On-campus

Intersectional Feminist Approaches (GEO58806)

The challenges we face today demand interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. They also demand careful considerations of structural modes of (in)justice. That said, uncovering and making sense of gender, race, wealth, generation, sexuality, effects of colonial practice, and more, is not straightforward. These differences demand a better understanding of the intersecting processes that shape the challenges we study in their specific socio-ecological settings.

Organised by Wageningen School of Social Sciences (WASS)
Date

Mon 12 May 2025 until Fri 4 July 2025

Contact person (content): Chizu Sato
Contact person (logistics): Marcella Haan

Registration: via Osiris, contact WASS when this is not possible

Times: Mon/Thu/Fri 10.00-13.10 hrs (Mon/Thu for sessions, Fri for group-based reflections).

This interactive course exposes students to diverse concepts (e.g., intersectionality, agency, care, decolonisation, performativity, reflexivity) and approaches (e.g., epistemology, history, feminist food studies, political ecology, postcapitalism, posthumanism) that are useful for understanding intersecting processes.

Through participatory sessions and post-session reflections, this course helps MSc and PhD students, first, to develop, operationalize and integrate a feminist intersectional framework into their own research. The process used for this integration, then, serves as a model for independent integration of other concepts and approaches relevant to students’ own interests. Additionally, students are supported to practice skills such as self-reflexivity, holding brave spaces, perspective-taking, and attitudes that reflect on ethical qualities of respect, reciprocity and responsibility, which improve their ability to engage with (more-than-human) actors from diverse backgrounds.

Learning outcomes

After successful completion of this course, participants will be able to:

  • understand and historically position key concepts and approaches in intersectional feminist studies;
  • develop, operationalise and integrate a coherent intersectional feminist framework into their own research project/interests;
  • draw on the concepts and approaches learned to develop and integrate other perspectives into their own research project/interest;
  • enhance skills and attitudes that embody the ethical qualities of respect, reciprocity and responsibility;
  • apply knowledge, skills and attitudes that are sensitive to intersecting socio-ecological dynamics to their study/professional domain;
  • engage in active learning, critical thinking and academic debate in their study/professional domain.

Assumed prior knowledge

General interest in gender studies; Bachelor’s degree in social, environmental or gamma sciences

Course materials

Required readings will be made available before the course starts by the course coordinator.

Activities

Reading, pre-session activities, participatory lectures, in-class discussions and post-session group-based and individual reflections.

Topics

Feminist approaches (history, epistemology, food studies, political ecology, decolonial, more than human), care,
masculinity, and issues in research across power.