NEIU Women and Revolution

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JUST 325 Women and Revolution

"There is something that Governments care for
far more than human life, and that is the security
of property, and so it is through property that we
shall strike the enemy. Be militant each in
your own way. I incite this meeting to rebellion.""
- Emmeline Pankhurst

Course Description

This course is intended as a basic study of the history and present day realities of women's participation and leadership in anti-imperialist, independence, nationalist, and revolutionary feminist struggles. 

The course is designed as a hybrid course in which classes are held once a month at the scheduled times listed in NEIU Course Catalogue and the rest of the class work is online at Blackboard.

Course Texts:

Weekly readings are on the links provided in the internet syllabus and attached in the Assignments section on Blackboard.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

Complete all weekly written checkpoints and assignments.

Participate substantively during discussion weeks. All discussion questions (DQ's) must be answered.  Substantive engagement with peers using texts, other sources, experiences, and critical thinking is required two times at least three days of discussion weeks.

Complete Midterm book report and final PowerPoint Presentation project and review peer projects.

Core Course Learning Objectives

Identify historical foundations of women's participation in revolutionary struggles.

Evaluate historical basis for economic, gender, and racial social inequalities.

Understand theories of women's resistance and revolution.

Identify social construction of self-knowledge and self-determination within confines of imperialism and patriarchy.

Analyze art and cultural works that inspire activism for social justice.

Evaluate present day media presentations of revolutionary and radical women. 

Analyze who benefits from women's participation in anti-imperialist, nationalists and feminist resistance struggles?

Identify and evaluate praxis as it is implemented by revolutionary women.

Grading Scale

1000-900 =A

900-800= B

800-700 = C

700-600= D

600-0 =F

 

First class meets from 12:15-1:30 on T/TH January 12 and 14 in CLS/LWH 2109

Tentative Schedule

Week One:  Defining the Revolutionary Woman

Course Assignments

1. Course Preparation and Introduction to the hybrid class.  In class.  CLS/LWH 2109

          Read the course description and objectives and Appendix A.

2. Readings, presentation and video:

Women Liberators and Revolutionaries  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Y-C1BIJ1Q

Declaration of the Rights of Woman, 1791 Written by Olympe De Gouges, 1791 http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/americanstudies/lavender/decwom2.html

Women and Revolution

http://www.patriciadaniel.org.uk/womenandrevolution.pdf

 

3. Discussion Questions

DQ 1 [In class] Describe your images of revolutionary women? 

DQ 2 (In class) Describe a vision of you as a revolutionary and you supporting revolutionary women.  

 

Week 2 Building Resilience against Oppression

Course Assignments

1.  Read

2.  Checkpoint

Due day 3 (submit through email) 

Using the "Join the resistance: Fall in Love "essay describe what it would be like to fall in love with you in a manner

that honors all of who you are.  300-500 words

3.  Assignment

Due day 7 (submit through email)

 Respond reflexively to all the places in the SCUM Manifesto that evoked an emotional response of delight, disapproval,

disconnection, etc. and explain why you think you had that response.  800-1000 words

WEEK 3 Conducting your Research on Revolutionary Women

Course Assignments

1.  Read and Watch

  • All the Men are Fighting for Freedom, All the Women are Mourning their Men, but Some of Us Carried Guns PDF
  • This essay is critical to the course and should be read and cited through out the fifteen week's assignments.
  • (Attached in the Assignments section).
  • Sandra Oh reads Emma Goldman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz-0Shljq88
  • Oum Kalthoum - Al Atlal (The Ruins, Les Ruines) 1966 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go-3AN-m2gI

2.  USE Appendix B--You have three options for your final research project:

Choose an historical woman revolutionary or revolutionary women's group from the links and/or names in Appendix C for your final research ppt project.

Choose and discuss an historical woman revolutionary or group not on the list with Dr T's approval for your final ppt project.

Design a proposal and strategic plan for a revolutionary women's group with you in a leadership position.  

3.  Respond to the following question on the Discussion Board

under the appropriate thread and substantively discuss each others responses:  Describe your opinion on whether

using violence to defend yourself against an oppressor is as Fanon describes, "a cleansing and liberating process"? 

Is your answer the same for men and women?

