COURSE DESCRIPTION

This upper-level course will analyze the socio-cultural construction of gender identity. Beginning with a historical look at the relationship between feminism and anthropology, the class then explores a series of subjects, including the domestic/ public dichotomy, kinship, religion, colonialism, globalization, reproduction, and sexuality as they relate to women and men in society. Readings, lectures, presentations, films, and class discussion will provide both formal and informal avenues for exploring issues that arise in the cross-cultural study of gender.

COURSE PREREQUISITES

Previous junior/senior-level course work in socio-cultural anthropology and / or women’s studies is strongly recommended.

READINGS

Required:

Brettell and Sargent, eds.

2005 Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective, fourth edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Brown, Karen McCarthy

2001 Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, (updated and expanded edition). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lynch, Caitrin

2007 Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka’s Global Garment Industry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Materials on Blackboard (explained below).

Recommended:

Hacker, Diana

2003 A Pocket Style Manual, Fourth Edition. Boston: St. Martin’s Press.

Strunk, William and E.B. White

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

CLASS REQUIREMENTS

Students taking this course pass-no-pass are required to earn at least a 'C-' to pass the class. For undergraduates, completion of two 4-page essays (20% each), two 5-page rewritten essays (25% each) and class participation and discussion leadership (10%) will form the basis for evaluating performance. Graduate students will complete all assignments required of undergraduates (70%) and will write a 15-20 page term paper on a topic of their choice (30%).

Two 4-page essays (20% each)

Essay topics will be assigned for readings in sections 2-4, 6-7, and 9-10 of the class. Students may choose which two sections to write their essays about, provided that they write at least one essay in April. Essays are due roughly a week after we finish covering the section material. The due-dates are as follows:

Section 2: Tues, 15 April

Section 3: Thurs, 24 April

Section 4: Tues, 29 April

Section 6: Thurs, 15 May

Section 7: Thurs, 22 May

Section 9: Thurs, 5 June

Section 10: Thurs, 12 June (turn in to Anth Dept, 141 CH, by noon).

Please submit 2 hardcopies of April essays, one for the professor and one for the WA. The WA will give feedback on the style and form of each essay; the instructor will give feedback on its content. Students are advised to incorporate the suggestions in their subsequent written work.

Two 5-page rewritten essays (25% each)

Rough drafts due Tues, 6 May and Tues 27 May

Final drafts due Tues 20 May and Tues 10 June

Students will write and rewrite two five-page essays, one on each of the books assigned in class (to be read during Sections 5 and 8). Students will turn in a hardcopy rough draft of their paper to the WA, who will return papers with comments on style and content. Students will turn in a hardcopy of the re-written paper (with rough draft attached) to the instructor, who will read, comment on, and grade the essay. Please note that the completion of a rewritten essay forms an essential part of a Writing Intensive Course; failure to turn in rough drafts and obtain comments from the WA will result in the loss of 10 points from the final grade on the paper in question.

Blackboard

Class readings, the course syllabus, the plagiarism document, assignment sheets, review sheets, and discussion questions will be available on Blackboard. You may read the materials online or print copies for use during class discussions.

All students can access Blackboard with an Odin account. If you do not have an Odin account, you can sign up to get one at https://www.account.pdx.edu. Use your Odin username and password to login to Blackboard at http://psuonline.pdx.edu/. Use of Blackboard will be demonstrated on the first day of class. Please contact the instructor if you encounter difficulties in accessing this resource.

Discussion leadership and class participation (10%)

Students will be assigned responsibility for facilitating discussion on particular articles throughout the course. Articles will be designated ahead of time.

Class participation forms an important aspect of the learning experience in this upper-level class, and is therefore both expected and required. Participation points will be assessed through short in-class free-writes and/or pre-writes on specific articles. These informal, hand-written thought-pieces will be evaluated on a check/ check-plus/ check-minus basis. Students who do the reading and pay attention in class will easily achieve a passing grade on these assessments.

Students with more than 3 unexcused absences will receive no points for class participation. Legitimate reasons to miss class are few and dire, and should if at all possible be reported to the instructor before the start of the class period.

Term paper (graduate students only) due Thurs, 12 June (turn into Anth Dept, CH 141, by noon).

