Intimate Archives: On Feminist Movements & Emotions

This is a poetic investigation, and the subject is ourselves. Archives, when combined with movements, become a documentation of those who rebelled; when combined with intimacy, they lose their coldness and distance. In Intimate Archives: On Feminist Movements and Emotions, we explore political feelings. We get introduced to political feminist movements in the global south, from the pañuelo verde in Latin America to Palestinian movement. We study feminist movements’ literature with a focus on Arabic-speaking countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, Western Sahara, and Palestine, creating a map of alternative voices that questioned and dared to exist and transform lives. In this course, we create a repository of public feelings as we ask and discuss: what does it mean to live feminist lives? What happens to the heart in queer cruising? What does it mean to love, and to love politically? We will have the space to analyze loneliness, despair, depression and ‘bad’ feelings in relation to systems of oppression. From our analyses, we will explore hope as a means of resistance and as an invitation to choose healing and care.