects self-reflection at all stages of the research project from epistemology to publication. Methodologically, it expects an inclusive understanding of the research subject and expects to be educated and to educate about intersectional experiences of oppression. It is attentive to power and to diasporic and marginalized people. In short, global feminist research practices are ethical practices and they are themselves practices that require ethical reflection.

Global feminisms scholars are engaged in the study of boundaries associated with sex, gender, sexuality, class, race, ability, ethnicity, geography, identity, and membership - using both theoretical and empirical lenses. They are attentive to silence and marginalization, to citizenship politics (including migration, refugees, rights, and participation), to political economy (formal and informal), to society and culture, and to the environment (understood as the places where we live, work, play, and pray). Global feminist scholarship is making important contributions to many fields of study and to many ways of living.

List of texts (mailing-list discussion):  http://research.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/globaltext.html
Texts Collection (alphabetical): Nov. 8, 2006:  http://research.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/wmsttoc.html

Global Feminisms Collaborative at Vanderbilt

The Global Feminisms Collaborative at Vanderbilt engages in these scholarly and ethical reflections individually and collaboratively. Because Global Feminisms’ subjects of inquiry have long been marginalized questions within their home disciplines, enhancing Global Feminist scholarship takes place through increased visibility of this scholarship and its authors within their own institutions and globally. Hence, the Global Feminisms Collaborative is committed to working transinstitutionally, with global partners, national partners, Nashville partners and Vanderbilt partners in order to develop the field of Global Feminisms in research and teaching. In addition, we are committed to reflecting on our work and the way we work as a practice of the ethical commitments of global feminism.


Global Feminisms Collaborative at Vanderbilt:  http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/site/bZYlvq/GFC
 http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/psci/ackerly/globalfeminisms

University of Michigan Global Feminisms Project:  http://www.umich.edu/~glblfem/
 http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/cole.qsort/global_feminisms

Course Guide:  http://krook.wustl.edu/pdf/Global_Feminisms_2007.pdf

Image: Brooklyn Museum Art Exhibition Catalogue
Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art
Accompanying the new exhibition, this handsome catalogue, edited by Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin, features the work of more than 80 contemporary women artists from around the world. The book includes seven essays from a multinational group of authors focusing attention on socio-cultural, racial and gender identities. The works cover perspectives on feminist artistic expression since 1990.  http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/global_feminisms/



Question: How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Answer: None. It's not the lightbulb that needs changing.