THE MODERN WORLD IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Group and Personal Identity: Race, Gender, and Nationality

Anthropology 300W: Spring 2003

MWF 12:45 – 1:50, CH 449

Click here for a .pdf version of this syllabus

Dr. Michele Gamburd

Office phone: 503/ 725-3317

Office: 141N Cramer Hall

Office Hours: W 2 – 2:30, F 12 – 12:40

and by appointment

Email: gamburdm@pdx.edu

Writing Associate J.R. Estes

Office phone: 503/ 407-1660

Office: 3707 Urban Center

Office hours: 11-12 TR

Email: estes_j@hotmail.com

Writing Associate Melissa Mullins

Office phone: 503/ 725-3570

Office: 188 Cramer Hall

Office Hours: TBA

Email: ismenus@hotmail.com

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This upper-level introductory course offers an anthropological analysis of individual and group identity. Probing beneath the surface of 'common sense', we will explore relations of inclusion, exclusion, domination, and resistance inherent in the cultural politics of power and inequality. Assigned readings examine gender, race, ethnicity, and nationalism, while class discussion will focus on how these classifications come to be considered ‘natural’ or ‘given.’ Papers offer a chance to pursue areas of special interest while honing writing skills.

This class can be counted simultaneously both as a Writing Intensive Class and as University Studies upper division credit within the Popular Culture cluster.

REQUIRED READINGS:

Coursepack, available from Clean Copy, 1704 SW Broadway (503/ 221-1876)

Oyono, Ferdinand

1960 Houseboy. John Reed, Trans. London: Heinemann

Recommended: Strunk, William and E.B. White

2000 The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Recommended: Hacker, Diana

2000 A Pocket Style Manual, Third Edition. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin’s.

CLASS REQUIREMENTS:

Policy on plagiarism, grades, illness, emergencies, and extensions:

Students taking this course pass-no-pass are required to earn at least a 'C-' to pass the class. The midterm (20%), final (30%), short critical analysis (20%), and critique of press reporting (30%) will form the basis for evaluating student performance.

Late papers and exams will lose one letter grade for each day past due except in the event of severe illness or emergency. Requests for extensions on deadlines should be made in writing ahead of the due date. Students with a documented disability needing accommodations in this course should immediately inform the instructor.

Plagiarism (intellectual theft) is a very serious academic offense. Any assignment containing plagiarized material will receive a failing grade. You are responsible for reading and understanding the department handout on plagiarism, which is available on web at http://www.anthropology.pdx.edu/assets/plagiarism.pdf and is also included in the course packet. Please ask the instructor, a writing associate, or a tutor at the Writing Center if you have any questions.

Sample Papers, Discussion Questions, Assignment Sheets and Review Sheets:

Sample papers for both writing assignments are available with the writing associates and the Anthropology Department secretary. Discussion questions for readings are included in the course packet. Other handouts, including in-class exercises, instructions for assignments, and review sheets for the first and second term tests will be available on the web at: http://web.pdx.edu/~b5mg/300hands.htm and will be handed out in class. Paper copies of all class handouts will be available on the wooden shelves to the right of the main door as you enter the Anth. Dept., 141 Cramer Hall.

Short Critical Analysis (20%) due Monday, 21 April.

Students will write a 3-4 page paper analyzing an advertisement or comic strip using techniques and theories developed in class. Further instructions will be handed out in class on Friday 4 April.

First Term Test (20%) Friday, 9 May.

The hour-long first term test will cover the first five sections of the course, with an emphasis on material studied since the quiz. A review sheet will be handed out on Wednesday 30 April. Please bring a blue-book and a pen to the test.

Critique of Press Reporting (30%) rough draft due: Friday 23 May; final draft due: Friday 6 June.

Drawing on ideas raised throughout the term, you will be asked to find, read, and critically analyze an article on a topic of your choice, focusing on the different points of view or biases underlying the press coverage. You will explore such issues as the sources of information, the use of value-laden language, and the historical context of the stories. Controversial issues with opinionated proponents on different sides lend themselves to this sort of critical analysis. Topics can be either of long-term national and international importance, or of limited local interest; choose your articles for the presence of ‘spin’ rather than for the information they contain.

