| 1 | Introduction to the Course | |
| 2 | Issues of the Course | Response Paper: Examine one or two news stories in print publications or on the Web to consider their gender dimensions. What are the feminist or anti-feminist implications of the story? How does "doing theory" help you understand the significance of the story? |
| 3 | Thoughts on Methods | Response Paper: Following the same story as last week or choosing a new one, how do the "methods" in this week's reading help you look not just at the gender dimensions but also at those of race and class? What is the relationship between the author and the story? What is told in the story and what is perhaps not being told? |
| 4 | "Femaleness" and the Body | Response Paper: Examine an issue of female/male portrayals on the Web, in a print publication, or in a textbook. How is the body represented? How are gender differences embodied and disembodied? |
| 5 | The Work of Family | Response Paper: What is the connection between "public" and "private" in one of the stories you have been following? What is considered "work" and what is considered "non-work"? What is considered "domestic" and what is considered the province of "society" or "the state"? How are these issues being decided?
Research paper topics due. We will discuss these in class. Please come prepared not only to discuss your own topic, but also to help others with advice, thoughts on sources, possible approaches, etc. Feel free to email me with any questions. |
| 6 | Gender and Sexuality | Response Paper: Gayle Rubin discusses one hypothesis on the "traffic" in women, how women's position in society is structurally positioned, particularly within the context of heterosexuality. Peiss and Simson discuss the intersections of class and race with sexuality. You also have readings on lesbianism and bisexuality. How do you put together Rubin's work with the dimensions of race, class, and non-heterosexuality presented in the other readings? How does sexuality become a marker in society? How do these theoretical writings square with some of the sexual choices being made by Lisa Dodson's subjects? |
| 7 | Pornography, Rape, and the Politics of Consent | Response Paper: Women and consent can be one of the thorniest issues in feminist theory when it comes to issues of date rape, distinctions between pornography and eroticism, issues of the public presentation of rape (e.g., the rape trial) and its consequences or pornography and its consequences. Discuss the issues of choice and consent or non-consent in light of the readings, in light of your outside explorations, and/or in terms of your paper topic. |
| 8 | Gender and Mothering | Brief Response Paper: How do mothering and fathering intersect with the other social issues we have been studying? What are the "public" and "private" dimensions? How do race, class, sexuality, and other markers affect images of the mother?
Annotated Bibliography Due. Choose 8 to 10 of your leading sources and write a brief commentary on the significance of each.
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| 9 | The Welfare State | Response Paper: Comment on any aspect of the relationship between gender and the welfare state. Having now read many articles on the intersections between race, class, gender, and sexuality, how do you think these are played out in the welfare state today? You may want to think more about the blurring of public and private, the political relations that make some people "clients" and others "staff." |
| 10 | The Political Sphere | Response Papers: The articles in Duke, Women in Politics, consider a variety of positions held by women in politics today and also some of the classic "political" issues with important gender dimensions. What do you think of this issue of the "gender gap"? Do you see evidence of it in the election coverage this year? |
| 11 | Militarism and Gender | Final Papers Due. No response paper. Questions to think about: How has anti-militarism been marked as a "female" issue? What are some of the gender dimensions of the military and its presence in various sectors of modern life? How does language itself become marked (Cohn's point) in other fields besides the military, e.g., science and engineering? What role do gender understandings play in the military in peacetime and in war? |
| 12 | International Politics | Response Papers: Do the gender issues we have been discussing in this class have an international dimension? Conversely, how do the issues we have discussed help us to have a more nuanced understanding of international politics more broadly? |
| 13 | Concluding Thoughts and Student Presentations | |