Due Session #2
Your mission is to read the Redbook magazine article and write two short responses. One will be a Letter to the Editor explaining your views on what Scott Haltzman has written. That letter can be from one paragraph to one page long. Try to think how to write it so it could actually get published! The other will be to write a longer piece (2-3 pages) putting the piece in the context of the readings for this week. Have you learned anything from the readings that puts this piece in perspective? Write an analysis showing how what Mr. Haltzman has written might fit in the context of the debates over feminism and gender differences that these authors are writing about. I would like to have you share your letters in class. We will work together to decide if we should send some of them to the magazine (Redbook).
Due Session #3
Complete the reading required for Ses #3. From the internet, locate 1-2 pieces that discuss the egg and sperm story. Examples from the press include issues about chromosomes XXY in sports and transgendered parents being able to adopt or not to adopt children. Please write a response paper addressing the question "How are gender and sex defined?"
Due Session #4
After reading Eli Clare and the shorter readings, please write 1-2 pages (or longer) on some aspect of your own embodied knowledge. How has your own physical experience (e.g., as a woman or a man, a person with a disability or no disability, a person with a certain way of speaking or a certain way of walking) affected how you understand particular social or cultural issues? Stated another way, is there any knowledge you possess that has been directly affected by your physical, embodied position in the world? If nothing comes to mind, it's okay just to write a response to Clare, perhaps responding to her choice of title, her choice of subject matter, her way of writing, her sense of herself in the world.
Due Session #6
On pp. 528-529, Gayle Rubin discusses six theories of "ideological formulations" of sexuality: from sexual essentialism to sex negativity and so on. Reading Lisa Dodson, Audre Lorde, Evelynn Hammonds, Marilyn Frye, and Catharine MacKinnon, can you think of other theories of the relationship between sexuality and politics? How would you name the concepts that they are dealing with? Are these theories? Do they help us understand how sexuality operates in our society?
Your response paper should focus on these theories, showing how they operate in the six writers we are reading for this week.
In class we will have a discussion of the different theories that seem to be emerging in these different authors (and any others that you may come up with yourselves). Think about how formulating theories can be helpful in changing our understanding of society and sexuality. Are there ways that formulating theories isn't helpful? Why is sexuality sometimes such a challenging topic for feminism?
Due Session #13
Your mission is to take a current or relatively recent set of events or topic of concern that has been in the media and think about how the issues of feminism come to bear on this topic. What are the feminist theory angles in your topic? How has the media portrayed your topic? How can theories about gender and language or gender and performance or the ideological formations relating to sexuality (to take a few examples) help us better understand real conflicts and politics in the world today? What can theory tell us about what observers have and have not understood about your topic?
I will sit down with each of you and help you formulate the theoretical readings that might be best suited to working out your topic. We will meet with librarians in Ses #8 to discuss methods of using library and Internet sources to find your topic.
The papers should be 10-15 pages in length.
I think we can make this quite an interesting exercise.
Due Session #14
Rework your research paper as an op-ed piece for a newspaper. You may choose to focus on a few points of your argument so that you have space to develop your ideas.