Course Description:
This course looks at the ways in which 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 among women and men, people of color and whites, and gays and straight are prevalent in popular culture. Using materials ranging from Web sites to blockbuster movies to magazines, we will explore the ways in which popular culture answers these questions and affects what we think and know about gender and race. For example, it surely matters to understand the struggles for racial equality over the past three centuries, in which most Europeans and Anglo-Americans 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.
Readings:
There are two texts for this course. Anne Fausto-Sterling. 1992. Myths of gender, 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).
Week 1:
· What stories does popular science tell about sex and gender? Course overview
· Testosterone: Are you man enough? 2000. Time, April 24; The science of women and sex. 2000. Newsweek,
May 29.
· Gender and science: From numbers to knowledge to cyborgs:Ma vie en rose. Week 2:
· AFS, ch. 1; Keller, Evelyn Fox. Introduction. In Reflections on gender and science.
· Longino, Helen, and Evelynn Hammonds. Conflicts and tensions in feminist studies of science. In Marianne Hirsch
and Evelyn Fox Keller, Conflicts in feminism.
· Anatomy and physiology of race and gender-history; in-class presentations Week 3:
· World Wide Web workshop
· Schiebinger, Londa. Why mammals are called mammals. In Nature's body. Week 4:
· Gould, Stephen Jay. American polygeny and craniometry before Darwin: Blacks and Indians as separate, inferior species.
In The mismeasure of man.
· Gay women's inner ear works like men's, researchers find. Toronto Star; Study suggests biological basis for
lesbianism. Washington Post; Finger length points to sexual orientation. San Francisco Chronicle; Anne
Fausto-Sterling. Of gender and genitals: The use and abuse of the modern intersexual. In Sexing the body.
· Mothers and reproduction; in-class presentations Week 5:
· Balsamo, Ann. Public pregnancies and cultural narratives of surveillance. In Technologies of the gendered body:
Reading cyborg women.
· Ortiz, Ana Teresa. Bare-handed medicine and its elusive patients: The unstable construction of pregnant women and
fetuses in Dominican obstetrics discourse. Feminist Studies, 23:2.
· Molecules make the (wo)man: Genes for gender, race, and sexual orientation; in class presentations: Genes
and gender. Week 6:
· AFS, ch. 2, A question genius: Are men really smarter than women?
· AFS, ch. 3, Of genes and gender.
· in-class presentations: Human Genome Project: Telling stories of race and reproduction. Week 7:
· Keller, Evelyn Fox. Master molecules. In Are genes us? The social consequences of the new genetics; Nelkin,
Dorothy, and M. Susan Lindee. Sacred DNA. In The DNA mystique: The gene as cultural icon; short film in class:
Ellen DeGeneres and Sharon Stone, If these walls could talk.
· Paul, Diane. The nine lives of discredited data. In The politics of heredity; Staples, Brent. The scientific
war on the poor (editorial). 1994. New York Times, October 28; Murray, Charles, and Richard Herrnstein. 1994.
New Republic, October 31; Rushton, J. Phillipe. Genetics and race. Science 271:5249.
· in-class presentations: Gay genes. Week 8:
· AFS, ch. 8
· Hamer, Dean. Sex. In Living with our genes: Why they matter more than you think.
· in-class presentations: Designer babies, clones, and monsters. Week 9:
· Film, Gattaca
· Gould, Stephan Jay. Dolly's fashion and Louis's passion; Dworkin, Andrea. Sasha. In Martha Nussbaum and Cass
Sunstein, Clones and clones; Thomas Kellner and Ben Pappas. Rex redux. Forbes 162:11.
· AFS, ch. 4. Hormonal hurricanes: Menstruation, menopause, and female behavior. Week 10:
· Oudshoorn, Nelly. The measuring of sex hormones. In Beyond the natural body: An archeology of sex hormones.
· AFS, ch. 5, Hormones and aggression.
· Animal Models: Studler, L.H., J.R. Reddon, and K.G. Siminoski. Serum testosterone in adult sex offenders: A comparison
between Caucasians and North American Indians. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 53:4; Mazur, A. Biosocial models
of deviant behavior among male army veterans. Biological Psychology, 41:3.
Week 11:
· Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. Empathy, polyandry, and the myth of the coy female. In Ruth Bleier, ed. Feminist approaches
to science.
· Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. The evolution of female orgasms: Logic please but no atavism. Animal Behavior 52; Thornhill,
Randy, and Steven Gangestad. Human female copulatory orgasm: A human adaptation of phylogenetic holdover? Animal
Behavior, 52.
· in-class presentations
Week 12:
· AFS, ch. 6, Putting woman in her (evolutionary) place.
Thornhill and Palmer. Why do men rape? A natural history of rape; and Coyne, Jerry, and Andrew Berry. Rape as adaptation.
Nature 404; Stanford, Craig. Darwinians look at rape, sex, and war. American Scientist 88; Angier, Natalie.
Biological bull. Ms. (June/July).
· Triechler, Paula. Beyond Cosmo: AIDS, identity, and inscriptions of gender. Camera Obscura 28.
· Disease; in-class presentations: Women, teens, race, and AIDS.
Week 13:
· Triechler, Paula. Beyond Cosmo: AIDS, identity, and inscriptions of gender. Camera Obscura 28.
· Patton, Cindy. Between innocence and safety. Fatal advice: How safe sex education went wrong.
Week 14:
· Harrison-Chirumuuta, Rosalind, and Richard Chirumuuta. AIDS from Africa: A case of racism vs. science. In
AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. Rushton, J. Phillipe. Population differences in susceptibility to AIDS: An evolutionary
analysis. Social Science and Medicine, 28:12.
· Packard, Randall, and Paul Epstein. Medical research on AIDS in Africa: A historical perspective. In Elizabeth Fee
and Daniel Fox. AIDS: The making of a chronic disease.
Week 15:
· Preston, Richard. Crisis in the hot zone. New Yorker 68:36.
· Sandra Harding. Is science multicultural challenges, resources, opportunities, uncertainties. Configurations
2:2.
