The Sociology of Gender

Sociology 305, Spring 2005
Tues 7pm


Instructor: Eleanor Townsley (etownsle)
201 Merrill House
office phone: 538-2803

Office Hours: Tuesday 2:30-4.30pm or by appointment

Course Description:

This seminar focuses on the social production and reproduction of gender relationships across a range of institutional, interactional, intellectual, and cultural contexts. The syllabus includes selections from major social theories of gender as well as several exemplary empirical studies. This is a heavy reading course and class participation weighs heavily in final assessment.

Course requirements and grading:

Read the assigned material, participate in class discussions/debates.………….20%
Reading responses.……………………………………………………………...20%
3 essays (W5, W9, end)……………………………………………………each 20%

Regular attendance and timely completion of all assignments is required.

Readings:

Course readings are available on electronic reserve at the library.

Films will be screened in class.

Recommended books are available at the Odyssey Bookstore and on library reserve: R.W. Connell. 1995. Masculinities. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press; Michael S. Kimmel and Michael A. Messner. 2001. Men’s Lives. 5th ed. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon; Michael Kimmel. ed. The Gendered Society Reader. New York: Oxford University Press; 2004. Ellen Messer-Davidow. 2002. Disciplining Feminism. Durham and London: Duke University Press; Carole Pateman. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press; Steven Seidman 2002. Beyond the Closet. New York: Routledge.



COURSE SCHEDULE

W1 Introduction

2/1 Connell “Introduction: Some Facts in the Case” 1-20; “Gender as a Structure of Social Practice” 67-86

W2 Gender as social relation and moral category: some early thinking

2/8 Rubin “The Traffic in Women” 157-210; Rich “Compulsory heterosexuality and Lesbian existence” 631-60; hooks “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory” 1-15

W3 More thinking about moral categories, social identities & cultural geographies

2/15 Garfinkel “Agnes” 116-140, 164-167, 180-185. “Am I a Woman or a Man” 78-208; “You don’t know dick”. Morgan and Towle “Romancing the Transgender Native”, 469-497. Moreno and Goodwin. 1998. “Am I A Woman or A Man?”

W4 Doing gender and the social construction of reality

2/22 “Juggling Gender”; Butler. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution”; Bordo “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity” 309-326. Recommended: Scott “The Evidence of Experience”, 773-797; Henley, Hamilton and Thorne. “Womanspeak and Manspeak” 145-152.

W5 Intersecting categories, full immersion hierarchies: race, class, gender

3/1 Kimberlé Crenshaw “Mapping the Margins”; Marable “The Black Male: Searching Beyond Stereotypes” 18-24; Bourgois “In Search of Masculinity”, 42-55. Espiritu “All Men Are Not Created Equal; Asian Men in U.S. History” 35-44; Zinn, “Chicano Men and Masculinity”, 17-23.

W6 In the academy: difference, discipline, feminism, gender

3/8 Howe “The Proper Study of Womankind: Women’s Studies”; Stacey “Is academic feminism an oxymoron? 1189-1194; Klein, “The Critique of Limitation” 71-74, “The Disciplinary Paradox” 95-117; Recommended: Messer-Davidow “Disciplining Feminism” 1-48.


3/12 –3/20 Midterm break

W7 Labor, gender, work, family, state

3/22 Kimmel “The Gendered Family” 117-158; “Segregation” 188-193; Flanagan “How Serfdom Saved the Women’s Movement” 109-128; Chang. "Undocumented Latinas" 311-319; Dill "Our Mother's Grief: Racial-Ethnic Women and the Maintenance of Families" 270-292; Murdock. “Comparative Data on the Division of Labor by Sex”, 551-553.

W8 Labor, gender, work, family, state, continued

3/29 “Rosie the Riveter”; Amott, Teresa. "Shortchanged: Restructuring Women's Work" 238-247; Albeda and Tilly "It's a Family Affair: Women, Poverty, and Welfare" 368-371; Adams and Padamsee. "Signs and Regimes: Rereading: Feminist Work on Welfare States"1-23. Recommended: May, M. “The Historical Problem of the Family Wage" 275-291; The State, Gender and Sexual Politics 507-544.

W9 The Polity and Power: gender, law and the nation-state

4/5 Pateman, C. “Contracting In” 1-8; Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government 269- 71; Roe v. Wade 314 Federal Supplement 1217 (1970) Recommended: Fraser “Beyond the Master-Subject Model” 173-181;

W10 The Polity and Power: gender, law and the nation-state

4/12 Seidman “ From Outsider to Citizen” 123-196; Seidman “From the Polluted Homosexual to the Normal Gay”123-161; Meeks, “Marriage, the Family, and Sexual Politics: Contested Images of Normal Intimacy” (manuscript)

W11 Gender and Power: war, peace and institutionalized rape

4/19 Herman “The Rape Culture” 38-46; Sanday “Rape-prone versus rape-free campus cultures” 58-70; Seifert. “War and Rape: A Preliminary Analysis” 54-72; Copelon, “Surfacing Gender” 197-218.

W12 The Authority of Experts: Categories and Classifications

4/26 Cohn. “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals” 107- 138; “Wars Wimps and Women: Talking Gender and Thinking War” 397- 409; Conk. “Accuracy, efficiency, and bias: The interpretation of women’s work in the U.S. Census of Occupations, 1890-1940" 65-72. “The date-rape backlash” Martin “Science and Women’s Bodies”, 69-82.

W13 Conclusions?
5/3 discussion/ debates