Description |Requirements |Links
Black Iris by Georgia O'Keefe
1/10 Course Introduction, Expectations, Requirements; Introduction
to Web-Enhanced Features
Small Group
Activity: Unpacking the “F” Word.
Viewing: Iron-Jawed Angles
1/17 Uttering the "F" Word: What is Feminism? What is Women's Studies? And What Difference Does it Make?
Dialogue Journal #1 Due on the following required readings :
Required
Readings from Women: Images and
Realities: “What is Women's
Studies" (8-15); "Talking Back" (15-18); "Sins of Silence”
(18-19); “Claiming an Education” (19-21); “The Politics of Black Women's
Studies" (21-4); "Men and Women's Studies: Premises, Perils, and Promise" (24-8);
"Have You Ever Heard of Asian-American Feminists?" (28-29);
"Women's Studies as a Growth Process" (29-30); "Finding My
Latina Identity through Women's Studies" (30-31); "What Women's
Studies Has Meant to Me" (31-32); “Why Women’s Studies?” (32-33);
"Women's Studies: A Man's
Perspective" (33-34).
Required
ALL readings
are required. Your dialogue journal
should touch upon readings from the text as well as those on the handouts.
Explanation of Web-Based Group Presentation on International
Women's Issue
Viewing: The F Word
1/24 The Cultural Construction of “Femininity” (and “Masculinity): Dominant Ideas about Women
Dialogue Journal #2 Due on required readings :
Required
readings from Women: Images and
Realities: “The Sperm and the Egg”
and “Becoming a Woman in Our Society" (40-44); Dominant Ideas about Women
and How They Are Learned" (45-6)); "To Be Real" (54-7);
"Blazes of Truth” and Jap: The New Anti-Semitic Word" (57-60);
"In Search of Liberation" (60-1); “Brideland” (61-2); "On Being
a 'Good Girl': Implications for Latinas in the U. S." (63-6); “Girls: We Are the Ones who Can Make a Change”
(67-8); “not a pretty girl” (69).
Required
reading from Xeroxes: "Patriarchy, the System: An It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us."
Recommended
but not required Xerox reading: “The
Social Construction of Gender”
Viewing: Killing
Us Softly 3 (34 mins)
1/31 "Doing" and Undoing Gender / (En)Gendering
Change
Dialogue Journal #3 Due
on required readings :
Required
readings from Women: Images and Realities: "Learning Gender" (70-71); “klaus
barbie, and other dolls i’d like to see” (72-75); "Allegra Maud
Goldman" (73-6); "An Educator’s Primer on the Gender War," “Reality
Versus Perception,” and “Checklist for Inclusive Teaching” (76-83); "Teen
Mags" (93-6); "No Respect:
Gender Politics and Hip-Hop" (99-104); "Mutineers in
Mainstream Music" (105-7); India.Arie video (108); X: A Fabulous Child's Story" (108-113)
Required
readings from Xeroxes" The Five Sexes:
Why Male and Female Are Not Enough"
Explanation of Oral History Project: Goals, Expectations, Strategies, Assessment
Criteria
Viewing: Dreamworlds
2 (57 mins). Warning: this
video contains a scene of sexual violence. If at any time you feel
uncomfortable with the film, please feel free to leave the room.
2/7 Women's Bodies, Domestic and
International Contexts: The Beauty Myth
Dialogue Journal #4 Due on required readings:
Required
readings from Women: Images and Realities: "Gender and Women's Bodies" (116-18);
"Female Beauty" (119); "The Beauty Myth" (120-25);
"When I Was Growing Up" (125-26); "To Other Women Who Were Ugly
Once” (126); “Nose Is a Country . . . I Am the Second Generation” (127-29); One
Spring" (132); "Homage to my Hair” and “Our Crowning Glory, Our Roots”
(129); “The Body Politic” (130-34);
“Breaking the Model” (134-38); “The Fat Girl Rules the World” (138);
"Homage to my Hips" (139)
Viewing: Slim Hopes (30 mins)
Group Presentation(s) on any of the following: eating disorders; internet web sites promoting eating disorders; advertising and media images of women’s bodies; “make-over” reality TV and women’s bodies, cosmetic surgery, and vaginoplasty surgery in U. S. to “correct” women’s “unattractive” genitals; female genital mutilation in an international context; intersexual activists and their work for informed consent before genital surgery; popular culture images of the female body.
2/14 "Excavating" the Categories of Race
and Class "from the Inside":
Structural Inequalities in the U. S.
Dialogue Journal #5 Due on required readings:
Required
readings from Women: Images and Realities: “Take a Closer Look: Racism in Women’s Lives”
(380); "Defining Racism: Can We
Talk?" (380-85) “Salad” and "I Am Not Your Princess" (387-88);
"Take a Closer Look" (368); "White
Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”
(388-92); "An Autobiography" (392-3); “The Legacy of Class” (394); “Tired
of Playing Monopoly” (394-98); “Poverty, Hopelessness, and Hope” (390-93)
Required
readings from Xerox: "A Question of
Class"
Also read pages
1-50 of Bastard Out of Carolina
Also consult
poverty statistics on our web pages: Recent
U.S. Poverty Statistics (Just click on link.)
Viewing: Eyes on the Prize, Awakenings
2/21 Dialogue Journal #6 Due on required readings:
Required readings Bastard Out of Carolina (the rest of the
novel)
Recommended Reading:
Baker, Moira: "'The politics of they': Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina as
Critique of Class, Gender, and Sexual Ideologies. (Just click on link.)
