“The University of Pennsylvania is offering a writing course this semester called ‘Abolish the Family,’ touting a common feminist slogan,” reports The College Fix.
“In this seminar, we will look at the history of family abolition and its threads through various other movements, examine variations in cultural models of family, and imagine new models of collective care together,” says the course description. Families can “be sites of pain, trauma, and uneven distributions of labor.”
“In fact, many people turn away from biological families and toward ‘chosen’ families when in need of care, love, and understanding,” it adds.
“Abolish the Family” is one of multiple Critical Writing Seminars in Penn’s Marks Family Center for Excellence in Writing. The class is taught by Professor Melanie Kapadia.
Students “will look at the history of family abolition and its threads through various other movements, examine variations in cultural models of family, and imagine new models of collective care together,” says the course description.
As The College Fix explains,
The phrase “abolish the family” is commonly associated with feminist discourse. Notably, the course description for Penn’s “Abolish the Family” course mirrors that of the book “Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation” by prominent feminist theorist Sophie Lewis, a “leading feminist critic.”…. While it is unclear whether Penn’s course is directly based on Lewis’ book, the university has ties with Lewis, who serves as a visiting scholar at Penn’s Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies.
Lewis, who goes by they/them pronouns, has also authored a book titled “Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family.”
“Sophie’s scholarship operates in the spheres of trans feminist cultural criticism and queer social reproduction theory, and [her] interests include utopian critiques of the family, Marxist feminisms, Black radicalism and antiwork theory,” Penn states.
The traditional family has become a controversial topic on college campuses at large. The University of Massachusetts Boston hosted a talk by Sophie Lewis in 2022 called “Abolish the Family.”
In 2015, students at the University of California at Santa Barbara disrupted an event in support of the nuclear family. The event featured Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute, whose mission is “to defend the family and build a civilization of love.” “More than 20 protesters disrupted the event by chanting and holding vulgar signs. Morse attempted to engage with the demonstrators, but they continued to disrupt the event before eventually leaving,” reports The Fix.