4.  Assignment:  Submit your completed Appendix B to the Discussion Board.  Offer resources and discuss the choices of

topics of at least four other students.  Due Day 5. 

Week 4 in class at 12:15 Rm 2109 Self-knowledge and self reliance

Course Assignments

1.  Read

2.  Salt of the Earth Film

3.  DQ 1 (In class)

Respond to the following question in the Discussion Board.

In what ways are you confined, constricted and oppressed by the concepts of gender?

Week 5:  Knowing history/Knowing Others

Course Assignments

1.  Read and Respond:

 

2.  Checkpoint

Due day 4 (Submit through email)

Compare the similarities and differences in the struggles of this week's women.  500-700 words.

 3.  Assignment

Due day 7(Submit through email)

 Citing sources from sources within the text of your essay  and in a reference section discuss the manner in which imperialism,

colonization, white supremacy, race and class effect women in

their revolutionary struggles and their efforts to understand each other.  800-1000 words

 

 WEEK 6 Knowing History/Knowing others

 

Course Assignments

1.  Read and Respond

 

  • Women in Nationalist and Socialist Revolutions ppt
  • Changing My Life:  How I Came to the Vietnamese Revolution pdf--attached in assignments section
  • Women, Power and Revolution by Kathleen Cleaver pdf--attached in assignment section

 DQ 1

Due day 3 (Discussion Board)

Discuss you and your peers understanding of what happened to women who fought 

during and after the various revolutions and movements discussed in this week's readings. 

 

3.  DQ 2

Due day 5 (Discussion Board)

 Discuss why women, who are trained to be as skillful in the arts of war along side of men, are historically not respected or treated as equals by the men with whom they are fighting?  Remember to defend your answer with quotes from the texts and cite your sources.

 

Week 7 Women fighting in Nationalist Struggles

Course Assignments

 

1.  Read and Respond:

 

 2.  Assignment Essay

Due day 7 (submit through email)

The revolutionary activist educator, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz wrote:

When I say I am opposed to war I mean ruling class war, for the ruling class is the only class that makes war...I would be shot for treason before I would enter such a war....I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world...I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the world- wide war of the social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades. 

Using this week's readings take a stand on whether or not you believe women should participate in national struggles against colonialism and imperialism or whether, as Dunbar-Ortiz implies, women should only participate in a war that frees everyone from the global system of capitalism and imperialism?  800-1000 words

Remember to cite sources within the your response.

Weeks 8 and 9 Midterm Reflexive Analysis Journal

Course Assignments

1.  Choose either A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft http://www.bartleby.com/144/ or The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir at http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/2nd-sex/index.htm.  Choose four chapters in which you will reflexively analyze your understanding of the author's main claims and your response to those claims.  Each chapter's response should be at least 800-1000 words and sources cited within the text. 

 Due day seven of week 9. Submit on Discussion Board. 

We will have class week 8 at 12:15 in Rm 2109

Week 10:  Final Presentation Annotated Bibliography

Course Assignments

1.  Discuss substantively the ideas and claims made in at least three of your peers midterm journals.

2.  An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and documents. Each citation is followed by a brief

 (usually about 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph, the annotation.

The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.

Prepare and submit your annotated bibliography for your final presentation. See http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/skill28.htm for more information.

 You must include at least 2 books and 5 articles.  Due day 7 

Week 11:  Relationships, Community and Networks

Course Assignments

1.  Read and Respond and Watch

 

 DQ 1

Due day 3 (Discussion Board)

  Using your own experience discuss how your race, gender, class, ethnicity, and creed may afford you privileges or mistreatment. 

 DQ 2

Due day 5 (Discussion Board)

Imagine you were in a revolutionary group.  How could you organize the group to prevent sexism, racism, and violence against women?

 

Week 12 Relationships, Community and Networks in Classroom 2109

Course Assignments

1. Read, Watch and Respond:

 

2.  DQ 1

 (In class)

 When was a time you stood up for yourself as a woman or for women?   What activities, if any, have you engaged in that made you feel part of a community working for justice?

 

3.  Assignment

 (In class) 

Drawing from the readings provide examples of the implications, consequences, results, and who benefits from the activities of each of this week's stories.

