Introduction: Toward an Engaged Feminist Heritage Praxis

We advocate a feminist approach to archaeological heritage work in order to transform heritage practice and the production of archaeological knowledge. We use an engaged feminist standpoint and situate intersubjectivity and intersectionality as critical components of this practice. An engaged feminist approach to heritage work allows the discipline to consider women’s, men’s, and gender non-conforming persons’ positions in the field, to reveal their contributions, to develop critical pedagogical approaches, and to rethink forms of representation. Throughout, we emphasize the intellectual labor of women of color, queer and gender non-conforming persons, and early white feminists in archaeology

Feminist Erasures: The Development of a Black Feminist Methodological Theory

Within the social sciences, and particularly in political science, feminist methods and theory are seen as valuable only within its own disciplinary boundaries, and limited to its own departments or program, often named women’s studies, gender studies, and/or feminist studies. While the move within the academy to formalize the study of women, gender, and feminism is an important one, these disciplinary boundaries unfortunately have the result of rendering the study and practice of feminist intellectual work invisible to the rest of the academy. Too often, feminist theory and methodological practice is only carried out by one or two female academics within individual departments, and these academics also happen to be connected with various iterations of women’s studies departments, centers, or programs. As a result, feminist discourse is often absent from broader discourses within the larger academy, which is rife with methodological habits that fail to adequately measure and assess the lives, habits, and politics of marginalized populations at large. Contextualized within this broader condition, this chapter argues that feminism should have an important role in the methodological conventions of the social sciences, especially political science. More specifically, the chapter contends that black feminist theory should be more fully incorporated into the discipline of political science because it specifies how political scientists can better study populations on the margins of American society