SCSO1000: Gender, Science, and Society

SCSO1000: Gender, Science, and Society

Fall 2012

W 3:00-5:20pm / Wilson 203
Prof. Catherine Bliss / Office: Sidney Frank 262
Email: / Office Hours: Weds 1-3pm

Course Description:

This course is designed to introduce students to interdisciplinary approaches to the role of gender in science and societyas an integrated natural and social scientific endeavor. This seminar uses a Problem-Based Learning style pedagogy to explore real-world problems such as validating knowledge about sexual difference, the relationship between politics and science, and the characterization of biomedical disorders like hormone imbalance and depression. The class will be broken into groups that evenly consist of natural and social science concentrators in order to simultaneously approach problems from natural and social scientific perspectives.All assignments will be integrated group work. Students will learn critical scholarship including gender studies, feminist theory,and science and technology studies. This course is intended for seniors who are interested in gender and STS, but will favor students who co-enroll in BIOL 310, 400, 470, 480, or have taken similar Biology courses. This is a S/NC course.

Course Requirements:

Participation10%

You are permitted 2 excused absences. Thereafter, you grade goes down one letter. This class and the learning you will be doing are entirely structured around interdisciplinary weekly presentations and class discussion. I’m looking for thoughtful contributions that refer directly to the readings and presentations at hand. Each class will be structured around three discussion modules: 1) presentations of the week’s theories with respect to your group’s case material, 2) application of the theory to current events, 3) large group debate and discussion. Participation in all three is required.

Presentations20%

Each week you will prepare a ten-minute natural and social scientific group presentation on the problem of the week using the week’s featured STS theory. Your group will meet outside of class to cull sources in contemporary science news and journals. Your group will also be required to post a one-page summary of the presentation and the powerpoint on the MyCourses discussion board, Tuesdays by 5pm.

Midterm 20%

For the midterm, you and your group will source and analyze existing Wikipedia pages that pertain to one of the problems we address in class. Groups must critique three webpages using gender and STS theory, and provide a written copy of that critique on MyCourses. Each group must present their analysis.

Final20%

The final is a class-wide group project to create a Wikipedia page on one topic of the course. We will decide on a topic at our eleventh meeting. You will be required to draw on your midterm findings to bring a list of points for our final class. In class, we will compile, debate, and select points, draft the page, and publish it.

Portfolio 30%

The portfolio shows your development and growth over the course. You are responsible for collecting evidence of your participation in group work and writing a summary of your contribution to the Wikipedia midterm and final assignments. Examples of evidence include articles you found for the class archive, aspects of a presentation summary that you were responsible for writing, slides you created for a powerpoint, and language you authored for the Wikipedia entry.

Required Articles:

All articles listed below are available on OCRA.

Course Schedule:

Sep 5: Introductions

Sep 12: Knowledge and Expertise

Keller, Evelyn Fox. 2008. “Gender and Science: an Update” in Women, Science, and Technology: a reader in feminist science studies. New York: Taylor and Francis. 245-55.

Haraway, Donna. 1999. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” in The Science Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. 172-188.

Scott, Joan. 2010. “Gender: Still a Useful Category of analysis?” Diogenes 225: 1-5.

Sep 19: Contested Anatomy

Loudrastress. 2009. “Semanya as the 21 Century Sarah Baartman.”Weblog. August 29.

NPR. 2009. “Gender Questions Surround Track And Field Star: Interview with Human Geneticist with Dr. Eric Villain.”

Dreger, Alice. 2009. “The Sex of Athletes: One Issue, Many Variables” New York Times.

Fausto-Sterling, Anne. “Testing for ‘real’ sex obscures a more important issue.”

Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books. Chapters 1 and 2.

Schiebinger, Londa. 1990. “The Anatomy of Difference: Race and Sex in 18th-century Science.” EighteenthCentury Studies 23: 387-405.

Preves, Sharon. 2003. Intersex and Identity. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Chapter 3.

Sep 26: Evolutionary Biases

Lloyd, Elisabeth Anne. 2008. Science, Politics, and EvolutionCambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 12.

Longino, Helen. 1992. “Knowledge, Bodies, and Values: Reproductive Technologies and Their Scientific Context.” Inquiry 35:323-40.

Richardson, Sarah. 2010. “Sexes, species, and genomes: why males and females are not like humans and chimpanzees.” Biology and Philosophy 25: 823-41.

Oct 3: Hormones and Health

Oudshoorn, Nelly.1994.Beyond the Natural Body: An Archeology of Sex Hormones.London: Routledge. Chapter 2.