Week 13 Art and Revolution

Course Assignments

1.  Read and watch

 2.  DQ 1

Due day 3 (Discussion Board)

Art can be a catalyst and sustainer for revolutionary spirit and movement.  Which artist in the readings for this week inspires you?  Do you know of other artists that are inspiring?

 

Week 14 Final Project

 Present power point summary of your research on a historical group of revolutionary women, women who participated in a revolutionary group or an individual revolutionary woman and analyze the consequences of their struggle.  You may also choose to design your own revolutionary group. 

 Final Project: Women and Revolution PowerPoint Presentation

  • Due Day 7 (Post to Discussion Board)
  • Resources: Appendix A and C

 

  • Create an 11-to 14-slide PowerPoint presentation documenting the history, aims, political ideology, accomplishments, and a critique of who benefited from the revolutionary group or woman you choose to research. Refer to Appendix A for details of the assignment and the Grading Form in Appendix C.

 

Week 15 Final Project Capstone Discussion-Peer Review

 

Review, analyze and discuss peer final projects.

SOME WOMEN REVOLUTIONARIES, REBELS AND RESISTERS, LINKS, BOOKS AND ARTICLES

Ella Baker

Septima Clark

Ruby Doris

Fannie Lou Hamer

Annie Devine

Victoria Gray

Inel Ponder

Aylene Quinn

Books under this subject

In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez 

I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala by Rigoberta Menchu 

No One to Trust by Iris Johansen 

Angela Davis: An Autobiography by Angela Davis 

American Woman: A Novel by Susan Choi

The Wild Irish: A Novel of Elizabeth I and the Pirate… by Robin Maxwell 

1949: A Novel of the Irish Free State by Morgan Llywelyn 

Granuaile: Ireland's Pirate Queen C. 1530-1603 by Anne Chambers 

Tree Bride, The by Bharati Mukherjee

Rosa: A Novel by Jonathan Rabb 

Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar by BARBARA ENGEL 

Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times As a Weatherman by Cathy Wilkerson

Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life by Alice Wexler 

Outlaw Woman by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Blood Diamonds (Ben and Danielle) by Jon Land

Afeni Shakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary by Jasmine Guy 

Memoirs of a Revolutionist by Vera Figner 

Maud Gonne: A Life by Margaret Ward 

The Rebel Countess: The Life and Times of Constance… by Anne Marre

Queen of Bohemia: The Life of Louise Bryant by Mary Dearborn 

Angel of Vengeance: The "Girl Assassin," the Governor of… by Ana Siljak

Lucky eyes and a high heart: The life of Maud Gonne by Nancy Cardozo

Unruly Women of Paris: Images of the Commune by Gay L. Gullickson

Constance de Markievicz in the cause of Ireland by Jacqueline Van Voris 

Terrible Beauty: A Life of Constance Markievicz, 1868-1927 by Diana Norman (

Guns & chiffon : women revolutionaries and Kilmainham Gaol,… by Sinéad McCoole

Grace Gifford Plunkett and Irish Freedom: Tragic Bride of… by Marie O'Neill 

Molly Pitcher : young American patriot (Graphic library.… by Jason Glaser

Apostles into terrorists: Women and the revolutionary… by Vera Broido

Maud Gonne by Samuel Levenson 

Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance… by Julie Peteet 

Women Soldiers, Spies, and Patriots of the American… by Martha Kneib

Fearless Women in the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish… by Tabea Alexa Linhard 

Molly Pitcher : heroine of the War for Independence by Rachel A. Koestler-Grack 

The courageous patriot by Idella Bodie 

Women & guerrilla movements : Nicaragua, El Salvador,… by Karen Kampwirth 

Rebel daughters : women and the French Revolution by Sara E. Melzer 

Mambisas : rebel women in nineteenth-century Cuba by Teresa Prados-torreira 

The women of 1916 : when history was made by Ruth Taillon

All in the blood : a memoir by Geraldine Plunkett Dillon  

Juana Azurduy by Gisela Aguirre 

Marianas in combat : Teté Puebla & the Mariana Grajales… by Teté Puebla

Dolores Jimenez y Muro http://www.ic.arizona.edu/ic/mcbride/ws200/mex-jand.htm

Hermila Galindo http://www.ic.arizona.edu/ic/mcbride/ws200/mex-jand.htm

There were also numerous Filipinas who distinguished themselves in the battlefield. In 1896, Gregoria Montoya y Patricio, upon the death of her Katipunero husband, led the charge of a thirty men unit while holding a Katipunan flag on one hand and a sharp-bladed bolo (machete) on another hand. She used a white piece of cloth, commonly used during mass, to ward off bullets. Another Filipina revolutionary was Agueda Kahabagan who fought the Spaniards armed with a rifle, brandishing a bolo and dressed in white. Teresa Magbanua, on the other hand, earned the sobriquet "Joan of Arc" of the Visayas for the valor she displayed in many battle

