Week One: The Public Sphere
1. In your own words, briefly describe the meaning of the public and private spheres. How has this binary historically been used to subordinate women and other marginalized people?

2. Next, read these two short articles about the ‘waves’ of feminism:

https://femmagazine.com/feminism-101-what-are-the-waves-of-feminism/ (Links to an external site.)
(Links to an external site.)http://www.ohiohumanities.org/betty-friedan-the-three-waves-of-feminism/ (Links to an external site.).
You may already be familiar with the waves metaphor for feminism. It is broadly used to describe periods of increased feminist activism (its definitely not perfect it can sometimes create the impression that feminism has not been a sustained movement. Most activist movements [think the increase in public attention to the Black Lives Matter this year] have periods of greater and lesser public engagement).

3. Explain how each wave of feminism connects to, negotiated with, or protested against divisions between the public and the private. Why was the act of making things public an important part of feminism? What did it do?

4. Finally, find one contemporary example that illustrates the concept behind the personal is political. You can screenshot something on Instagram, share a tweet, find an article, share something on Facebook anything that illustrates the idea!

This discussion post should be a minimum of 300 words. Please take a look at the rubric to get a sense of how this will be graded.