I'm teaching one of the Warner School's signature classes this semester, Race, Class, Gender, and Disability in American Education. I love teaching it even though it's tough course to teach. Students often resist taking a serious look at how they are privileged at the expense of others. We work on it together though and sometimes students surprise me in their willingness to take risks.
This week has me depressed though. Class is in about an hour (the late slot this semester) and I am increasingly anxious. We have read about race and racism, sexuality, class and classism, and this week we are looking at what I call "the F word" - feminism. What I am struck by in putting this class together is the amazing lack of recent literature on women's oppression. I know someone is going to say I didn't look in the right places and that I'm full of sh--, but it was depressing.
It makes me wonder what happened to feminism? I tend to read the poststructural feminists (Butler, Lather, Walkerdine, Irigary, Kristeva, among others) but I'm not finding much recent work that I can use in a masters level class in education. Liberal feminism just isn't interesting or enough to challenge people's ideologies. The Education Feminism reader came out in 1994. The situation for women and girls is worse.
Am I missing something here?