Fall 2003
PLC 634, ext.64873
University of Oregon
Irene Diamond
PS 407/507
The contemporary search for ecological wisdom seeks to
cultivate a covenant that is inclusive
of
all peoples and species of the earth. This search has raised fundamental
philosophical, religious cultural,
scientific, and ethical questions about humanity’s relationship to the
natural world. This inter-disciplinary
seminar examines how prevailing assumptions are challenged when explorations of gender, the feminine, human sexuality, and evolution are central
components of this project.
Ecofeminist
theory is the most well known effort to
theorize about these issues. The seminar will
address some of the strengths
and weaknesses of this body of thought. The primary focus will be on the
development of feminine ecology as a mode of reading and doing ecological
science that problematizes the concepts of population, history, and scarcity,
while foregrounding the umbilical ties that make life and human activity
possible. The seminar challenges the assumptions of a so-called
"Judao-Christian tradition.” that structure Western feminism,
environmentalism, and much contemporary intellectual thought, paying particular
attention to the notion of Jews as an indigenous people, Jewish ideas of the
feminine, and the implications of these concepts for understandings of
nationhood..
Texts
available for purchase:
1) Irene Diamond, Fertile Ground
2) Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the
Goddesses
3) Claire Katz, Judaism, Levinas, and the
Feminine
4) Sarah Hrdy, Mother Nature
5)Lynn Margulis, The Symbiotic Planet
6) Clara Pinto-Correia, The Ovary of Eve
7) Shmuley Boteach, Judaism for Everyone
1) “The boy whose blood has no father” New Scientist Oct. 1995, p.16
2) Irene
Diamond,”Ecofeminism, “Shifting Terrains, and
Questions for a New Millenium”
3) Irene Diamond
and David Seidenberg, “Sensuous Minds
and the Possibilities of a Jewish
Ecofeminist Practice”
Ethics and the Environment, Winter 2000
4) Irene Diamond,
“Umbilical Ties” and “Notes Toward a Cosmology of Creation”
Shmuley Boteach, Judaism for Everyone,
chps 2, 3,10,14,15,20
5) Book of Jerimiah, 31:16-21
recommended: Fertile Ground
Allison Jolly Lucy’s
Legacy, pp. 139-153
Daniel Boyarin Unheroic Conduct,prologue and pp. 1-13
Susannah Heschel, “Jesus As Theological Transvestite,” in
Peskowitz and Levitt, Judaism Since
Gender
Tikva Frymer-Kensky In the Wake of the Goddesses,
preface, introduction
Stephen J. Gould, foreward to The Ovary of Eve
Carol Christ, Rebirth of the Goddess, pp. 1-49
recommended: Jacob Meskin, “Textual Reasoning, Modernity, and
the Limits of History”
Sarah Schneider, Kabbalistic Writings
on the Nature of Masculine and Feminine,pp.1-35
Evelyn Fox Keller, Refiguring Life,
preface
Jonathan Boyarin and Daniel Boyarin, Powers
of Diaspora, pp.37-102
. Evan Eisenberg, The Ecology of Eden, pp. 61-98
Tikva Frymer-Kensky In the Wake of the Goddesses,
chps. 1-9
recommended: David Rosenberg, The Book of David,pp.
7-43
Judith S. Antonelli, “Beyond Nostalgia: Rethinking the
Goddess”
Starhawk, Truth of Dare, chp. 3
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Eva C. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus,
pp.1-15,33-79
Sander L. Gilman, Freud, Race, and Gender, pp. 1-92
recommended: Anna Wilson, “Sexing the Hyena: Intraspecies
Reading of the Female Phallus,” Signs
vol. 28, no. 3 spring 2003
Pierre Bourdieu, Male Domination
Clara Pinto-Correia, The Ovary of Eve
Carol Delaney, Abraham on Trial, chp.1
Carol Delaney, The Seed and the Soil,
introduction
recommended: Emily Martin, “The Egg and the Sperm: How
Science Has Created a Romance
Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles”
SIGNS 16 (1991) pp. 485-501
Stuart Newman, “Carnal Boundaries” in Birk
and Hubbard eds, Reinventing Biology
Page Dubois, Sowing the Body
Judy Grahn, Blood,
Bread and Roses
David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, chp7
recommended:
Marjorie Profet,
“Menstruation as A Defense Against Pathogens Transported by Sperm” (1993 )
Quarterly Review of Biology
Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet
Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance, chp.6
Freeman Dyson, ‘The Evolution of Science,” in A.C. Fabian ed.
Evolution
recommended: Connie Barlow, ed. Evolution Extended,
Allison Jolly, Lucy’s Legacy, sections I, V
Helena Cronin, The Ant and
the Peacock
Richard Levins and Richard
Lewontin, The Dialectical Biologist, chp.3
S.J. Gould and
N. Eldredge, “Punctuated equilibrium comes of age” Nature
336:223-227
Mae-Wan Ho and Sydney Fox
(eds.) Evolutionary Proceses and
Metaphors
Edward J. Steele, et al, Lamarck’s
Signature
VIII Ethical Relations, Maternity, and
Understandings of the Feminine
Sarah Hrdy, Mother
Nature or
Claire Katz, Judaism, Levinas, and the Feminine
Recommended: Sarah Schneider, Kabbalistic Writings on the
Nature of Masculine and Feminine
Brenda Peterson, Nature and Other Mothers, pp. 3-19,
108-114, 139-151
Carol Bigwood, Earth Muse, chps. 1-5
Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born
Sallie McFague, Super, Natural
Christians, chp.5
Pattiann Rogers, The Dream of the
Wren
IX From scarcity and the counting of populations to
umbilical consciousness and the transformation of nations
TBA
graduate students
1)one
presentation on recommended readings
2)short
7-8 page essay on debate in literature due
Oct. 28
3) short essay on Claire Katz, Judaism, Levinas, and the
Feminine due Nov.18
4)Research paper 12-15 pages in length due no later than Dec.3
All students will present the topic of
their research to the class. Presentations will normally be
no longer than 15 minutes.
undergraduates
1) one presentation on required readings
2) one 5-6 pg.critical
essay on Mother Nature or Fertile Ground due no later than Nov.18
3) bibliography and statement of problem for research paper due Nov.
4
4) 10 –12 page research paper due no later than Dec.3