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How to find me outside of class:
Of course you can feel free to grab me after class with questions, comments, concerns, etc. My office is 101 Rice and my campus phone number is x8918. My official office hours are: MWF 2:00-3:00 and Tu 9:00-10:00 (and by appointment, if these hours don't work for you). I also have a "coffee hour" on Wednesday morning from 8:30-9:30 at the Foxgrape café (on College St.) for people who think it's too scary to come into the office, or for people who are sleepy and need some caffeine. By the way, if you're lucky I might just buy your coffee. You can also e-mail me: sarah.kelen@oberlin.edu.
Please feel free to come to see me even if you just have a little question, or if you are just thinking about something and want to run it by me, or you are having trouble with your paper, or whatever. Lots of people think that they can't come to office hours unless they are all done with their paper or know exactly what they want to say. That's ridiculous: my job is to help you figure these things out.
Your writing tutor:
This class will also have a peer-writing tutor attached to it. This is a valuable resource, please take advantage of it. Your tutor is here to help you with papers (though not to write them for you, or "fix" them for you) and other written work, or just to talk about difficulties you might be having with the class in general.
How this class will run:
Most of what we will be doing in this class is discussing books/essays we have read or movies we have seen. The movie viewing will take place at screenings scheduled outside of class. If you cannot make a screening, it is your responsibility to watch the movie on your own (they will be available in the A/V department of the library) before our class discussions. When we are discussing written work, I want you to bring the text to class so that you can refer to it as we go along and use specific textual evidence in your discussion. We can't do that with the movies, so before we watch the movies, I will ask each of you (or groups of you) to be responsible for remembering/noticing certain things. When we discuss these aspects of the movie, we will look to you for details or insights. It's probably a good idea to take notes on your assigned topic during or immediately after the movie.
Class discussion does not mean shouting at each other. It also does not mean ignoring each other's comments. I expect you to engage seriously and respectfully with each other's ideas and arguments. When someone offers an opinion, I expect you to take some kind of a stand: do you agree or disagree with this position? What evidence can you give to support your points? And if someone challenges your ideas, it is your job to explain how you arrived at your position and to defend or modify your claims in response to that challenge. I know people have different styles: some are more talkative than others. But remember that part of your grade in this class is for class participation.
The work for this class:
You will be asked to do a number of different kinds of assignments in this class as follows:
One kind of assignment will be the group position papers: You will each be assigned to one of three small groups (about 5 people). Your group will be asked to respond to a certain question relevant to the issues and books/movies we are discussing. Each individual person in the group will be responsible for writing a personal short answer to the question (about a page). These will be due on a Monday. That group will then meet together to look over and discuss each other's short assignments and write a 2-4 page group position paper on the issue. I am not necessarily looking for consensus within the group. If you have different perspectives on a topic (and I expect that you usually will), you should find a way to express everyone's opinions and to show how different people argued to produce their individual responses. On Friday of that week, the group will present the position paper to the rest of the class (giving copies to all of the students, and then leading discussion on the topic for the other students who have not yet had an opportunity to address these issues). I will give you a handout with samples to look at before the first assignment to clarify what kinds of things I am looking for.
You will also write three individual papers of about 3-5 pages long. I will hand out topics, but you will have a choice of which topic you choose to address. One of the goals of this class is to strengthen your rhetorical and writing skills. On each of the paper due dates, we will spend the whole class period discussing how the paper went: problems you ran into, things that worked particularly well, ideas that changed as you progressed. I will expect you to be able to summarize your arguments for your classmates and to engage each other in a discussion of why you ended up with different answers to the same questions. [This will be similar, in a way, to the process your groups go through in crafting the position papers.]
You will have a final exam of sorts; this exam will test how well you can use the tools you have learned in this class to analyze a piece of new material. At the exam I will bring in something you haven't seen before&endash;&endash;a story, a video, a magazine article&endash;&endash;and ask you a specific question about it, something similar to the kinds of analysis we have done all semester. So you won't have to "cram" for this final, you will mostly have to think about what tools of analysis AND argumentation you have learned along the way, and use them.
And you will have various short assignments along the way: things like response papers in which you compare something in a book or movie to a situation you have observed personally, or assignments where you have to look up information on a certain topic. And when we see movies in this class, I will assign a number of "things to watch for," or "things to think about," so that certain people will be responsible for remembering or paying attention to certain aspects of the movie and refreshing everyone else's memory during our discussions. These short assignments must be handed in, but they will be graded on a check minus, check, check plus scale (these correspond roughly to "not so good," "okey-dokey," and "hey, nice job!" &endash;&endash; it is also possible to get a ø, but only if you really mess up).
Here is the rough breakdown of what counts for how much:
- class participation and the short assignments together are 20%
- the 3 papers will each be worth about 20%
- the final will then be the remaining 20%
And note that you must turn in all of the written work to pass this class. If you have an A average on your papers and decide that you can blow off a couple of short assignments, you will regret it.
