We live in (yet another) age of backlash against feminism’s victories: reproductive rights have been rolled back, global alliances have been formed to attack sexual rights and reinstate religiosity, and gender studies courses – along with critical theory and queer studies – are being starved of funding or dismantled altogether. This course addresses the fictions that attend to this new politics, rooted in fear and loss, and with powerful material effects. We will consider the ways in which racism is woven into the founding myths of nations in Europe and North America, as well as some postcolonial countries. We will ask whether feminism itself is complicit in foregrounding the concerns of white women at the expense of people of colour, and the affective languages that are imbricated in dominant forms of feminism. We will think through the kinds of affective and political strategies that might weave together different types of democratic and radical demands. This course will count towards the requirements of the New School Gender Studies Minor and the Graduate Certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies.