SOCI 357                                                                                                        Dr Kristen Myers

The Sociology of Gender                                                                                801 Zulauf

Summer 2007                                                                                                  kmyers@niu.edu

Office Hours: TuW 3:15-4 and by appt.                                             753-6431

This syllabus is a contract between you and me. Please read it and ask any questions you may have. This class promises to be demanding, stimulating, and even exciting. If you choose to stay in this class after reading the syllabus, I will assume that you intend to participate fully in order to help the course reach its potential.

Course Goals

I have several goals for this course, and they may expand and change over the session:

1. To understand the ways that gender is socially rather than biologically constructed.

2.  To understand and be critical of the mechanisms of gender inequality.

3.  To understand the ways in which we all participate in and, perhaps, benefit from gender inequality.

4.  To understand that different people experience gender opportunities and constraints differently according to their race, gender, sexuality and class.

5.  To understand the ways in which gender is connected to masculinity, femininity and sexuality.

6.  To understand the ways in which gender is connected to racism, classism, heterosexism and freedom.

7.  To improve your writing, organizational, and analytical skills.

8.  To make the course material relevant to your personal lives. 

Texts
There is a great deal of reading in this class.  I inform you of all reading assignments ahead of time, and they are all due the date on which they are listed.  You must keep up with the readings in order to perform well in this course.  There are three books to buy for this class: Disch’s edited volume, Reconstructing Gender; Scholinski’s memoir, Last Time I Wore a Dress; and Kraus and McLaughlin’s novel, The Nanny Diaries.  You will also have several on-line readings you must be prepared to discuss.

I have selected these pieces because they help meet all of the course goals stated above.  Some are harder to reach than others, but they are all central to this course and I will hold you accountable for having read all assignments.  Pace yourself.

Pop Quizzes

There are many ways to encourage you to keep up with the reading—I’ve tried to do so above.  But there’s no better incentive than pop quizzes.  Throughout the session, you will have

5 pop quizzes.  These will consist of three short answer questions administered at the beginning of class.  The questions will test to see if you a) read and b) understood the material scheduled for that class period.  Note: the quizzes will test your reading for that day only—they are not cumulative. 

Participation
We all live gendered lives, yet we rarely approach gender critically in our day to day worlds.  We will be looking at our normal lives through new lenses throughout this semester, and this new approach is bound to spark controversy and consternation.  Cool.  Part of the process of learning this material will be discussing it.  A lot of the ideas are abstract.  Unlike many courses you will take in college, this course actually expects you to talk—intelligently—in class.  My questions to the class will rarely be rhetorical—I expect response and interaction that is grounded in the reading as well as experience. 

Again, I will hold you accountable for your participation.  Your final grade will include an evaluation of your class participation.  The grading is not set in stone and it will include plusses and minuses.  However, a guideline for the participation grades is as follows:

A:  Student participates regularly in a well-informed manner

B:  Student participates occasionally in a well-informed manner

C:  Student participates occasionally

D:  Student participates rarely

F:   Who?

Exams

You will have a midterm and final in-class essay exam.  Each is cumulative.  Each will require you to synthesize and apply major concepts and data learned in this course.  For the each exam, I allow you to bring one (1!) sheet of typed or handwritten notes to each exam to help remind you of material.  You must turn in this sheet with your exam at the time of the exam.  

NO MAKING UP Missing work.  Period

Attendance
This is not an introductory level course. The pace in this class will be quick. I expect you to attend class so that you can keep up with developments as they happen. I will take attendance randomly. If you are present, you receive credit. If you are absent, you do not. Attendance is counted when students are alert and participating. Note: I do not distinguish between “excused” and “unexcused” absences.

Also, to be counted as present, you must do more than take up space: I do not count as present people who are sleeping, chatting with their friends, listening to headsets, reading the newspaper, or doing homework for this or any other class. Attendance is counted when students are alert and participating. 

Atmosphere
In this class, we will discuss issues that are controversial. We all come from different perspectives on these issues. It is likely that we will disagree with each other. I welcome and encourage lively discussion, as they are necessary for true learning to occur. Indeed, much of this course will center on discussion.

However, disagreements should not take the form of personal attack. That is absolutely unacceptable. Mutual respect is required in order to maximize a healthy and fair learning environment. Disagree with each other’s ideas and the evidence used in arguments, but respect each other as people. We all have to work together to create this atmosphere.

On a related note, this is a 300 level course on gender.  If you have not had any lower level sociology course that addresses various inequalities (such as Introduction to Sociology, Social Problems, or Social Psychology), then this may not be the course for you.  Prerequisites exist for a reason.  Please evaluate your own level of knowledge/background and decide if you should remain enrolled. 

Cell phones: Turn them off before you come into class. That means no texting either.

A note about e-mail: Due to e-mail, communication between faculty and students has become much easier over the years.  I welcome your comments and questions over e-mail.  However, remember that I am not on e-mail 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I will not always have time to check and/or respond to your e-mail.  Be reasonable.  Also, I do not accept ANY assignments over e-mail.  

Policy on Academic Misconduct

Cheating in this course is taken as a serious offense.  This includes not completing your own work, sharing information or materials for one-minute essays, freeloading on other group members, plagiarism (presentation of the work or ideas of another person as your own, including cutting-and-pasting text from the internet), the unauthorized use of course materials, or other forms of dishonesty in academic matters. Offenders will be disciplined through the procedures outlined in the Student Judicial Code on Academic Misconduct.

Grading—10 point scale
Pop quizzes: 25%                      Exams:             50%     Attendance and Participation      25%

Many of you already know what grade you need in this class in order to maintain or elevate your GPA. My philosophy on grades is this: They are yours to earn, not mine to give. Therefore, decide now what grade you want to receive, and earn it! Do not come to me at the end of the semester with a creative story about your various personal tragedies (i.e., “I’m going to flunk out;” “I’m going to lose my scholarship;” “My parents will kill me”) and expect me to make it all better.

In this class, an ‘A’ is reserved for truly excellent work.  If you earn an ‘A’, you went above and beyond the call of duty not just with your effort but with your performance.  A ‘B’ indicates very good work.  You did not just do the minimum requirements, but you made an extra effort to show your skills, and your effort showed.  A ‘C’ means you did average work—you did what was asked and you did it satisfactorily.  Nothing less, nothing more.  A ‘D’ means you need to improve—you did below the minimum requirements.  An ‘F’ is guaranteed if you turn nothing in.  But you could also earn an ‘F’ if you completely bungled the assignment. 

It is a challenge to get an ‘A’ or an ‘F’ in this class—it all depends on your effort or lack thereof. 

 Schedule—readings due on day for which they are listed