Course Description
This interdisciplinary course brings together the history of feminist internationalism, International Relations, peace studies, imperialism studies, and globalization studies to explore how feminist internationalists sought to make the world more interdependent, peaceful, anti-imperial, and equitable since the mid-nineteenth century. Feminism’s first wave crashed upon the shores of the industrializing world in the mid-nineteenth century. Widespread feminist involvement within both the international peace and political emancipation movements was in part an outgrowth of the mid-nineteenth-century antislavery movement. This radical confluence further solidified within the turn-of-the-century transatlantic women’s suffrage and anti-imperialist movements, to become what Harriet Alonso has described as “the suffragist wing” of the international peace movement from the First World War onwards. Scholars have also begun to recognize the feminist contributions to International Relations theory, reforming empires, human rights, and economic development. This course brings together these interconnected fields of study to trace and critically analyze how feminist internationalists have worked to reform and regulate global governance to make the world more equitable, democratic, and peaceful.

Learning outcomes
This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to give students historical insights into the changing nature of the global system, focusing upon how feminist internationalists have worked to reshape the global order since the mid-nineteenth century.
The course will be taught through a combination of lectures, group discussion of weekly readings, and small-group exercises. Students are expected to contribute to class. This will also include one oral presentation and a final research paper.
Students will be expected to do the required readings and to attend class regularly. Attendance is compulsory for all students. Required readings will be designated on a weekly basis.
Group work mixing nationalities will be encouraged. Research essays must include bibliographical references and footnotes.

Evaluation method
Essay – A short 2000-word research essay – 50% of the final grade.
Presentation –An oral presentation in class – 40% of the final grade.
Class participation – Overall class participation, in terms of both attendance and interaction, will count for 10% of the final grade.

Syllabus structure
Part I: Feminism internationalism and imperial order, 1846-98
Part II: Feminist activism, imperialism, and world war, 1898-1919
Part III: Interwar feminism and global governance, 1919-1939
Part IV: Feminist contributions to reordering the world after 1945

Bibliography

Selections from some of the following:

Harriet Hyman Alonso, Peace as a Women's Issue: A History of the U.S. Movement for World Peace and Women's Rights (1993).
Naomi Black, “The Mothers' International: The Women's Co-operative Guild and Feminist Pacifism,” Women's Studies International Forum 7 (1984): 467-476.
Keisha N. Blain, Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).
Roland Burke, “Competing for the Last Utopia?: The NIEO, Human Rights, and the World Conference for the International Women’s Year, Mexico City, June 1975,” Humanity 6 (Spring 2015): 47-61.
Antoinette Burton, “Race, Empire, and the Making of Western Feminism,” in Routledge Historical Resources: History of Feminism (London: Routledge, 2016), https://www.routledgehistoricalresources.com/feminism/essays/race-empire-and-the-making-of-western-feminism
Catia Cecilia Confortini, “Doing Feminist Peace: Feminist Critical Methodology, Decolonization and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), 1945-75,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 13 (2011): 349-370.
Karen Engle, “Looking Back to Think Forward: What We Might Learn from Cold War Feminist Movements,” American Journal of International Law 116 (2022): 264-269.
Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Relations (2014).
Bronwen Everill, Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020).
Sylvanna M. Falcón, Power Interrupted: Antiracist and Feminist Activism Inside the United Nations (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016).
Karen Garner, “Global Feminism and Cold War Paradigms: Women’s International NGOs and the United Nations, 1970-1985,” in Philip E. Muehlenbeck, ed., Gender, Sexuality, and the Cold War: A Global Perspective (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2017): 224-248.
Dayo F. Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War. New York: New York University Press, 2011.
Kristin Hoganson, “Garrisonian Abolitionists and the Rhetoric of Gender, 1850-1860,” American Quarterly 45 (Dec. 1993): 558-95.
Kristin Hoganson, “‘As Badly Off as the Filipinos’: US Women’s Suffragists and the Imperial Issue at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Women’s History 13 (Summer 2001): 9-33.
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1917-1994 (1997).
Cecilia Lynch, Beyond Appeasement: Interpreting Interwar Peace Movements in World Politics (2000).
Erik S. McDuffie, “‘For the Full Freedom of…Colored Women in Africa, Asia, and in these United States…’: Black Women Radicals and the Practice of a Black Women’s International.” Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender and the Black International 1 (2012): 1-30.
Valentine M. Mohgadam, Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).
Simon Morgan, “Domestic Economy and Political Agitation: Women and the Anti-Corn Law League, 1839-46,” in Kathryn Gleadle and Sarah Richardson, eds., Women in British Politics, 1760-1860 (New York: Palgrave, 2000): 115-33.
Sumita Mukherjee, Indian Suffragettes: Female Identities and Transnational Networks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Patricia Owens and Katharina Rietzler, eds., Women's International Thought: A New History (2021).
Marc-William Palen, Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024).
Marc-William Palen, “British Free Trade and the International Feminist Vision for Peace, c.1846-1946,” in Imagining Britain’s Economic Future, c. 1800-1975: Trade, Consumerism, and Global Markets, edited by David Thackeray, Richard Toye, and Andrew Thompson (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018): 115-131.
David S. Patterson, The Search for Negotiated Peace: Women's Activism and Citizen Diplomacy in World War I (2008).
Jean H. Quataert, “A Knowledge Revolution: Transnational Feminist Contributions to International Development Agendas and Policies, 1965-1995,” Global Social Policy (2014): 209-227.
Rhoda E. Reddock, “Pan-Africanism and Feminism in the Early Twentieth-Century British Colonial Caribbean,” in Shirley Anne Tate and Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodriguez, eds., Palgrave Handbook of Critical Race and Gender (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022): 143-166.
Leila Rupp, "Challenging Imperialism in International Women's Organizations." NWSA Journal 8 (1996): 8-27.
Leila Rupp, "Constructing Internationalism: The Case of Transnational Women's Organizations, 1888-1945." American Historical Review 99:5 (December 1994): 1571-1600.
Mona L. Siegel, Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women's Rights After the First World War (2020).
Allison L. Sneider, Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870-1929 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Megan Threlkeld, Citizens of the World: U.S. Women and Global Government (2022).
Ian Tyrrell, Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1880-1830 (University of North Carolina Press, 2010).
Susan Zimmermann, "The Challenge of Multinational Empire for the International Women's Movement: The Habsburg Monarchy and the Development of Feminist Inter/National Politics." Journal of Women's History, 17: 2 (Summer 2005), 87-117.

Last updated: January 22, 2024