The Trung Sisters - Vietnam, 40-43 A.D.

Samurai Woman - Japan, 12th Century
Amina Nigerian Queen, 1560-1610  http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/rulers.html

Mbande Nzinga Angolan Queen, 1582-1663

http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/rulers.html
Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz - Mexico, 1691
Rani  Lakshmibai of Jhansi - India, 1850's

Maria Candelaria, Chiapas

Kimpa Vita, dona Beatriz de Congo

Veleda of the Bructerii (Netherlands), Dahia al-Kahina (Tunisia)

the Kumari of Taleju (Nepal)

Jeanne d'Arc (France

Tang Saier (China)

Juana Icha (Peru)

Kimba Vita (Congo)

Cécile Fatiman (Haiti)

Antonia Luzia (Brazil)

Toypurina (Tongva Nation, California

 the Prophetess of Chupu (Chumash Nation)

Wanankhucha (Somalia)

Lozen (Apache Nation)

Teresa de Cabora (Mayo, Sonora)

Nehanda Nyakasikana (Zimbabwe)

Muhumusa (Uganda)

Nomtetha Nkwenkwe (!Xhosa, South Africa)

Teresa Urrea, la Santa de Cabora (Mexico)

Wanakhucha, the mganga priestess who led the Zigula
exodus out of slavery in Somalia;

the Bagirwa oracles of Nyabingi on the borderlands of Uganda / Rwanda

Queen Nanny of the Jamaicans

Women of the French Revolution http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2003/fr_rev_wmn.html

Women of the Paris Commune Uprisings  http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=855&Itemid=106

Women in the resistance in WWII http://www.ossinitaly.org/Women/womenintheresistance.html


"First Wave" Feminists  Japan, 1878-1927

Qiu Jin - China, 1875-1907

Militant Suffragettes - England, 1904-14

Soldaderas  Mexico, 1910

The Women's War  Southeast Nigeria, 1929-30

Huda Shaarawi - Eygpt, 1920s-1940s

Independence Movement - India, 1929-30

Women Fight Fascism  Europe, 1930s-40s

Women Leaders of the Cuban Revolution

http://www.laborstandard.org/Venezuela/Celia_H_on_Two_Women_Leaders.htm

Liliuokalani, Last Monarch of Hawaii, 1838-1917

Women of FARC

http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa032703a.htm

http://www.voltairine.org/womenresisters.html

http://www.suppressedhistories.net/catalog/shamanliberators.html

http://www.ic.arizona.edu/ic/mcbride/ws200/mex-jand.htm

Women of the Spanish Revolution (1 of 3)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCF9YWk5W-s

 

Comrades in Arms http://links.org.au/node/934

Women in Russian Rev

Anna Maria Mozzoni 1837-1920

http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2003/mozzoni2.html

Mira Nair  http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/fps/2009/11/20091130133636760351.html

Zohra Drif, Algerian Revolutionary

Anthony, Susan B.

Pankhurst, Emmeline

Catt, Carrie Chapman

Goldman, Emma.

Stone, Lucy.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins.

Truth, Sojourner.

Cooper, Anna Julia.

Wollstonecraft, Mary.

Simone de Beauvoir

Mitchell, Juliet. “Women: The Longest Revolution,” 201-212 (FIOT)

Wallace, Michele

Lorde, Audre.

Friedan, Betty

Sarachild, Kathie

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/fem/sarachild.html#bar

Solonas, Valerie

http://www.womynkind.org/scum.htm 

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

Rich, Adrienne 

Collins, Patricia Hill

Boston Women’s Health Book Collective

Jordan, June 

 Daly, Mary

Firestone, Shulasmith