You are required to meet with the instructor or one of the writing assistants to discuss your article choice before writing your paper; time for this will be available after class, during office hours, and by appointment. Papers should be 6 pages long. On Friday 23 May each student will do a ‘peer review’ of a classmate’s essay while receiving a review of his/ her own essay. Students can then turn their essays in to the writing assistants as they stand or rewrite and turn in a draft on Wednesday 28 May. Drafts will be returned with extensive comments for rewriting. A final draft of the essay is due Friday 6 June. Further instructions will be handed out on Friday 9 May and Friday 23 May.

Second Term Test (30%) 12:30 – 2:20, CH 449, Monday 9 June.

The two-hour second term test will cover all six sections of the course, with an emphasis on material studied since the first term test. A review sheet will be handed out on Friday, 30 May. Please bring a blue-book and a pen to the test.

COURSE OUTLINE

Section 1 (Week 1) INTRODUCTION;

AMERICAN NATIONALITY

Lecture in the introductory section will focus on the construction of cultural concepts, examining the origin and perpetuation of habits, values, and norms. We will focus on the creation of cultural categories and the complex processes involved in maintaining 'taken-for-granted' boundaries between culturally salient groups.

Miner, Horace

1958 Body Ritual among the Nacirema. American Anthropologist 58: 503-507.

Linton, Ralph

1937 One Hundred Percent American. The American Mercury 40: 427-29.

Douglas, Mary

1966 Secular Defilement and The Abominations of Leviticus. In Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. pp. 29-40, 41-57. London: Ark Paperbacks.

Section 2 (Week 2) LEARNING GENDER

This section will explore how children learn gendered behaviors through leisure-time and school-time activities.

Sobieraj, Sarah

1998 Taking Control: Toy Commercials and the Social Construction of Patriarchy. In Masculinities and Violence, Lee H. Bowker, ed. Pp. 15-28. London: Sage Publications.

Martin, Karin A.

1998 Becoming a Gendered Body: Practices of Preschools. American Sociological Review 63: 494-511.

Gailey, Christine Ward

1993 Mediated Messages: Gender, Class and Cosmos in Home Video Games. Journal of Popular Culture 27 (1): 81-97.

Williams, Brett

1991 Good Guys and Bad Toys. In The Politics of Culture, Brett Williams, ed. pp. 109-131. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Section 3 (Week 3) GENDER, VIOLENCE, AND POPULAR CULTURE

The gender roles ‘naturalized’ in popular culture affect adult men and women. Readings in this section explore how images of ‘male’ and ‘female’ operate in American popular culture, examining in particular the links between gender and violence.

Kramer, Cheris

1975 Stereotypes of Women's Speech: The Word from Cartoons. Journal of Popular Culture 8(3): 624-38.

Katz, Jackson

1995 Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity. In Gender, Race and Class in Media. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez, eds. Pp. 133-141. London: Sage Publications.

Cohn, Carol

1987 Sex and death and the rational world of defense intellectuals. Signs 12(4): 687-718.

Section 4 (Weeks 4-5) THE BIOLOGY OF RACE

This section examines different scientific ways of describing human variability, showing race to be a weak concept for explaining human diversity.

Lieberman, Leonard

1997 ‘Race’ 1997 and 2001: A Race Odyssey. American Anthropological Association: General Anthropology Division Modules in Teaching Anthropology (3).

Cartmill, Matt

1998 The Status of the Race Concept in Physical Anthropology. American Anthropologist 100 (3): 651-660.

Rushton, Philippe J.

1999 Intelligence and Brain Size and Genes, Environment, or Both In Race, Evolution, and Behavior. Pp. 47-58, 59-72. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Gould, Steven J.

1995 Curveball. In The Bell Curve Wars, Steven Fraser, ed. Pp. 11-22. New York: Basic Books.

Census forms

Section 5 (Weeks 5-6) RACE AS A CULTURAL CONSTRUCT

The section explores race as a social category, looking at how cultural constructions of difference have been ‘naturalized’ as biological.

