Reminder (TODAY!): White feminism and the academy, Oct 12 at 3pm EST

Hi friends,

Just a quick note to remind anyone who wishes to join us that our next discussion is today (Wed, October 12) at 3pm EST; please register here.

Our topic today is white feminism in the academy. The starting point for our discussion is “Beyond Choice“ by Britt Munro and Houda Ali. Even if you can’t be there, Britt and Houda welcome everyone to read and share comments/feedback on the piece. And, as a reminder, you can always take a look at our collective notes here: bit.ly/inkcap-notes-2 .

As I mentioned earlier, Britt is in Australia and can’t join us, so she shared some introductory thoughts and discussion questions:

Hey all! Thanks so much for taking the time to look at this (to whatever extent you are able). This was written a couple of years ago now—you know the pace of book chapters—for a collection aimed at undergraduate students. The collection, called Feminists Talk Whiteness, has come up for editing now so we’re in the process of going back over it. Houda and I would appreciate any thoughts, critiques, recommendations, tensions, points of disagreement or difficulty with the text. It all helps us to think, and the questions we raise here are ones that we continue to wrestle with/think and write about (especially for Houda in her thesis work).

We would really appreciate any thoughts on:

1. How do people in this group relate to feminism—what does it mean to you to identify as feminist, or not? What do you understand feminism to be? Big questions but would love to hear people’s thoughts!

2. How do people think this will sit with undergraduate readers? Obviously it won’t speak to every student, but we were aiming to make some of these ideas accessible, at least to an advanced undergraduate audience. If there are parts that stand out as too dense and/or convoluted we would love to know.

3. For those with a background in Black feminist and womanist theorizing, how did you read the piece? Do you think it is clear enough that our critique is of the entanglement of whiteness and liberal feminism? As Mahmood explores, the possible necessity of a relationship between liberalism and feminism more broadly is a really interesting question, but as an autoethnographic piece here we’re just thinking through the kind of feminism we were exposed to growing up, so we don’t go into depth with more radical feminist traditions.

Thank you all, again, so much! Sad I can’t be there but looking forward to hearing your thoughts. —Britt

Hope to see some of you later today!

Warmly,

Katina