CGS
2A
INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL
GENDER STUDIES:
Tue & Thu, 11:00-12:20, in Center
214
Prof. Steven
Epstein
Department of
Sociology
University of California,
San Diego
Contact info:
Office phone:
858-534-0489
E-mail:
sepstein@ucsd.edu
Home page:
http://sociology.ucsd.edu/~sepstein
Sections:
A01 (#506306): Wed
2:00-2:50, HSS
2154
A02 (#506307): Wed
3:00-3:350, APM 2301
TA: Kyla Schuller
Email: kschulle@ucsd.edu
Summary:
This course will examine how 20th- and 21st-century social movements have promoted and contested ideas and institutions relating to gender and sexuality. How do social movements challenge the social organization of gender and sexuality? How do movements mobilize, how do they define interests and frame issues, and what kinds of effects do they have on society? How do movements construct their identities and grapple with differences? Our examples will include feminist and antifeminist movements; men’s movements; movements of women of color; women’s health movements; reproductive rights movements; lesbian and gay movements; AIDS activism; and movements for peace, social justice, and human rights.
The course has several goals. First, we will acquire a basic familiarity with the recent historical development of certain movements, such as the women’s movement. Second, we will seek to understand how and why the social meanings of gender and sexuality become subject to debate and struggle. Third, we will analyze the various ways in which activism itself can be “gendered” in cases where men and women engage in political action as men or as women. Fourth, the range of cases we will study will challenge the notion of any simple correspondence between social identity and political strategy. For example, we will question whether there is any such thing as a unique set of “women’s interests” that women’s movements seek to advance. Fifth, part of the function of the course will be to gain a clearer understanding of just what a social movement is in the first place, as well as how social scientists study them. Finally, by comparing a range of movements, we hope to gain insight into how movements differ, and why some succeed while others fail.
Course
Mechanics:
¨ The following book is required for the course and should be purchased at Groundwork Bookstore in the old student center:
Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).
Copies of the book also are available on reserve at the Social Sciences and Humanities library.
¨ All additional course readings are available for download via e-reserves (http://reserves.ucsd.edu/). Please note that you will be responsible for downloading and printing each item. You can access the files from any campus computer, and you can print them with an ACS laser printing account (see http://sdacs.ucsd.edu/~icc/laser.php). You can also download and print the files from off-campus, but in order to do so you need to specify a proxy in your web browser (an easy process; see http://www-ono.ucsd.edu/documentation/squid/). In the case of any problems accessing e-reserves, library staff are available to help you.
¨ Your grade for the quarter will be calculated on the basis of the following course requirements:
1. A take-home short essay that will focus on the material in the first three weeks of the course (25% of grade). The assignment will be distributed Thursday, October 7, and it is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, October 19.
2. A closed-book, in-class midterm on Tuesday, November 2, covering all material up through October 28 (25%).
3. A take-home final covering the entire course but emphasizing the material covered after the midterm (40%). The essay questions will be distributed Tuesday, November 30, and the final is due by 2:30 pm on Tuesday, December 7 (the final exam date for the course). You may also turn in the final earlier, if you prefer.
4. Section attendance and participation (10%).
¨ Students are responsible for all material presented in the readings, videos, lectures, and sections. Class attendance is expected at both lectures and sections. Come to class with the reading for that day, and be prepared to participate.
¨ Late papers will be marked down unless a doctor’s note is presented.
¨ Please understand that, in a class of this size, I cannot accept any papers sent as email attachments.
¨
I am committed to strict enforcement of university regulations concerning
plagiarism and integrity of
scholarship, which means that I report all such cases to university
administrators. Please familiarize
yourself with the “UCSD Policy on Integrity of Scholarship”
(http://www.ucsd.edu/catalog/AcadRegu.html). You should understand that examples
of plagiarism include obtaining text from any source, such as the internet, and
passing off such text as your own work, rather than citing the source of the
material. If you have any questions about what constitutes plagiarism or
academic dishonesty, I encourage you to speak to me or your TA about it.
According to university policies, plagiarism or other forms of academic
dishonesty will typically result in a failing grade for the course and may lead
to dismissal from the university.
¨ At the beginning of class, please make sure your cell phone is turned off or set to vibrate.
¨ Arriving late, leaving early, and walking in and out of class are distracting to those around you. Obviously they are sometimes unavoidable. But I’d appreciate your keeping them to a minimum.
