More About Feminist Transnational Studies

The framework of Feminist Transnational Studies enables an examination of the encounters, conflicts, and contacts among women, gender concepts, and feminist ideas from different nations, communities, and groups. It covers a wide array of methodological and theoretical approaches. Transnational cultural theory is a fruitful part of this framework, for conducting both historical and current studies of gender, women, and feminist ideas. As applied to understand historical processes, this framework illuminates the legacies of colonialism and modernity from the 16th century to the present. As applied to present and emerging processes, it addresses issues arising from globalization as these affect gender relations and meanings. Much of this work examines the conflicts among different ideas of modernity within nations, and the ways in which European colonialism was the force through which these encounters occurred.

This transnational method consistently asks students to understand how they are positioned and how their identities and subjectivities are constituted in various geopolitical and historical contexts. The method also asks students to analyze the conditions under which knowledge of different regions of the world is produced and circulates, particularly concerning how this knowledge pertains to gender.  A transnational approach pays attention to the inequalities and differences that arise, for example, from the new forms of globalization and from older histories of colonialism and racism; it emphasizes a world of connections and differences rather than of similarities and comparisons.

A number of important paradigmatic changes in the field originally known as Women's Studies are reflected in the expertise and curriculum of the faculty in our unit. Among these are a concern for deploying the capacities of feminist analysis not only to understand women's situations but also to interrogate institutions and modes of thought that produce the conditions under which men and women in different contexts are constituted as "gendered subjects" by means of variegated modes of power and discipline. Furthermore, philosophical pressures within the field of Women's Studies over the past decade have brought to light the important point that Women is not a universally fixed category nor a clearly delineated identity but is a symbol and an identity category that carries many different meanings in different historical and cultural contexts. Simply put, our faculty’s work reflects a move from an academic unit based on a particular identity (“woman”) to one based on two interwoven modes of analysis (feminist and transnational). In addition, our faculty share the concern for analyzing the interrelated systems of gender, race, class, and sexuality not only as these pertain to dynamics in the United States but as they form particular identities, social practices, and political movements in different geopolitical contexts around the world.

The Development of Feminist Transnational Studies at UCI
Inderpal Grewal

At the turn of the century, after more than three decades of women’s studies and feminist activism, what lies ahead for feminist teachers and students? Women’s studies in the United States looks quite different now from its beginnings in the early 1970s. As women’s studies classes grew in number throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, they became part of a popular feminist movement linked to transformations in society at large, such as legal, social, economic, political, and cultural change. For instance, advances in approaches to sexual assault and harassment were made in the legal arena, changing workplaces and homes. In the late 1970s and 1980s, women’s studies responded to challenges by changing its curriculum and content. For example, the early homophobia that marked some programs was answered by new emphasis in the study of sexuality and lesbian cultures. Teachers addressed the race and class bias of early women’s studies programs and projects by changing curricular content to include the study of women of color and working-class women. During this time period and throughout the 1990s, the curriculum expanded to include women with disabilities and women from multiple ethnicities as well as transgender and bisexual communities. Across several decades and through debate and struggle as well as success and achievement, women’s studies courses reflected an increasingly diverse and multicultural world.

However, one emphasis was still missing or marginalized: an international perspective on women’s lives and concerns. Until recently, there were only two ways of addressing international issues in the women’s studies classroom. The first method, popular since the 1970s, was to point to the similarities among women around the world and across time periods. This “common world of women” approach focused on topics such as motherhood and family structure. While this well-meaning approach seemed to propose a world of people without prejudices of skin color or national biases, all linked through biology or cultural activities that seem to be the lot of women the world over, it did not recognize that women are also divided by class, race, nationality, sexuality, and other signs of power. The second approach was a more hierarchical one that viewed Western culture as modern and other cultures as hoping or needing to catch up to the West in Western terms. This “women and development” approach posed an important set of questions about poverty, education, and health. However, many feminists could not help acknowledging that development programs in the poorest nations did not result in improvements in women’s lives. Instead, women’s power and influence in the household deteriorated as a result of modernization polices such as population control, increased industrialization, and the use of technology in agricultures. Given the problems with these two approaches, are there better ways for women’s studies to introduce the study of women within and beyond the boundaries of the United States?

Our faculty at UC Irvine has worked to develop a curriculum and research program with a strong emphasis on a transnational approach to women’s studies. The term transnational means a number of different things. First of all, it means, literally, moving across national boundaries. In our work and teaching, we refer to the ways in which people, goods, money, and media images cross national boundaries in new ways that start to change our very idea of what we mean by national and local identities. Second, the term transnational enables us to see how this transformation of national boundaries depends not only on political changes but also on economic and cultural shifts. In women’s studies we can look at these changes from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on many fields of study to begin to understand these complex conditions. Third, the term transnational refers to new forms of international alliances and networks across national boundaries that are enabled by new media and technologies as well as contemporary political, economic, and cultural movements. These transnational networks are often aided by nongovernmental organizations and new social movements. Fourth, it is very important to stress that these new international communities and identities do not simply create an ideal world where women are all the same and equal. Rather, a transnational approach pays attention to the inequalities and differences that arise from new forms of globalization as well as from older histories of colonialism and racism. It pays attention to the effects and conditions produces by a New World Order marked by one superpower, the United States. A transnational approach emphasizes the world of connections of all kinds that do not necessarily create similarities. Rather the transnational world in which we are living is a world of powerful possibilities and challenges.

At this time, the United States has entered a new phase of militarism—we are at war. Immigration and travel have been affected by tighter security and greater surveillance. Our view of citizenship and civil liberties have altered as a result of the advent of war. Many current events can be traced back to older histories of colonial relations and geopolitics from earlier wars and their aftermaths. As women’s and gender studies educators we have to ask whether or not we are preparing our students to understand the world around them. Does our field provide our students with the critical and historical tools they need to address the situation of war and heightened nationalism?