Gender - Stable and Unstable:
Case Studies in the Changing Meaning of Gender

Course Syllabus

Professor Ann Snitow

SESSION I – INTRODUCTION: HOW FIXED IS GENDER?
-- Anonymous, a Gypsy Folk-Tale, “The Red King and the Witch” (PDF)
-- Angela Carter, “The Tiger’s Bride” (short story), The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Penguin, 1979 (PDF)
-- Ann Snitow, “A Gender Diary,” Conflicts in Feminism, Ed. Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller, New York: Routledge, 1990 (PDF)
-- Emily Martin, “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles,” Feminist Approaches to Theory and Methodology: An Interdisciplinary Reader, Sharlene Hesse-Biber, Christina Gilmartin, and Robin Lydenberg, eds., Oxford UP, 1999 (PDF)

SESSION II – THE METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF “STABLE & UNSTABLE:” DEFINITIONS OF GENDER
-- Carole Vance, “Social Construction Theory: Problems in the History of Sexuality,” Social Perspectives in Lesbian and Gay Studies: A Reader, Peter M. Nardi and Beth E. Schneider, eds., Routledge UP, 1989 (PDF)
-- Judith Butler, “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire,” from Feminism and Politics, Ed. Anne Phillips, Oxford UP, 1998 (PDF)
-- Myra Jehlen, “Against Human Wholeness: A Suggestion for a Feminist Epistemology,” Manuscript – Do Not Cite (PDF)
-- Martha Minnow, “The Dilemma of Difference,” Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion, and American Law, Cornell UP, 1990 (PDF)
-- Uma Narayan, “Undoing the ‘Package Picture’ of Cultures,” Dossier 26, October 2004 (PDF)

SESSION III –THE BIOLOGY OF GENDER
-- Iris Marion Young, “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality,” Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory, Indiana UP, 1990 (PDF)
-- Brief excerpt from, “Get Happy: Myths of the Modern Mind,” by Jennifer Michael Hecht, from The Happiness Myth, 2007 (PDF)
-- Alix Kates Shulman, “Organs and Orgasms,” Women in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness, Ed. Vivian Gornick and Barbara Moran, Signet/New American Library, 1971 (PDF)
-- Anne Fausto-Sterling, “Of Genes & Gender,” Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men, HarperCollins, 1985 (PDF)
-- Natalie Angier, “Spiking the Punch: In Defense of Female Aggression,” Woman: An Intimate Geography, Houghton Mifflin, 1999 (PDF)
-- Marian Lowe, “Social Bodies: The Interaction of Culture and Women’s Biology,” Biological Woman – The Convenient Myth: A Collection of Feminist Essays and a Comprehensive Bibliography, Ruth Hubbard, Mary Sue Henifin, and Barbara Fried, eds., Schenkman Publishing Co., 1982 (PDF)

SESSION IV – HOW STABLE IS GENDER IDENTITY?
-- Mira Marody & Anna Giza-Poleszczuk, “Changing Images of Identity in Poland: From the Self-Sacrificing to the Self-Investing Woman?” Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday Life, Ed. Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, Princeton UP, 2000 (PDF)
-- Maciej Giertych, Excerpts from “Gender Equality and Life Issues in the European Union,” 2008, in Polish and English (PDF)
-- Marjorie Garber, “Introduction: Clothes Make the Man,” Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing & Cultural Anxiety, Routledge, 1992 (PDF)
-- Martha Southgate, “My Girlish Boy,” What Makes a Man: 22 Writers Imagine the Future, Ed. Rebecca Walker, 2004 (PDF)
-- Bryant Keith Alexander, “‘Good Man-Bad Man’ ”Performative Agency and Choice,” Performing Black Masculinity: Race, Culture, and Queer Identity, 2006 (PDF)

SESSION V – DOES SEX HAVE A HISTORY?
-- Denise Riley, “Does Sex Have a History?” Am I That Name? Feminism and the Category of “Women” in History, University of Minnesota, 1988 (PDF)
-- Thomas Laqueur, “Orgasm, Generation, & the Politics of Reproductive Biology,” The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century, Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Laqueur, eds., Univ. of California Press, 1987 (PDF)
-- Sandra Lee Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” from Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, eds. Conboy, Medina, Stanbury, Columbia University Press (PDF)
-- Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s,” Feminism/Postmodernism, Ed. Linda J. Nicholson, Routledge, 1990 (PDF)

SESSION VI – DOES GENDER MATTER?
DEMOCRATIC REPRESENTATION AND PUBLIC & PRIVATE
-- Anne Phillips, “Democracy and Representation: Or, Why Should It Matter Who Our Representatives Are?” from Feminism and Politics, Ed. Anne Phillips, Oxford UP, 1998 (PDF)
-- Mala Htun, “Democracy and Political Inclusion: The Andes in Comparative Perspective” (English version), Published in Spanish in Nadando contra la corriente: Mujeres y cuotas politicas en los paises andinos, Ed. Magdalena Leon, UNIFEM, 2005 (PDF)
-- Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, “Dilemmas of Public and Private,” The Politics of Gender After Socialism: A Comparative-Historical Essay, Princeton UP, 2000 (PDF)

