Education 353
MWF 11-11:50

Professor:
Dr. Laura Briggs
Communication 114F
Office hours: 1-2 pm, M/F and by appointment
lbriggs@u.arizona.edu
626-9149

TA: Meredith Trauner
Communication 114H
Office hours by appointment
trauner@u.arizona.edu
 

overview

Are women's brains different from men's? Is there a gay gene? Are we really ruled by our hormones? Does testosterone make men more aggressive? Are there racial differences in intelligence? How much is temperament inherited? Can women get AIDS from "normal" sex? What about lesbians?

This Tier II course (which fulfills the gender, race, ethnicity requirement) looks at how meanings of gender and race are influenced by popular conceptions of biology and medicine. It explores controversial topics such as gender difference in brain anatomy, genetic models of gayness and of intelligence, reproductive technology, hormones, and AIDS.

Ideas about "scientifically" established differences between women and men, people of color and whites, gays and straights are prevalent in popular culture. Using materials ranging from web sites to blockbuster movies to magazines, we will explore how the ways popular culture answers these questions affects what we think we know about gender and race. For example, it surely matters to struggles for racial equality that for the past three centuries, most Europeans and Anglo-Americans have believed that African Americans as a group are less intelligent than whites. Similarly, questions about women's fitness for certain jobs have often hinged on the belief that PMS makes women unreasonable and unable to make responsible decisions. We will explore the (thin) scientific justification for these beliefs, and the ways they are carried into popular culture.

day-to-day business of the course

The course will be conducted in a conversational style, as much as possible in a large course. Attendance is mandatory, and students are expected to come to class with the reading completed, prepared to write and talk about the course reading. There will be seven unannounced quizzes, designed to assess that students have completed the reading and drawn some preliminary conclusions about it. Quizzes cannot be made up, but the two lowest grades will be dropped to accommodate unavoidable absences.

The point of this course is not to learn a set of "right answers," but to help you develop skills to think critically about information you read and hear that is presented as "true" and scientific. You are invited to have opinions, to think, to agree or disagree with the reading, the instructor, and your classmates, though we will hold each other to the highest standards of mutual respect and politeness.

Your written and oral work will be assessed based on its persuasiveness, clarity (including grammar), and development of ideas. The deadlines for writing assignments are on the syllabus and you are responsible for knowing them. The only acceptable reasons for late work are illness with a doctor's note or extraordinary events that are similarly documented. Unexcused late work will be docked one-third of a letter grade for each day late (e.g., B+ becomes a B). The only assignment not on the syllabus is the second 2-3 p.p. paper and oral report; you will have the opportunity in the second week of class to choose a due date for these assignments and you will be expected to keep track of that date.

While the final responsibility for the course and grading is the professor's, the course will be taught by a team, including the professor,  a graduate teaching assistant, and a visiting scholar in evolutionary biology. All three of us will be available to answer questions and help you with your written work in class, during office hours or by appointment, and via e-mail. Students are encouraged to take advantage of these resources.

Required texts
There are two texts for this course. Anne Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender (1992)--designated "AFS" on the syllabus--and the course reader, available via the course web page (http://www.u.arizona.edu/ic/polis/fall00/Course-Homesite.cgi?W_S_210).

Grades
10 points--class participation
5 points--2-3 pp. assessment of web site
5 points--2-3 pp. assessment of a pop culture example of science
5 points--oral presentation based on 2nd 2 pp. paper
25 points--5 unannounced quizzes (7 given, lowest 2 grades dropped)
25 points-- Two 5 pp. papers, one re-write permitted
25 points--in-class final exam
_______
100 points
 

August 21--course overview

What stories does popular science tell about sex and gender?
Aug. 23--"Testosterone: Are You Man Enough?" Time April 24, 2000; "The Science of Women and Sex," Newsweek May 29, 2000
Aug. 25--in class: Ma Vie en Rose