McIntosh, Peggy

1990 White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Independent School 49(2): 31-36.

Cullen, Jim

1992 ‘I’s a Man Now’: Gender and African American Men. In Divided Houses: Gender and Civil War, Clinton and Silber, eds. pp. 76-91. New York: Oxford University Press.

Blanton, Carlos

2000 “They Cannot Master Abstractions, but They Can Often Be Made Efficient Workers”: Race and Class in the Intelligence Testing of Mexican Americans and African Americans in Texas during the 1920s. Social Science Quarterly 81(4):1014-1026

Section 6 (Weeks 7-10) NATIONALISM AND COLONIALISM

In an ever-more-integrated global community, citizens must understand the nature and origin of the concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘nationality.’ Anderson takes an historian's perspective on the creation and perpetuation of nationalism. Looking at the objective modernity and subjective antiquity of the self-presentation of nation-states, Anderson examines the over-arching national identity and the technologies that produce and perpetuate it, including the censuses, maps, and museums that codify, formalize, quantify, objectivize, and make the

nation ‘historical.’ Said explores the politics of representation underlying colonial domination in Asia, examining how Western identities take shape in contrast to an ‘Oriental’ ‘other’.

Borrowing tools from Anderson and Said, the class will read six ethnographic works that examine the linked topics of national identity and sexuality within and between nations. Looking at the ways love, fear, hatred, dissension and solidarity arise and are maintained, we will explore dynamics of power and authority, resistance and subordination.

Oyono, Ferdinand

1960 Houseboy. John Reed, Trans. London: Heinemann

Anderson, Benedict

1991 Introduction and Census, Map, Museum In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. pp. 1-7, 163-185. London: Verso.

Malkki, Liisa

1992 National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees. Cultural Anthropology 7(1):24-44.

Hayden, Bridget

1997 You’re not from here, are you? Manuscript.

Said, Edward

1978 Latent and Manifest Orientalism. In Orientalism. pp. 201-225. New York: Vintage.

Garber, Marjorie

1992 The Occidental Tourist: M. Butterfly and the Scandal of Transvestism. In Nationalisms and Sexualities, Parker, Andrew, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger, eds. pp. 121-146. New York: Routledge

Gould, Steven Jay

1984 Singapore’s Patrimony (and Matrimony): The Illogic of Eugenics Knows Neither the Boundaries of Time nor Geography. Natural History 93(5): 22-29.

Heng and Devan

1992 State Fatherhood: The Politics of Nationalism, Sexuality and Race in Singapore. In Nationalisms and Sexualities, Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger, eds. pp. 343-364. New York: Routledge.

CLASS SCHEDULE:

Week	Day	Date	Month	Readings, assignments, tests, handouts, films:
1	M	31	March	Handout: Syllabus
	W	2	April	Read: Miner, Linton.
	F	4		Read: Sobieraj Film: Slim Hopes Handout: Short Critical Analysis Assignment
2	M	7		Read: Douglas
	W	9		Read: Martin
	F	11		Read: Gailey, Williams
3	M	14		Read: Kramer, Katz
	W	16		Film: Dreamworlds II
	F	18		Read: Cohn
4	M	21		Due: Short Critical Analysis
	W	23		Read: Lieberman
	F	25		Gulf War Syndrome exercise
5	M	28		Read: Cartmill, Census Forms
	W	30		Read: Rushton, Gould. Handout: Review Sheet for First Term Test.
	F	2	May	Read: McIntosh, Cullen
6	M	5		Read: Blanton.
	W	7		Review for First Term Test
	F	9		First Term Test Handout: Critique of Press Reporting Assignment
7	M	12		Charlie’s Angels exercise
	W	14		Read: Anderson
	F	16
8	M	19		Read: Hayden, Malkki
	W	21		Read: Said
	F	23		Critique of Press Reporting: peer review exercise
9	M	26		Memorial Day Holiday: PSU closed.
	W	28		Due: Critique of Press Reporting rough draft Read: Garber
	F	30		Read: Gould, Heng and Devan Handout: Review for Second Term Test
10	M	2	June	Read: Oyono
	W	4
	F	6		Film: Disney. Due: Critique of Press Reporting final draft
11	M	9		Second Term Test 12:30 – 2:20 in CH 449.