SESSION VII – THE GENDER OF GLOBALIZATION
-- Saskia Sassen, “Counter Geographies of Globalization,” Feminist Post-Development Thought: Rethinking Modernity, Postcolonialism, and Representation, 2002 (PDF)
-- Saskia Sassen, “Global Cities and Survival Circuits,” Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, eds., Henry Holt and Co., 2002 (PDF)
-- Carla Freeman, “Is Local:Global as Feminine:Masculine? Rethinking the Gender of Globalization,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2001, vol. 26, no. 4, Univ. of Chicago (PDF)
-- Gillian Youngs, “Breaking Patriarchal Bonds: Demythologizing the Public/Private,” Gender and Global Restructuring: Sightings, Sites, and Resistances, Marianne Marchand and Anne Sisson Runyan, eds., Routledge, 2000 (PDF)
-- Jacqui True, “Gendering Post-Socialist Transitions,” Gender and Global Restructuring: Sightings, Sites, and Resistances, Marianne Marchand and Anne Sisson Runyan, eds., Routledge, 2000 (PDF)

SESSION VIII – CHANGING THE WORLD: MODES OF ACTIVISM I
-- A letter from Dr. Beach, Jan. 7, 1969 (PDF)
-- Gail Pheterson, “Open Space: Group Identity and Social Relations,” The European Journal of Women’s Studies, SAGE, Vol. 1, 1994: 257-264 (PDF)
-- Alice Wolfson, “Clenched Fist, Open Heart,” The Feminist Memoir Project: Voices from Women’s Liberation, Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Ann Snitow, eds., Rutgers UP, 2007 (PDF)
-- Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake, “‘It’s All About the Benjamins’: Economic Determinants of third Wave Feminism in the United States,” Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration, Stacy Gillis, Gillian Howie, Rebecca Munford, eds., Palgrave, 2004/2007 (PDF)
-- Leonore Tiefer, “History of the New View Campaign,” and “The Manifesto: A New View of Women’s Sexual Problems,” from the website for the New View Campaign, www.newviewcampaign.org
-- Leonore Tiefer, “Arriving at a ‘New View’ of Women’s Sexual Problems: Background, Theory, and Activism,” A New View of Women’s Sexual Problems, HaworthPress,2001(PDF)

SESSION IX – CHANGING THE WORLD: MODES OF ACTIVISM II
-- Ann Snitow, “Thinking about the Mermaid and the Minotaur,” Feminist Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, Toward a Feminist Theory of Motherhood, June 1978 (PDF)
-- Pat Mainardi, “The Politics of Housework” (1968), reprinted in Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women’s Liberation Movement, Ed. Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon, Basic Books, 2002 (PDF)
-- Janet Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers, “Support for Working Families: What the United States Can Learn from Europe,” The American Prospect, Jan 1-15, 2001 (PDF)
-- Nancy Fraser, “From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’ Age,” from Feminism and Politics, Oxford UP, 1998 (PDF)
-- Nancy Fraser, “The Uses and Abuses of French Discourse Theories for Feminist Politics,” Women & Institutional Knowledge, Silvestra Mariniello and Paul A. Bove, Duke UP, 1998 (PDF)

SESSION X – THE TROUBLE WITH NORMAL
-- Michael Warner, “Chapter Two: What’s Wrong with Normal?” The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life, Harvard UP, 1999 (PDF)
-- Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race & Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” from Feminist Legal Theory, Ed. D. Kelly Weisberg, 1993 (PDF)
-- Paula Rust, “Sexual Identity and Bisexual Identities: The Struggle for Self-Description in a Changing Sexual Landscape,” Queer Studies: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Anthology, Brett Meemyn and Mickey Eliason, eds., NYU Press, 1996 (PDF)
-- Jason Cromwell, “Transvestite Opportunists, Passing Women, and Female-Bodied Men,” Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities, Univ. of Illinois Press, 1999 (PDF)

SESSION XI -- RIVAL DEFINITIONS OF CHOICE
-- Janet Hadley, “The ‘Awfulisation’ of Abortion” Global Network for Reproductive Rights, Avril-Juin, 1996 Bulletin 54-5 (PDF)
-- Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, “Designer Babies and the Pro-Choice Movement,” Dissent, Summer 2007 (PDF)
-- Kathryn Joyce, “Missing: The ‘Right’ Babies,” The Nation, Mar. 3, 2008 (PDF)
-- Linda Hirschmann, “Off to Work She Should Go,” Linda Hirshman, Op-Ed, New York Times, April 29, 2007, and 9 Letters in response to Linda Hirshman’s Op-Ed (PDF)

SESSION XII – CASE STUDY IN CONTINUITY: JEWS, GAYS, AND GENDER
-- Adam Ostolski, “Conspirators, Corruptors, Pariahs: The Judaization of Gay People in Polish Right-Wing Discourse,” Manuscript - Do Not Cite (PDF)
-- Warren Blumenfeld, “History/Hysteria: Parallel Representations of Jews, Gays, Lesbians, and Bisexuals,” Queer Studies: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Anthology, Brett Meemyn and Mickey Eliason, eds., NYU Press, 1996 (PDF)
-- Naomi Scheman, “Queering the Center by Centering the Queer: Reflections on Transsexuals and Secular Jews,” Feminists Rethink the Self, Ed. Diana Tietjens Meyers, Westview Press, 1997 (PDF)

APPENDIX
-- Sharon E. Preves, “Beyond Pink and Blue,” and excerpts from “Seeds of Change,” Intersex and Identity: The Contested Self, Rutgers UP, 2005 (PDF)
-- Justyna Wlodarczyk, “Post Abortion Stress Syndrome – The Greatest Medical Epidemic in Contemporary Poland,” Manuscript – Do Not Cite (PDF)
-- Anca Gheaus, Research Plan: “The Transformation of the Romanian Welfare State: What Does it Mean for Gender Justice?” Manuscript – Do Not Cite (PDF)
-- Mary Hawkesworth, “The Semiotics of Premature Burial: Feminism in a Postfeminist Age,” SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2004, vol. 29. No. 4, Univ. of Chicago (PDF)