Gender and Science: From Numbers to Knowledge to Cyborgs
Aug. 28--AFS, ch. 1; Evelyn Fox Keller, "Introduction" Reflections on Gender and Science (Yale, 1985), 3-13.
Aug. 30--Helen Longino and Evelynn Hammonds, "Conflicts and Tensions the Feminist Studies of Science," in
    Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller, Conflicts in Feminism (Routledge, 1990)
Sept. 1--in-class presentations

Anatomy and Physiology of Race and Gender--History

Sept. 4--(no class, Labor Day)
Sept. 6-- meet in Electrical and Chemical Engineering 206 ( SW corner Mountain and Speedway) for WWW workshop
Sept. 8--Londa Schiebinger, "Why Mammals Are Called Mammals," Nature's Body (1993), 40-74.
***2 pp. analysis of web site due***

Sept. 11--Stephen Jay Gould, "American Polygeny and Craniometry before Darwin: Blacks and Indians as
    Separate, Inferior Species," The Mismeasure of Man (Norton, 1996, 2nd ed.), 62-104.
Sept. 13--"Gay Women's Inner Ear Works Like Men's, Researchers Find," Toronto Star (March 6, 1998):F2; "Study Suggests Biological Basis for Lesbianism," Washington Post (March 3, 1998): A9; "Finger Length Points to Sexual Orientation," San Francisco Chronicle (March 30, 2000): A2; Anne Fausto-Sterling, "Of Gender and Genitals: The Use and Abuse of the Modern Intersexual" Sexing the Body (Basic, 2000).
Sept. 15--in-class presentations

Mothers and Reproduction

Sept. 18--Ann Balsamo, "Public Pregnancies and Cultural Narratives of Surveillance," in Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women (Duke, 1996)
Sept. 20--Ana Teresa Ortiz, "'Bare-Handed Medicine and Its Elusive Patients: The Unstable Construction of
    Pregnant Women and Fetuses in Dominican Obstetrics Discourse," Feminist Studies 23:2 (Summer 1997):
    263-88.
Sept. 22--in class presentations
******5 pp. paper due*******

Molecules Make the (Wo)man: Genes for Gender, Race, and Sexual Orientation

Genes and Gender
Sept.  25-AFS, ch. 2 "A Question Genius: Are Men Really Smarter Than Women?"
Sept. 27--AFS, ch. 3 "Of Genes and Gender"
Sept. 29--in-class presentations

Human Genome Project: Telling Stories of Race and Reproduction
Oct 2-- Evelyn Fox Keller, "Master Molecules," in Are Genes Us? The Social Consequences of the New
    Genetics (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1994), pp. 89-98; Dorothy Nelkin and M. Susan Lindee, "Sacred DNA"
    in The DNA Mystique: The Gene as Cultural Icon(W.H. Freeman, 1995), pp. 38-57.
short film in class: Ellen DeGeneres and Sharon Stone, "If These Walls Could Talk"
Oct. 4-- Diane Paul, "The Nine Lives of Discredited Data," The Politics of Heredity (SUNY, 1998), 37-52.
    >Brent Staples, "The Scientific War on the Poor," (editorial) New York Times (October 28, 1994); Charles
    Murray and Richard Herrnstein, New Republic (October 31, 1994); J. Phillipe Rushton, "Genetics and Race,"
    Science 271:5249 (2 Feb. 1996): 579-80.
Oct. 6--in-class presentations

Gay Genes
Oct. 9--AFS, ch. 8; 223-59
Oct. 11--Dean Hamer, "Sex" in Living with Our Genes: Why They Matter More than You Think (Doubleday,
    1998), pp. 158-200.
Oct. 13--in-class presentations

Designer Babies, Clones, and Monsters
Oct.16--film, Gattaca (1997)
Oct. 18-- Stephan Jay Gould, "Dolly's Fashion and Louis's Passion," 41-53; Andrea Dworkin, "Sasha," 73-75.
    in Martha Nussbaum and Cass Sunstein, Clones and Clones (Norton, 1998), Thomas Kellner and Ben
    Pappas,  "Rex Redux," Forbes 162:11 (November 16, 1998): 45.