Each graduate student will write a 15-20 page research paper on a topic of his or her choice. Further instructions will be posted on Blackboard and discussed separately.

Policies

Please retain for your own records a copy of all the work you submit. All written work must be completed to receive a passing grade in this class. 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.

Plagiarism (intellectual theft) is a very serious academic offense. You are responsible for reading the department handout on plagiarism, which will be posted on Blackboard. Please ask the instructor, the writing associate, or the Writing Center if you have any questions about plagiarism.

Students with a documented disability needing accommodations in this course should immediately inform the instructor.

COURSE OUTLINE:

SECTION 1: Introduction

Blackboard

Lorber, Judith

1994 “Night to his Day:” The Social Construction of Gender. In Paradoxes of Gender. Pp. 13-36. New Haven: Yale University Press.

SECTION 2: Domestic Worlds and Public Worlds

GCCP

¨ Introductory essay for section III (81)

¨ Lamphere, Louise “The Domestic Sphere of Women and the Public Sphere of Men: The Strengths and Limitations of an Anthropological Dichotomy” (86)

¨ Watson, Rubie: “The Named and the Nameless: Gender and Person in Chinese Society” (207)

¨ Weismantel, Mary: “Cities of Women” (120)

Blackboard

Ortner, Sherry

1996 [1974] Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture? In Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. Pp. 21-42. Boston: Beacon Press.

1996 So, Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture? In Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. Pp. 173-180. Boston: Beacon Press.

SECTION 3: Family, Household, and Kinship

GCCP

¨ Introductory essay for section VIII (349)

¨ Menon, Shanti “Male Authority and Female Autonomy: A Study of the Matrilineal Nayars of Kerala, South India” (354)

¨ Stack, Carol “Domestic Networks: ‘Those You Count On’” (363)

¨ Prior, Marsha “Matrifocality, Power, and Gender Relations in Jamaica” (372)

¨ di Leonardo, Micaela “The Female World of Cards and Holidays: Women, Families, and the Work of Kinship” (380)

¨ Townsend, Nicholas: “Fatherhood and the Mediating Role of Women” (105)

Blackboard

Borovoy, Amy

2005 Conclusion: Home as a Feminist Dilemma. In The Too-Good Wife: Alcohol, Codependency, and the Politics of Nurturance in Postwar Japan. Pp. 181-176. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

SECTION 4: Ritual and Religion

GCCP

¨ Introductory essay for section IX (391)

¨ Boddy, Janice “Spirit Possession and Gender Complementarity: Zar in Rural Northern Sudan” (397)

¨ McIntosh, Janet “’Tradition’ and Threat: Women’s Obscenity in Giriama Funerary Rituals” (408)

¨ Kendall, Laurel: “Shamans, Bodies, and Sex: Misreading a Korean Ritual” (430)

SECTION 5

Book: Karen McCarthy Brown: Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn.

SECTION 6: Colonialism

GCCP

¨ Introductory essay for section XI (495)

Blackboard

Chatterjee, Partha

1989 Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized Women: The Contest in India. American Ethnologist 16(4):622-633.

Comaroff, Jean

1997 The Empire’s Old Clothes. In Situated Lives: Gender and Culture in Everyday Life. Pp. 400-419. New York: Routledge.

Stoler, Ann

1989 Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in 20th Century Colonial Culture. American Ethnologist 16(4):634-660.

Carby, Hazel

1985 ‘On the Threshold of Women’s Era’: Lynching, Empire and Sexuality in Black Feminist Theory. Critical Inquiry 12:262-77.

