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Gender, Race and Class

Sociology 3405
Fordham College at Rose Hill/Spring 2014


Instructor: Dr. Laura Pearl Kaya, Ph.D.
Email: laura.pearl@gmail.com
Office: Dealy 408D
Office hour: Thursday 4:30-5:30
Time: Monday, Thursday 5:30-6:45
Room: Dealy 206

This course examines the relationship between gender, race, and class as overlapping dimensions of social
experience in the U.S. Drawing on a variety of sources, including theoretical, ethnographic, and literary
writings, each of these dimensions is considered as part of a complex approach to social problems.

Books for Purchase:

1. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. New York: New Press. 2012.
2. Wannabes, Goths and Christians by Amy Wilkins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2008.
3. Herculine Barbin by herself with introduction by Michel Foucault. New York: Vintage. 1980.
Other readings will be available on Google Drive.

Course Schedule:

A. Introduction
1. Monday, January 13
Why gender, race and class?
B. Stratification
2. Thursday, January 16
What is stratification, and what is prestige?
a. The Specter of Whiteness by Celine-Marie Pascale. Studies in Symbolic Interaction
30:167-182. 2008.
b. Being Poor by John Scalzi. http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/
(Accessed 1/7/2014)
3. Thursday, January 23
School
a. The Savage Inequalities of Public Education in New York by Jonathan Kozol. In
Savage Inequalities. New York: Broadway Books. 1991.
b. Student Social Class and Teacher Expectations By Ray Rist. Harvard Educational
Review 70(3): 257-301. 2000.
4. Monday, January 27
Work
a. Goin Legit: Disrespect and Resistance at Work by Philippe Bourgois. In In Search of
Respect. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1996.
b. Just One of the Guys? How Transmen Make Gender Visible at Work. By Kristin
Schill. In Gender and Society 20(4): 465-490. 2006.
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5. Thursday, January 30
Neighborhoods
The Missing Link and The Creation of Underclass Communities by Douglas Massey and
Nancy Denton. In American Apartheid. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1993.

Ethnographic Research Proposal Due

6. Monday, February 3
Home
a. Joey's Problem: Nancy and Evan Holt by Arlie Russell Hochschild " in The Second
Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. New York: Viking, 1989.
b. Do working mothers oppress other women? The Swedish Maid Debate and the
Welfare State Politics of Gender Equality by John Bowman and Alyson Cole. Signs
35(1):157-184. 2009.
7. Thursday February 6
Public Sphere
a. On the Threshold of Womans Era: Lynching, Empire and Sexuality in Black Feminist
Theory by Hazel Carby. Critical Inquiry 12(1):262-277. 1985.
b. Killing Rage by bell hooks. In Killing Rage. New York: Holt. 1996.
8. Monday, February 10
The State I
Introduction, Chapters 1-2, The New Jim Crow.
Research Groups meet for 15 minutes during class.
9. Thursday, February 13
The State II
Chapters 3-5, The New Jim Crow.

Ethnographic Research Plan Due

C. Signification
10. *****Tuesday, February 18 *****
Binary Opposition and Markedness
a. Marked and unmarked: A choice between unequals in semiotic structure by Linda
Waugh. Semiotics 38(3/4):299-318. 1982.
b. How Gay Stays White and What Kind of White it Stays by Allan Berube. In The
Making and Unmaking of Whiteness, Biergit Brander et al, eds. Durham: Duke
University Press.
11. Thursday, February 20
Midterm Review
Individual meetings with professor about research plans
Research Groups meet
12. Monday, February 24

Midterm Exam
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13. Thursday, February 27
Performativity
a. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire by Judith Butler. In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the
Subversion of Identity. New York, Routledge. 1990.
b. 3 by John Berger. In Ways of Seeing. London: BBC. 1972.
14. Monday, March 3
Reading the body
a. Reading the Slender Body by Susan Bordo. In Unbearable Weight. Berkeley:
University of California Press. 1993.
b. An Anatomy of the Classes, and Appearance Counts in Class by Paul Fussel. New
York: Touchstone. 1992.
15. Thursday, March 6
Claiming positively valued identities
a. From Geek to Freak and So Full of Myself as a Chick, Wannabes, Goths and
Christians.
b. Masculinity as Homophobia by Michael Kimmel. In Reconstructing Gender, Estelle
Disch, ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. 2008.
D. Interpellation
16. Monday, March 10
Interpellation
a. Ideology by Louis Althusser. In Cultural Studies: An Anthology. Michael Ryan, ed.
New York: Wiley-Blackwell 2008.
b. Interpellation by John Fiske. In Cultural Studies: An Anthology. Michael Ryan, ed.
New York: Wiley-Blackwell 2008.
c. Not Just a Test by Claude M. Steele. In The Nation, May 3, 2004, p. 38-41.
Research groups meet for 15 minutes during class.
E. Categorization and Boundary Policing
17. Thursday, March 13
Science I: How biology shapes categories and categories shape biology
a. Natural Assumptions: Race, Essence, and Taxonomies of Human Kinds by Lawrence
Hirschfeld. Social Research 65(2):331-349. 1998.
b. Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Race, What Differences Make a
Difference? and Interview with Joseph Graves, Jr. Racethe Power of an Illusion,
Background Readings/Science, PBS. https://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-
background-01.htm (Accessed 1/1/2014)

