Sara Ahmed:  “Introduction: Bringing Feminist Theory Home” in Living a Feminist Life

  • What are new things that Ahmed is contributing?
  • How does Ahmed’s prose affect the reception of her theory?
  • What is the role of intersectionality in restorative justice?
  • What are the practical “action items” we can take from these readings?
  • What is the relationship between subjectivity and embodiment?
  • When are theoretical positions unuseful? What is the utility of the model?
  • Maybe: Link between pragmatism and theory? Feminist pragmatism?

Llewelyn, Kristina R. & Jennifer J. Llewellyn: “A Restorative Approach to Learning: Relational Theory as Feminist Pedagogy in Universities”

  • How do we revise the system for genuine equity?

Judith Butler: The first chapters of “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution” and “Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly”

  • How can bodies resist precarity when the conditions that we live in (which are, arguably, inescapable) maintain, perpetuate, and quite literally, live, for neoliberalism?
  • More broadly: How do you resist under the rule of the system?
  • What does the system mean? What is the value of the system itself? Why is it constructed in the way that it is? How do we use the tools of the system to create equity? What are requirements for access to the system? How do we recreate the system?

Judith Butler: “Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly”

  • What is the relationship between private, utopic spaces and public spaces?
  • How can public spaces be made more feminist?

Rosi Braidotti: “Organs Without Bodies”

Karma Chavez: Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities

  • How can we imagination possibilities for queer migration politics that doesn’t do violence to everyday lives?
  • How do we point out the stories that are missing without erasing the ones that are there?

Virginia Held: Feminist Ethics of Care (how we show care)

Brené Brown (academic and public works on vulnerability) http://brenebrown.com

Roxanne Gay (Bad Feminist, Hunger)

  • What if there are no communities of support to help?
  • How do we value and project our own person-hoods when they are rejected?
  • What are the levels and differences of what vulnerability means and can mean for and to different people?
  • Self-care and apology: How can apologies be offered in ways that are valuable?
  • How can we do this within coalitional politics where there is one common cause, but all coming from different backgrounds (and educations)?