SECTION 7: Globalization

GCCP

¨ Cairoli, M. Laetitia “Factory as Home and Family: Female Workers in the Moroccan Garment Industry” (522)

¨ Mills, Mary Beth: “Consuming Desires, Contested Selves: Rural Women and Labor Migration in Thailand” (536)

Blackboard

Freeman, Carla

2001 Is local: global as feminine: masculine? Rethinking the gender of globalization. Signs 26 (4): 1007-37.

Magazine, Roger and Martha Areli Ramirez Sanchez

2007 Continuity and Change in San Pedro Tlalcuapan, Mexico: Childhood, Social Reproduction, and Transnational Migration. In Generations and Globalization: Youth, Age, and Family in the New World Economy. Jennifer Cole and Deborah Durham, eds. Pp. 52-73. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

SECTION 8

Book: Lynch: Juki Girls, Good Girls

SECTION 9: The Politics of Reproduction

GCCP

¨ Introductory essay for section X (443)

¨ Davis-Floyd, Robbie “Gender and Ritual: Giving Birth the American Way” (449)

¨ Browner, Carole H. “The Politics of Reproduction in a Mexican Village” (461)

¨ Ragone, Helena “Surrogate Motherhood: Rethinking Biological Models, Kinship, and the Family” (471)

¨ Scheper-Hughes, Nancy “Lifeboat Ethics: Mother Love and Child Death in Northeast Brazil” (31)

Blackboard

Miller, Barbara

2001 Female-Selective Abortion in Asia: Patterns, Policies, and Debates. American Anthropologist 103(4): 1083-1095.

SECTION 10: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality

Read two of the following three: Herdt, Blackwood, Kulick

Read two of the following three: Urla & Swedlund, Zimmer-Tamakoshi, Hunt et al.

GCCP

¨ Introductory essays for sections V (185) and VI (241)

¨ Herdt, Gilbert “Ritual of Manhood: Male Initiation in Papua New Guinea” (203)

¨ Blackwood, Evelyn “Women’s Intimate Friendships and Other Affairs: An Ethnographic Overview” (268)

¨ Urla, Jacqueline and Alan Swedlund: “Measuring Up to Barbie: Ideals of the Feminine Body in Popular Culture” (285)

¨ Zimmer-Tamakoshi, Laura: “’Wild Pigs and Dog Men’: Rape and Domestic Violence as ‘Women’s Issues’ in Papua New Guinea” (550)

Blackboard

Kulick, Don

1997 The Gender of Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes. American Anthropologist 99(3): 574-585.

Hunt, Geoffrey P., Kathleen MacKenzie and Karen Joe-Laidler

2005 Alcohol and Masculinity: The Case of Ethnic Youth Gangs. In Drinking Cultures: Alcohol and Identity. Thomas M. Wilson, ed. Pp. 225-254. Oxford: Berg.

CLASS SCHEDULE:

Note: Articles by authors whose names appear in boldface appear in the text book Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective.

Week	Day	Date	Month	Readings to be discussed, assignments due, films:
1	T	1	April	Syllabus, introduction to Blackboard
	R	3		Read: Lorber, Intro III, Ortner, Ortner
2	T	8		Read: Lamphere, Weismantel, Watson
	R	10		Film: Small Happiness
3	T	15		Read: Intro VIII, Borovoy, Menon, di Leonardo Due: Section 2 Essay Option
	R	17		Read: Stack, Prior, Townsend
4	T	22		Read: Intro IX, Brody, MacIntosh, Kendall
	R	24		Read: Mama Lola I (through end of chapter 6) Due: Section 3 Essay Option
5	T	29		Read: Mama Lola II (finish the book) Due: Section 4 Essay Option
	R	1	May	Read: Intro XI, Chatterjee, Comaroff
6	T	6		Due: Mama Lola rough draft
	R	8		Read: Stoler, Carby, Freeman
7	T	13		Read: Cairoli, Mills, Magazine & Sanchez
	R	15		Read: Lynch I Due: Section 6 Essay Option
8	T	20		Due: Mama Lola final draft Read: Lynch II
	R	22		Read: Intro X, Davis-Floyd, Browner Due: Section 7 Essay Option
9	T	27		Due: Juki Girls rough draft
	R	29		Read: Ragone, Scheper-Hughes, Miller
10	T	3	June	Read: Intro V, VI Read: 2 of 3: Herdt, Kulick, Blackwood
	R	5		Read: 2 of 3: Urla, Zimmer-Tamakoshi, Hunt Due: Section 9 Essay Option
11	T	10		Due: Juki Girls final draft by noon, Anth Dept Office, 141 Cramer Hall
	R	12		Due: Section 10 Essay Option by noon, Anth Dept Office, 141 Cramer Hall