I am a tenured professor of philosophy at El Paso Community College. In 2023, I was invited to teach a Feminist Philosophy course at the University of Texas at El Paso. With full pedagogical freedom to design the curriculum and choose the course’s focus, I seized the opportunity to create an innovative and impactful class that focused on the U.S.-Mexico border. I designed this course to be the one I wish I had taken as a philosophy student, blending rigorous academic inquiry with a transformative approach to feminist philosophy.
El Paso, Texas, is part of a vibrant, binational, and bilingual community, with 85% of students being Mexican American. My process was deeply intentional, incorporating materials in both English and Spanish to ensure relevance and accessibility. The course was also inspired by my own lived experiences growing up across the border in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, one of the deadliest cities for women in the world, where rape and thousands of murders are tragically common. Raised in Juarez, I witnessed firsthand the harsh realities faced by women, from little girls selling candy on the streets to teenagers working in maquiladoras instead of receiving an education.
Drawing from these experiences, I aimed to make the course dynamic and versatile, creating a visually engaging learning environment. This three-hour, once-a-week course is cross-listed with the Department of Women’s Studies. I ensured to highlight feminist philosophers and activists often overlooked, such as Graciela Hierro, Carmelita Torres, Marisela Escobedo, and Susana Chavez. I also incorporated art and music as forms of resistance, featuring artists like Mare Advertencia Lirika. Additionally, I focused on the examination of policies that bridged the gap between theory and the real world.
For many years, art professor Isadora Stowe and I have collaborated closely to offer interdisciplinary workshops on visual literacy, merging philosophy with art. Our purpose has been to combat the objectification of women through engaging seminars and insightful lectures. For this course, Professor Stowe enriched my students’ learning experience with a guest lecture that explored the historical art representations of the human body and how these have turned into dangerous misrepresentations of women. I also invited Sunaina Arya to present her work on Dalit feminism and to discuss the challenges of women in India and the similarities of their struggles with women on the U.S.-Mexico border.
My advice for those hoping to teach this course using my syllabus as a guide is to expand the parameters of feminist philosophy and to make your pedagogy relevant and practical for students and their circumstances. You do not need to live in the context of the U.S.-Mexico border to benefit from the readings and videos presented here. This course is designed to provide an empirical and actual look into feminist responses and active engagement with multiple problems, making it universally applicable.
Just like all the philosophy courses I teach, a key element was student presentations, where students chose powerful topics related to the readings, such as the objectification of women in the media, the exploitation of women in maquiladoras, the lack of representation of women in fields like philosophy and law, and art as resistance.
Ultimately, the course emphasized the importance of advocacy and protest encapsulated in the rallying cries of the Latin American protest “Ni Una Más, Ni Una Menos” and a philosophical analysis of competing views like Judith Butler’s call to reshape our rage.
For one class, we analyzed the lyrics of the song, Canción Sin Miedo by Vivir Quintana, which is the anthem of the Ni Una Más, Ni Una Menos movement, a portion says:
Yo todo lo incendio, yo todo lo rompo
Si un día algún fulano te apaga los ojos
Ya nada me calla, ya todo me sobra
Si tocan a una, respondemos todas
This translates to a very clear threat from Latin American feminists who have had enough and are ready to burn and break everything if they keep hurting us. It was compelling for us to collectively explore how to channel and manage such intense rage in response to pervasive injustice.
My overall goal was to make feminist philosophy relevant to my students’ lived experiences and to empower them to become agents of change in our community and beyond by elevating the representation of women whom the canon has neglected. The end-of-semester evaluations reflected that my students really enjoyed the structure of the course and the assignments. I look forward to teaching this course again in the future.
The Syllabus Showcase of the APA Blog is designed to share insights into the syllabi of philosophy educators. We include syllabi in their original, unedited format that showcase a wide variety of philosophy classes. We would love for you to be a part of this project. Please contact Editor of the Teaching Beat, Dr. Smrutipriya Pattnaik via smrutipriya23@gmail.com, or Series Editor, Cara S. Greene via cara.greene@coloradocollege.edu with potential submissions.
Manuela A. Gomez
Dr. Manuela A. Gomez is a Philosophy Professor at El Paso Community College. She has 20 years of teaching experience on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. She is the vice president of the Society for Mexican American Philosophy. In2022, she was named Piper Professor for the state of Texas,and in 2024, she was inducted into the El Paso Women Hall of Fame for her work in public service.
