Teaching about Transnational Feminisms

This essay describes a graduate reading course in women's studies I taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara in the spring of 2003 to contribute to a consideration of teaching about women's movements, human rights, and transnationalism. My goal in the course was to provide a solid historical background for contemporary questions about the feasibility of transnational feminist activism, the legacies of feminist imperialism and feminist orientalism, the diversity of women's movements, the impact of globalization on women, and the relationship between women's rights and human rights. Thinking about the material we read, the issues we discussed, and the analyses produced by a diverse group of students, I conclude by suggesting that we cannot afford to ignore the ways in which—both in the past and in the present—women (and, of course, men as well) have come together across differences of nationality to fight for human rights and social justice.