-----------------------Spring Break------------------------

18. Monday, March 24
Science II: When categories dont work
My Memoirs, Herculine Barbin.
19. Thursday, March 27
Shifting categories
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a. How Did Jews Become White Folks? by Karen Brodkin. In How Jews Became White
Folks and what That Says About Race in America. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
1998.
b. Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making: Immigrants negotiate racial and cultural
boundaries in the United States by Aihwa Ong. Current Anthropology 37(5):737-762.
1996.
20. Monday, March 31
Crossing/passing I
Why dont they act like who they really are? and The Gendered Limits of Racial
Crossover, Wannabes, Goths, and Christians.
21. Thursday, April 3
Crossing/passing II
a. Surgical Passing: Or Why Michael Jacksons Nose Makes Us Uneasy by Kathy
Davis. Feminist Theory 4:73-92. 2003.
b. A Refuge from the World by Tanya Erzen. In Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian
Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2006.

Research Report Due

F. Consciousness
22. Monday, April 7
Political Consciousness
a. Class Consciousness by Georg Lukacs. From History and Class Consciousness. R.
Livingstone, translator. 1920.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/lukacs3.htm (Accessed
12/28/2013)
b. You Dont Need A Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows. By Karin
Asbley et al. New Left Notes. 1969.
http://archive.org/stream/YouDontNeedAWeathermanToKnowWhichWayTheWindBlow
s_925/weather_djvu.txt (Accessed 1/2/2014)
c. The Woman-Identified Woman by Radicalesbians. Notes from the Third Year. 1970.
http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/womidwom.html (Accessed
1/1/2014)
23. Thursday, April 10
Double Consciousness
a. Strivings of the Negro People by W.E.B. DuBois. The Atlantic. 1897.
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/18897/08/strivings-of-the-negro-people/305446/
(Accessed 12/29/13)
b. The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity by Paul Gilroy. In The Black
Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso. 1994.




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G. Recognition
24. Monday, April 14
Recognition
a. The Politics of Recognition by Charles Taylor. In Multiculturalism: Examining the
Politics of Recognition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1994.
b. Passing for White and Straight: How my looks hide my identity by Koa Beck. Salon.
2013.
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/09/passing_for_white_and_straight_how_my_looks_hide
_my_identity/ (Accessed 1/2/2014)

-----------------------Easter------------------------


25. Thursday, April 24
Problematizing Recognition
Double Binds: Jewish emancipation and the sovereign state and The Slippery Slope:
Multiculturalism as a politics of recognition by Patchen Markell. In Bound by Recognition.
Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2003.
H. Intersectionality
26. Monday, April 28
Intersectionality
a. Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images by Patricia Hill Collins. In Black
Feminist Thought. New York: Routledge. 2008.
b. Well Talk Later by Rhoda Kanaaneh. Cultural Anthropology 10(1):125-135. 1995.
c. What kind of Latino am I? by Daniel Alarcon. 2005.
http://www.salon.com/2005/05/24/alarcon/ (Accessed 1/7/2014)
27. Thursday, May 1

Final Papers Due
Student Presentations

28. Thursday, May 8

Final Exam

Requirements:
Students will be required to do an independent research project. The project has four stages:
proposal, research plan, research report, and an analytical paper. Details will be discussed in
class.
There will be a midterm on February 24 and a cumulative final exam on May 8.
Attendance and participation are required and will affect students grades. If a student must miss
class, s/he should notify the instructor of this fact by email in advance of the class meeting and
should obtain notes from a classmate.

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Grading:
Proposal: 5%
Research Plan: 10%
Research Report: 10%
Final Paper: 20%
Midterm: 15%
Final: 20%
Attendance and class participation: 10%

Policy on Late or Missed Work:
All written work must be submitted as hard copies in class. Late papers, if accepted, will be marked
down. Special circumstances may arise during research which would justify extensions, particularly in
the deadline for the research report. Reasonable extensions will be granted on a case-by-case basis to
students who ask for them in advance. No written work will be accepted after the last day of class. All
students must attend the midterm and the final exam.

Policy on Plagiarism
Plagiarized papers will receive a grade of zero and may not be redone. A paper will be considered to be
plagiarized if it contains any phrases or ideas copied from any source without proper citation.