Many of the texts we’ve read for this course account for the uses of the term “transnational” as it circulates in academic study and political discourse, as a descriptor of a set of phenomena linked to globalization, as a qualifier for the cultural identities and products that emerge from the experiences of these phenomena, as a critical perspective that makes visible the workings of the nation-state. Of all the creative and theoretical texts we’ve read this semester, though, the one that has been the most influential to my way of seeing and thinking about the world and ways of learning (in) it is, perhaps, one of the more straightforward discussions of the transnational in terms of a transnational practice of studying identities in the context of globalization. Inderpal Grewal and Caran Kaplan’s 2001 article, “Global Identities: Theorizing Transnational Studies of Sexuality,” provides a really useful articulation of what a transnational feminist practice of studying sexual identities might look like, consider, and prioritize, and how such a transnational practice helps overcome some limitations of conventional disciplinary approaches to the study of sexuality which, they argue, have been “unable to address some key issues and problems” (666). I suspect that one of the reasons their articulation of this practice has resonated with me in such a lasting way has to do with the order of things on the syllabus, as we read this article after the unit focusing on the transnational practice of studying the meanings and events of 1968; having already had this case study exemplifying a transnational scholarly practice surely made Grewal and Kaplan’s explanation of it all the easier to apprehend.

Grewal and Kaplan argue convincingly that “a more interdisciplinary and transnational approach that addresses inequalities as well as new formations” can more adequately explore the complex terrain of sexual politics and identities in the current phase of globalization (664). Their ideas about this approach to feminist study have expanded my previously entrenched understandings of transnationalism as primarily a thing of its own or a mode of being under contemporary global capitalism. This is, and will be, most useful to me not only in the realm of research, in terms of the way I determine and articulate my methodologies as an interdisciplinary feminist scholar; it also has profoundly affected the way I think about and wish to approach teaching feminisms and feminist studies, especially in the space of the introductory classroom (and perhaps even more especially in the UMD classroom, where student diversity reflects a range of the effects of transnational movements and economic policies on the Maryland population/demographics, a specificity to which I hope my teaching can be sensitive).

So my first application of this idea of a transnational practice of feminist study (of identities, of events, of cultural productions) has been/will be in my thinking through how to revise my syllabus for the introductory Women’s Studies course I teach on “Women, Art, and Culture” in order to reflect transnational histories of feminisms and, importantly, to destabilize the hegemonic narrative of Western/Eurocentric feminist thought and action. My biggest challenge will be in how little I feel I know about women’s (or feminist) artistic and cultural production outside of a U.S. or European context, although once I begin the work of selecting texts in earnest I may very well surprise myself on this front. In any case, I’ve begun to think seriously about how a transnational approach to teaching women’s studies could structure my syllabus, and thus an introduction to a field of study. Looking to Grewal and Kaplan’s explanatory examples of a transnational approach to the study of sexuality for hints about how this might translate to a transnational approach to feminist pedagogy: they start by examining how colonial and postcolonial discourses of modernity and tradition have structured feminist cultural production, identity politics, and national policy and activism, continue by interrogating how global political discourse and national policies on international relations produce subjects and identities, and also consider the how the deployment of feminist/social activist discourses about global issues shapes the emergence of local/national activist agendas (672-673). They also point to how certain topics of study, such as tourism and travel, provide “a window onto specific connections among nationalism, political economy, and cultural formations” as many of the figures and debates that come up in the study of tourism (such as the “Third World prostitute” and global trafficking and sex tourism) indicate colonialist habits of thought (673). Following these leads, perhaps a transnational approach to teaching an introductory women’s studies class might start by exploring a range of instances of artistic and cultural production relating to a particular topic (such as tourism or migration), from various locations and perspectives, in order to teach key concepts (power and privilege, inequalities, identity, difference, discourse, representation, activism, nation, etc.). I’m only at the beginning stages of revising my syllabus, but am excited about the possibilities opened up by a transnational approach to an introduction to Women’s Studies syllabus, and Grewal and Kaplan’s thinking will be incredibly useful in this regard.