Syllabus for Cloud’s Course: Communicating Gender in America

COM 370–Communicating Gender in America

Fall 2001

Professor Dana Cloud

Office: CMA 7.105 • Phone: 471-1947 • Email: dcloud@mail.utexas.edu

Office Hours: Tuesdays 11:30-2:00 p.m. and by appointment

This Senior Fellows class focuses on how our ideas about sex and gender and our identities as men, women, and sexual beings are influenced by and contested in the communication around us, from interpersonal relationships to the mass media, from legislative debates to social movements. The key questions guiding our investigations this semester are

°What are the sources of our ideas about what it means to be male and female, masculine and feminine?

°How have we been influenced by communication to adopt and perform particular gender identities?

°What are the consequences of these messages for women, for men, for gays and lesbians, and for society?

°How are ideas about gender and gender roles related to ideas about sexuality, sexual orientation, and sexual identity?

°What is gender? Can it be altered or changed? How?

°What roles have social movements for women’s rights and gay and lesbian rights in challenging and changing the ways we communicate gender in America?

Required Texts (available at the Co-Op):

Black, Katherine and Peter J. Welling. Women May Be from Venus...But Men Are Really from Uranus: A Parody of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus and Other John Gray Books. 2000. ISBN 1587219867

Bornstein, Kate. My Gender Workbook. Routledge, 1997. ISBN 0415916739

Davis, Angela. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism : Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. Random House, 1999. ISBN 0679771263

Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media. Times Books, 1995. ISBN: 0812925300

Flexner, Eleanor. Century of Struggle. Belknap, 1996. ISBN 0674106539

Gross, Larry and James Woods (Eds.) The Columbia Reader on Lesbians & Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics. Columbia UP, 1999. ISBN 0231104472

Jaggar, Alison and Paula Rothenberg. Feminist Frameworks (3^rd Ed.) McGraw-Hill, 1993. ISBN 0070322538

Thompson, Kathleen et al. (Eds.) Faces of Our Past. Indiana UP, 2000. ISBN: 025333635X

Wood, Julia. Gendered Lives (4^th Ed.)Wadsworth 2001. ISBN 0-534-57160-3

Course Requirements:

°Regular reading and participation in class discussions (25 points); pop quizzes on reading possible

°Two unit quizzes on course material (25 points each)

°Team project on gender/sexuality in politics, law, media, relationships, or the workplace

(50 points)

°Gender journal with sections on defining gender, identifying sources for gender in communication, questioning gender, questioning norms about sexuality, understanding the ideas of gender critics (25 points)

°Final paper answering some question about communication and gender in America (50 points).

Grades are based on a straight percentage of 200 points (180=A etc.).

Schedule of Topics and Readings

Unit I: Communicating Gender and Sexuality

in Culture, Mass Media and Politics

Day: Topic readings/due today

Th 8/30: Course introduction

Tu 9/4: What is gender? Wood intro, Ch’s 1-2.

Black

Th 9/6: What is gender, cont.

Assign team reports

Tu 9/11: Gender and language Wood Ch. 4, 5

Th 9/13: Gender, family, relationships Wood Ch.’s 6-7

Jaggar & Rothenberg, 367-447

Tu 9/18: Gender and work Wood Ch. 9

Jaggar & Rothenberg, 283-366

Th 9/20: Gender and media Wood Ch. 10

Tu 9/25: Gender and media, cont. Gross & Woods Intro & Part III

Compulsory heterosexuality *Rich,

Th 9/27: Gender and media, cont. Douglas excerpts

Tu 10/2: Gender in mainstream politics

Th 10/4: Politics, cont.

Tu 10/9: Consequences of gender for men, women, and society

Th. 10/11: Unit I team presentations

Tu. 10/16: Unit I quiz review Gender Journal due

Th 10/18: Unit I quiz

Unit II: Contesting Gender in Social Movements and Personal Life

Tu 10/23: Feminist Frameworks–Liberal Feminism Jaggar & Rothenberg

150-159

Th 10/25: Early feminisms and suffrage movement Flexner Part I

Tu 10/30: Suffrage, cont. Flexner Part II-III

Th 11/1: NO CLASS

Tu 11/6: Feminist Frameworks–Radical & Socialist Feminism

Hothead Paisan J & R 174-187
J & R 160-173, 187-200

Th 11/8: Feminist Frameworks–Black and Chicana Fem. J & R 203-248

Thompson

Tu 11/13: Blues and Black Feminisms Davis 1-119

Th 11/15: Blues and Black Feminism Davis to end

Tu 11/20: Gay and Lesbian movement Gross & Woods Parts IV & V

J & R 448-515

Th 11/22: NO CLASS–THANKSGIVING

Tu 11/27: Contesting Gender in the Body Bornstein

Transexualism and Performance of Gender Gross & Woods Part I

Th 11/29: Unit II team reports

Tu 12/4: Unit II quiz review Gender Journal due

Th 12/6 Unit II quiz

Seminar Papers due Monday 12/10 by 5 p.m. in CMA 7.114.

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~dcloud/Communicatinggender.html