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The Geopolitics of Gender/Race and War
Associate Professor Piya Chatterjee
Department of Women's Studies
Course: HASS 092-65C
Call #: 19618
Wednesdays, 10:10-11:00am, Women's Studies Conference Room

This class will explore the global politics of militarism, militarization and war (in the contemporary period) by viewing these, simultaneously, through the lens of gender and race. It is created as a space within which we can engage honestly, openly, and urgently the geopolitics of living and working in the United States where increased militarization, and foreign policy which leading to war, has had serious consequences for people here--and elsewhere.

Readings will engage gender and race justice concerns by looking at militarization of society; ideologies of gender/race in times of conflict; gender/sexuality and race in the armed forces; gender/race and war in the media; reconstruction, reconciliation and peacemaking; and what it means to teach and act in "times of war."

Because these are difficult topics, the class will be structured around close readings, open discussions and creative think-piece writing.

I will also invite students to contribute these in-class reflections for an anthology on gender and militarization that is being co-edited by an editorial group of graduate and undergraduate students at UCR, a faculty at Pitzer College and myself, called The Ya Basta Collective. I welcome students who are thinking creatively and critically about these issues.

Reading List:

Excerpts from the following books will be used for the 10 Classes and Discussions to be offered:

Cynthia Enloe.Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics.

Cynthia Enloe. Manouvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives.

Catherine Lutz. Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century.

Marjorie Agosin and Betty Jean Craige. (Eds) To Mend the World: Women Reflect on 9/11

Zillah Eisenstein. Sexual Decoys: Gender, Race and War in Imperial Democracy.

Robin Riley, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Minnie Bruce Pratt (eds). Feminism and War: Confronting American Imperialism.

Brief Biographical Statement:

Piya Chatterjee is trained in social anthropology. She teaches and writes about women's social organizing, and labor, in the global South--specifically in South Asia. However, she is also interested in, and teaches on,women of color politics within the United States.

She has published "A Time for Tea: Women,Labor and Post/Colonial Politics on an Indian Tea Plantation" (Duke, 2001); a co-edited volume, "States of Trauma: Gender and Violence in South Asia" will be out in Jan 2009. She is currently working on a book called "The Global Plantation," which looks at both sugar and tea histories of commodity trade, capital and labor.