¨ This syllabus and all lectures for this course are copyright 2004 by Steven Epstein. Students are prohibited from selling (or being paid for taking) notes during this course to or by any person or commercial firm without the express written permission of Professor Epstein.
Schedule of Readings and
Assignments:
Thu, Sep 23: Introduction
Tue, Sep 28: Case Study: The Radical Feminist Movement
Alice Echols,
Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in
America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 3-101
(Introduction and Chapters 1-2).
Thu, Sep 30: Case Study: The Radical Feminist Movement (cont.)
Echols, Daring to Be Bad, 103-202 (Chapters 3-4).
Tue, Oct 5: Case Study: The Radical Feminist Movement (cont.)
Echols, Daring to Be Bad, 203-241, 243-245, 269-281, 284-286, 287-295 (Chapter 5, parts of Chapter 6, and Epilogue).
Thu, Oct 7: Radical Feminism and Women of Color
Video: “A Place of Rage” (Pratibha Parmar, 1991, 52 min.)
**Take-home essay assignment
distributed**
Tue, Oct 12: Social Movements: What Are They? How Do We Study Them?
Sidney Tarrow,
Power in Movement: Social Movements and
Contentious Politics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 1-25 (Introduction and Chapter 1).
Robert D. Benford and Scott A. Hunt, “Dramaturgy and Social Movements: The Social Construction and Communication of Power,” Sociological Inquiry 62, no. 1 (February 1992): 37-55.
Johnston, Hank, Enrique Laraña, and Joseph R.
Gusfield, “Identities, Grievances, and New Social Movements,” in New Social Movements: From Ideology to
Identity, ed. Enrique Laraña, Hank Johnston and Joseph R. Gusfield
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 3-35.
Thu, Oct 14: Varieties of Women’s Movements: From Experience to Action
Cheryl Hercus, “Identity, Emotion, and Feminist Collective Action,” Gender and Society 13, no. 1 (February 1999): 34-55.
Gloria Lockett, “CAL-PEP: The Struggle to Survive,” in Women Resisting AIDS: Feminist Strategies of Empowerment, ed. Beth E. Schneider and Nancy E. Stoller (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1995), 208-218.
Byllye Y. Avery, “Breathing Life into Ourselves: The Evolution of the National Black Women’s Health Project,” in Phil Brown, ed., Perspectives in Medical Sociology, 3rd ed. (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2000), 626-631.
Tue, Oct 19: Varieties of Women’s Movements: From Experience to Action (cont.)
**Take-home essays due**
Video: “Las Madres: The Mothers of the Plaza De
Mayo” (Susana Muñoz and Lourdes Portillo, 1985, 64 min [watch
segment].)
Marysa Navarro, “The Personal is Political: Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo,” in Power and Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements, ed. Susan Eckstein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 241-258.
Mary S. Pardo:
Mexican American Women Activists:
Identity and Resistance in Two Los Angeles Communities (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1998), 105-141 (Chapter 5: “Becoming an Activist in
Eastside Los Angeles: ‘For My Kids, for My Community, and for my “Raza”’”).
Thu, Oct 21:
Varieties of Women’s Movements: Social Context and Social Structure
Raka Ray, Fields of Protest: Women’s Movements in India (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 45-62 and 102-120 (Chapter 3: “Calcutta: A Hegemonic Political Field”; Chapter 6: “Bombay: A Fragmented Political Field”).
Suzanne Staggenborg, “The Consequences of Professionalization and Formalization in the Pro-Choice Movement,” in Waves of Protest: Social Movements Since the Sixties, ed. Jo Freeman and Victoria Johnson (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 99-134.
Tue, Oct 26: Varieties
of Women’s Movements: The Construction of Interests in Global
Contexts
Video: “Union Maids” (James Klein et al., 1975, 50 min.)
Leila Rupp and Verta Taylor, “Forging Feminist Identity in an International Movement: A Collective Identity Approach to Twentieth-Century Feminism,” Signs 24, no. 2 (1999): 363-386.
Amy Conger Lind, “Power, Gender, and Development: Popular Women’s Organizations and the Politics of Needs in Ecuador,” in The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy, and Democracy, ed. Arturo Escobar and Sonia E. Alvarez (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992), 134-149.