Rules of the Game:
You have to get your work done on time. I know you are all balancing heavy course loads, jobs, extracurricular activities, and regular life. But given the interactive and cooperative nature of this course, turning in your work late really screws things up for your classmates. If, for some really dire and calamitous reason, you must turn in one of the papers late, you may take a 24-hour grace period with no penalty. However, I will still expect you to participate in the discussion about the papers, since presumably you will have begun to write. After that 24-hours, papers are marked down a step for every successive 24-hour period that they are late. There is no grace period for individual response papers, group position papers, or the short assignments; these are marked down a step for every day late starting from the due date.
You also have to be in class. I will be taking attendance in this class, and more than 3 unexcused absences will affect your grade. More than 5 will be grounds for an NE in the course. Perfect attendance gets you my deep appreciation and a gold star, or perhaps a fabulous prize. What's an excused absence? Religious observance; family emergency; illness; school-sponsored activity. What's not? hangover ("cocktail flu" doesn't count as an illness); vacation; oversleeping; skipping this class to study for another one. If you have a valid reason for missing class, make sure you let me know so I can make note of it.
Wednesday Sept. 2
- Introduction: What is Identity?
- Are Gender Roles the same as Gender Identities?
Friday Sept. 4
- "Identity, Identification, and the Subject" (photocopy)
- Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, parts I & II
Monday Sept. 7
Labor Day
Wednesday Sept. 9
- Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, part III
- Friday Sept. 11 Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, parts IV & V
- short assignment #1 due in class
Monday Sept. 14
Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, part VI
Wednesday Sept. 16
- Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, part VII & afterword
- Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination"
Friday Sept. 18
- set of photocopied essays on "biological sex":
- Marjorie Garber, "Spare Parts"
- Anne Fausto-Sterling, "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough"
Monday Sept. 21
- Rosh Hashanah, no class
- individual responses from ROCK group due to me on Wed., but you might want to get them to each other sooner if you can.
Wednesday Sept. 23
essential identities & men's movement(s) -- photocopied readings
Friday Sept. 25
group position paper presentation: ROCK
<movie viewing some time this week: Ma Vie En Rose>
Monday Sept. 28
essential identities & feminism -- photocopied readings
Wed. Sept. 30
Yom Kippur, no class
Friday Oct. 2
- Transgendered people in the mass media:
- "The Third Sex" (from Esquire)
- "Trans Across America" (from Time)
- short research assignment due in class
Monday Oct. 5
- discussion about Ma Vie En Rose
- discussion of papers in class
Wednesday Oct. 7
discussion about Ma Vie En Rose
Friday Oct. 9
Paper #1 (Brandon Teena) due in class
Monday Oct. 12
- Dorothy Canfield, The Home-Maker, part 1 (and pp. i-ix)
- individual responses from PAPER group due to me
Wednesday Oct. 14
Dorothy Canfield, The Home-Maker, part 2
Friday Oct. 16
group position paper presentation: PAPER
Monday Oct. 19-Friday Oct. 23
Autumn Recess
<movie viewing sometime this week: Freaky Friday>
Monday Oct. 26
Dorothy Canfield, The Home-Maker, part 3
Wednesday Oct. 28
Dorothy Canfield, The Home-Maker, part 4
Friday Oct. 30
discussion about Freaky Friday
Monday Nov. 2
Twelfth Night, act I
individual responses from SCISSORS group due to me
Wednesday Nov. 4
Twelfth Night, act II
Friday Nov. 6
group position paper presentation: SCISSORS
<movie viewing sometime this week: The Crying Game>
Monday Nov. 9
Twelfth Night, acts III
Wednesday Nov. 11
- Twelfth Night, acts IV-V
- [note: a video of Twelfth Night is on reserve at the library]
Friday Nov. 13
- paper #2 (The Home-Maker) due in class
- discussion of papers
Monday Nov. 16
discussion of The Crying Game
Wednesday Nov. 18
discussion of The Crying Game
Friday Nov. 20
Orlando, ch. 1
Monday Nov. 23
Orlando, ch. 2
Wednesday Nov. 25
Orlando, ch. 3
Friday Nov. 27
Thanksgiving Break
<movie viewing some time this week: Orlando>
Monday Nov. 30
Orlando, ch. 4
Wednesday Dec. 2
Orlando, ch. 5-6
Friday Dec. 4
discussion about movie adaptation of Orlando
<movie viewing sometime this week: The Odd Couple>
Monday Dec. 7
The Odd Couple
Wednesday Dec. 9
The Odd Couple
Friday Dec. 11
paper #3 (Orlando) due in class
Monday Dec. 14
discussion about the movie version of The Odd Couple
Sunday, Dec. 20
- final "exam," 7:00 pm.
- [don't blame me: I have no control over this.]
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