Inventing Sex Hormones
Oct. 20--AFS, ch. 4 "Hormonal Hurricanes: Menstruation, Menopause, and Female Behavior"
Oct. 23---Nelly Oudshoorn, "The Measuring of Sex Hormones," Beyond the Natural Body: An Archeology of
    Sex Hormones (Routledge, 1994)

Inventing Race and Sex?
Oct. 25--AFS, ch. 5, "Hormones and Aggression"
Oct. 27--L. H. Studler, J.R. Reddon, K.G. Siminoski, "Serum Testosterone in Adult Sex Offenders: A Comparison
    Between Caucasians and North American Indians," Journal of Clinical Psychology 53:4 (June 1997): 375-85;
    A. Mazur, "Biosocial Models of Deviant Behavior Among Male Army Veterans," Biological Psychology 41:3
    (16 November 1995): 271-93.
******5 pp. paper due*******

Animal Models

Oct. 30--Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, "Empathy, Polyandry, and the Myth of the Coy Female," in Ruth Bleier, ed. Feminist Approaches to Science (Pergamon Press, 1986).
Nov. 1--Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, "The Evolution of Female Orgasms: logic please but no atavism," Animal Behavior 52 (1996):851-52; Randy Thornhill and Steven Gangestad, "Human Female Copulatory Orgasm: A Human Adaptation of phylogenetic holdover?" Animal Behavior 52 (1996): 853-55
Nov. 3--in-class presentations

Nov. 6--AFS, ch. 6 "Putting Woman in Her (Evolutionary) Place"
Thornhill and Palmer, "Why do Men Rape?" A Natural History of Rape and Jerry Coyne and Andrew Berry, "Rape as Adaptation," Nature 404 (March 2000): 121-122; Craig Stanford, "Darwinians Look at Rape, Sex, and War," American Scientist 88 (July-August 2000): 360-62; Natalie Angier, "Biological Bull," Ms. (June/July 2000):80-82.
Nov. 8-- Paula Triechler, "Beyond Cosmo: AIDS, Identity, and Inscriptions of Gender," Camera Obscura 28 (January 1992): 21-78.
Nov. 10--in-class presentations

Disease

Women, Teens, Race, and AIDS
Nov. 13--no class
Nov. 15--Paula Triechler, "Beyond Cosmo: AIDS, Identity, and Inscriptions of Gender" Camera Obscura 28 (January 1992): 21-78.
Nov. 17--Cindy Patton, "Between Innocence and Safety," Fatal Advice: How Safe Sex Education Went Wrong (Duke, 1996): 35-62.

Africa and AIDS
Nov. 20--Rosalind Harrison-Chirumuuta and Richard Chirumuuta, "AIDS from Africa: A Case of Racism vs.
    Science?" AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean (Westview, 1997), pp. 165-80.
 >>J. Phillipe Rushton, "Population Differences in Susceptibility to AIDS: An Evolutionary Analysis," Social
    Science and Medicine 28:12 (1989): 1211-20.
Nov. 22--Randall Packard and Paul Epstein, "Medical Research on AIDS in Africa: A Historical Perspective,"
    Elizabeth Fee and Daniel Fox, AIDS: The Making of a Chronic Disease (University of California, 1992), pp.
    346-376.
***********deadline for re-writes************
Nov. 24--no class

Nov. 27-- Richard Preston, "Crisis in the Hot Zone," New Yorker 68:36 (October 26, 1992): 58-80.
Nov. 29-- Sandra Harding, "Is Science Multicultural: Challenges, Resources, Opportunities, Uncertainties,"
    Configurations 2:2 (Spring 1994): 301-330.
Dec. 1--in-class presentations

Feminist Anti-Racist Science?
Dec. 4--AFS, ch. 7 "Conclusion"
Dec. 6--review

Mon, Dec. 11, 11:00--final exam