Group Presentation(s): African-American women in U. S. history; Rosa
Parks and the Civil Rights Movement; Ida B. Wells-Barnett and the anti-lynching
movement; Madame C. J. Walker and the beauty industry for Black women; Anna
Julia Cooper and the education of Blacks; the National Association of Colored
Women and the National Black Women’s Club Movement (before WW I).
2/28 Recognizing
and Embracing Differences Based on Sexual Orientation, Age, Physical Ability,
and Culture
Dialogue Journal #7 Due on required readings:
Required
readings from Women: Images and Realities: “’Are You Some Kind of
Dyke?’" (415); “Homophobia and Sexism" (416-19); “Cat” (420-23); "Chicana
Lesbians: Fear and Loathing in the
Chicano Community" (423-27); “Livin’ in a Gay Family” (406-8); “Older, Wiser, and Marginalized: Ageism in
Women’s Lives” (434); “Older Women: The
Realities” (412-16); “Understanding and
Valuing Difference” (447); “Rights, Realities, and Issues of Women with
Disabilities” (448-52); "Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference" (454-58); “Boundaries: Arab/American” (464-68); “Why Race Matters to
a White Dyke” (468-69)
Viewing: Out of the Past
3/7 Women and Work:
Economic Inequality and Women’s Lives
Dialogue Journal #8 Due on required readings:
Required
readings from Women: Images and Realities: “Institutions that Shape
Women’s Lives” (170-78); “An Overview of
Women and Work” (180-85); “Questions and Answers on Pay Equity” (185-88);
“Office Double Standards” (188); “The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still
the Least Valued” (191-94); “9 to
5: Organizing Low-Wage Women” (203-7);
“Sexual Harassment and the Law” (204-6);
“In Case of Sexual Harassment: A Guide
for Women Students” (206-8)
Viewing: Fast Food Women
Group Presentation on the Gendered Pay Gap: Is Women’s Work Still Worth Less than Men’s? OR on sexual harassment in the workplace or university campus
Group Presentation on the Pittston Strike and the Role of Women
3/21 Oral History Essay Due
Viewing:
Strangers in Good Company
3/28 Women and Work: The Global
Economy and Women's Lives
Dialogue Journal #9 Due on required readings:
Required
readings from I, Rigoberta Mench:, Chapters 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 13, 15, 16,
18, 19, 20;
Required
readings from Women: Images and Realities: "The Globetrotting
Sneaker" (587-91).
Group Presentation(s) on International Women's
Issue: The U. S. sponsored military coup
of 1954 and its impact on Guatemalan society; Guatemala's indigenous people's
struggle against military repression and global capital; U. S./CIA intervention
in Guatemala since the 1954 coup to install dictatorships that favor repression
of workers and the poor.
4/4 Globalization and its
Discontents
Dialogue Journal #10 Due on required readings:
Required
Required
readings from I, Rigoberta Menchu: Chapters 23, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 33,
34;
Required
readings from Women: Images and Realities: “Bringing the Global Home” (550-6)
Group Presentation(s) on International Women's
Issue: The Maquiladoras in Mexico and
Central America; International Sweatshops; women's labor activism in the
maquiladors of El Salvador or elsewhere; the U. S. student movement to end
sweatshop exploitation
Group Presentation on International Women's Issue:
Sex tourism; the sexual exploitation of women and children in the international
sex industry and international women’s activism to stop such practices
Viewing: "The Global Assembly Line"
4/11 Violence against Women: Domestic and International Contexts
Dialogue Journal #11 Due
on required
readings:
Required
readings from Women: Images and Realities: “Violence against Women” (478-80); "Battering: Who's Going to Stop It?" (482-87); “Violence
in Intimate Relationships: A Feminist Perspective” (495); "Holding Up More
than Half the Heavens" (496-7); “Sexual Violence against Women and Girls”
(469); “Whose Body is it, Anyway?” (507-10); “With No Immediate Cause”
(510-11); "Naming and Studying Acquaintance Rape" (511-18); “Rape and
Gender Violence: From Impunity to
Accountability in International Law” (518-20); “Stronger than You Know” (520-22);
“Protecting Male Abusers and Punishing the Women Who Confront Them: The Current Status of Child-Sex Abuse in
Required
readings from Xerox: Alicia
Partnoy, The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival.
Group Presentation on International Women's
Issue:
Group Presentation on International Women's
Issue: Ethnic cleansing and the use of
rape as a systematic part of war in
Group Presentation on International Women’s
Issue: The battered women’s shelter
movement and activism to confront domestic violence in the U. S.
4/18 Women’s Health and Reproductive
Justice
Dialogue Journal #12 Due on required readings:
Required
readings from Women: Images and Realities: "Health and Reproductive Justice” (310-15);
"Abortion: Is A Woman a
Person?" (348-51); “Talking with the Enemy” (351-56); “Parental Consent Laws: Are they a Reasonable Compromise?" (357-9);
“Abortion in the
Viewing: Vagina Monologues
Group Presentation on International Women's
Concerns: Margaret Sanger and the
contraception movement in the U. S
4/25 Final Reflection Essay Due What is Women's Studies? What is feminism? And what difference does it make?
Pot-luck
supper in Heth and oral presentations on final papers. Prepare a 3-5 minute overview of your final
reflection essay for oral delivery to the class.
Description |Requirements |Links