Gender and Intersectionality

Starting with the introduction of the concept of "gender" as a social construction and a category of analysis, the course aims to investigate developments in gender studies through an intersectional perspective. Intersectionality, elaborated in African American feminism and theorized by Kimberlé Crenshaw in the 1980s, allows us to observe how gender intertwines other social categories (such as sexuality, race/ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, religion, citizenship) and how this intersection determines different locations within the social hierarchy. We will focus in particular on the intersection of gender and race/ethnicity. This intersection will be analyzed from a historical perspective in relation to the different phenomena of colonialism, slavery, and migration and will also be investigated through its literary representation in a memoir. In the final part of the course, a focus will be made on how social inequalities (especially those based on gender, race/ethnicity, and class) and the current environmental crisis support and reinforce each other.