Millie Thayer, “Transnational Feminism: Reading Joan Scott in the Brazilian Sertão, Ethnography 2, no. 2 (2001): 243-271.
Thu, Oct 28: The Gendering of Social
Movements
Verta Taylor, Rock-A-By-Baby: Feminism, Self-Help, and
Postpartum Depression (New York: Routledge, 1996), 163-179 (Chapter 6: “The
Revolution from Within: Gendering Social Movement Theory”).
Doug McAdam, “Gender as a Mediator of the Activist Experience: The Case of Freedom Summer,” American Journal of Sociology 97, no. 5 (March 1992): 1211-1216 and 1234-1240.
Rachel L. Einwohner, “Gender, Class, and Social Movement Outcomes: Identity and Effectiveness in Two Animal Rights Campaigns,” Gender & Society 13, no. 1 (February 1999): 56-76.
Tue, Nov 2: **IN-CLASS MIDTERM** (Bring blue books!)
Thu, Nov 4: Legacies
of Feminism: The Politics of Influence
Nancy Whittier, Feminist Generations: The Persistence of the Radical Women’s Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), 155-190 (Chapter 5: “United We Stand: The Impact of the Women’s Movement on Other Social Movements”).
Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 157-194 (Chapter 5: “Feminist Spirituality and Magical Politics”).
Verta Taylor, Rock-A-By-Baby: Feminism, Self-Help, and Postpartum Depression (New York: Routledge, 1996), 125-162 (Chapter 5: “The Metamorphosis of Feminism in Women’s Self-Help: Collective Identity in the Postpartum Support Group Movement”).
Tue, Nov 9: Legacies of Feminism: Women on the Right
Rebecca E. Klatch, Women of the New Right (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 119-153 (Chapter 5: “Feminism”).
Kathleen M. Blee, Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 111-155 (Chapter 4: “The Place of Women”).
Thu, Nov 11: Holiday (no
class)
Tue, Nov 16: Legacies of Feminism: Postfeminisms
Martha McCaughey, Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women’s Self-Defense (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 1-18, 59-88, and 177-211 (Introduction, Chapter 2, and Chapter 5).
Thu, Nov 18: Varieties of Men’s Movements
Videos: “Men and Masculinity” (John Lapham, 1991, 30 min.) and “Daddy Said So” (Niklas Sven Vollmer, 1996, 45 min. [watch segment])
R. W. Connell, “Men and the Women’s Movement, Social Policy, Summer 1993, 72-78.
Michael S. Kimmel and Michael Kaufman, “Weekend Warriors: The New Men’s Movement,” in Michael S. Kimmel, ed., The Politics of Manhood (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 15-43.
Tue, Nov 23: Varieties of Men’s Movements (cont.)
Robert Reid-Pharr, “It’s Raining Men,” Transition, no. 69 (1996): 36-49.
Brian Donovan, “Political Consequences of Private Authority: Promise Keepers and the Transformation of Hegemonic Masculinity,” Theory and Society 27 (1998): 817-843.
Thu, Nov 25: Holiday (no
class)
Tue, Nov 30: Lesbian and Gay Movements: From Origins to Gay Liberation
Video: “Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin” (Nancy Kates and Bennett Singer, 2002, 83 min [watch segment])
**Take-home final exam distributed**
John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 57-107 (Chapters 4-6).
Barry D. Adam, The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement. (Boston: Twayne, 1987), 75-101 (Chapter 5: “Gay Liberation and Lesbian Feminism”).
Thu, Dec 2: Lesbian
and Gay Movements: Lesbian Feminism; Politics of Racial
Difference
Verta Taylor and Nancy E. Whittier, “Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities: Lesbian Feminist Mobilization” in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, ed. Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 104-129.
Arlene Stein, “Sisters and Queers: The Decentering of Lesbian Feminism,” in Cultural Politics and Social Movements, ed. Marcy Darnovsky, Barbara Epstein, and Richard Flacks (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 133-153.
Cathy J. Cohen, “Contested Membership: Black Gay Identities and the Politics of AIDS,” in Queer Theory/Sociology, ed. Steven Seidman (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996), 362-394.
Martin Manalansan, “In the Shadows of Stonewall,” GLQ 2, no. 4 (1995): 425-438.
**TAKE-HOME EXAM DUE** on the final exam date for this course, Tuesday, December 7, by 2:30 pm.