Jordan-Young, Rebecca. 2010. Brain Storm: the flaws in the science of sex differences‬. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chapter 3.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

Mamo, Laura and Jennifer Ruth Fosket. 2009. “Scripting the Body: Pharmaceuticals and the (Re)Making of Menstruation.” Signs 34: 925-49.

Oct 10: The Science of Sexuality

Spanier,Bonnie. 2008.“Biological Determinism and Homosexuality” in Same-Sex Cultures and Sexualities: An Anthropological Reader, ed. J. Robertson. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Epstein, Steven. 2003. “Sexualizing Governance and Medicalizing Identities: The Emergence of ‘State-Centered’ LGBT Health Politics in the United States.” Sexualities 6: 131-71.

Mamo, Laura. 2010. “Fertility, Inc: Consumption and subjectification in lesbian reproductive practices”inBiomedicalization: Technoscience and Transformations of Health and Illnessin the U.S.eds. Adele E. Clarke, Janet Shim, Laura Mamo, Jennifer Fosket, and Jennifer Fishman. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Oct 17: MIDTERM: Wikipedia analysis

Oct 24: The ART of Reproduction

Thompson, Charis. 1998. “Ontological Choreography: Agency for Women Patients in an Infertility Clinic.” in Differences in Medicine: Unraveling Practices, Techniques and Bodies eds. M. Berg and A. Mol. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Rapp, Rayna. 1999. Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the social impact of amniocentesis in America. New York: Routledge. Chapter 1.

Woliver,Laura. 2008. “Reproductive Technologies, Surrogacy Arrangements, and the Politics of Motherhood” in Women, Science and Technology: a reader in feminist science studies. ed. Mary Wyer. New York: Taylor and Francis. 361-374.

Elster, Nanette. 2005. “ART for the Masses? Racial and EthnicInequality in Assisted Reproductive Technologies.” DePaul Journal of Healthcare Law. 9:1719-33.

Nov 2: Stem Cells and Cloning

Waldby, Catherine and Melinda Cooper. 2010. “From reproductive work to regenerative labour: The female body and the stem cell industries” Feminist Theory 11:3-24.

Almeling, Rene. 2007. “Selling Genes, Selling Gender: Egg Agencies, Sperm Banks, and the Medical Market in Genetic Material,” American Sociological Review 72: 319-40.

Franklin,Sarah. 2007. “Dolly's Body: gender, genetics, and the new genetic capital” in The Animals Reader: the essential classic and contemporary writings eds. Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald. Oxford, UK and New York: Berg. 349-361.

Nov 7: Normal Minds

Martin, Emily. 2010. Bipolar expeditions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chapter 8.

Fine, Cordelia. 2010. Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Chapters 1-3.

Nov 14: Biopolitical Citizenship

Rose, Nikolas. 2007. The Politics of Life Itself. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chapter 5.

Epstein, Steven. 2007. Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 11.

Lock, Margaret and Vinh-Kim Nyugen. 2010. An Anthropology of Biomedicine.West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Chapter 5.

Nov 21: No Class

Nov 28: An Alternate Immunity

Biehl, Joao and Amy Moran-Thomas. 2009. “Symptom: Subjectivities, Social Ills, Technologies.” Annual Review of Anthropology38:267–88.

Haraway, Donna. 1999. “The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Determinations of Self in Immune System Discourse.” Feminist Theory and the Body: a reader. 203-14.

Comaroff, Jean. 2007. “Beyond Bare Life: AIDS, (Bio)Politics, and the NeoLiberal Order.” Public Culture 19:197-219.

Dec 5: FINAL: Wikipedia entry

Grading and Class Requirements 2012

Groups and Discussion:

This course is intended to bring together natural and social science perspectives in order to tackle contemporary problems in gender and science. The class will be broken into groups that evenly consist of natural and social science concentrators. The idea is to have maximum cross-pollination across the sciences and for those familiar with particular aspects of the course to help out their fellow group members.

Each week, your group will meet outside of class to collect natural science sources on the week’s problem (i.e., hormones, the brain, artificial reproduction) and to prepare a presentation and presentation summary that relates those articles to the one of the class readings. Your group must post the presentation powerpoint, summary, and articles to MyCourses by Tuesday 5pm so that we create archives with which the entire class can work.

After certain groups present, we will engage in large group discussion that will more carefully analyze the body of literature that exists in the week’s MyCourses archive. This is when you will be required to draw your own conclusions about the readings and the literature and discuss them with the class. All together, we will take specific knowledge claims and examine what actions can follow from that claim. We will generate questions for further inquiry that can help us revise and promote alternative knowledge claims.

Attendance at all class events is expected. More than two excused absences may result in extra assignments to make up missed work. You must let me know before you will be absent in order for it to be an excused absence. You are also responsible for getting a note from the Dean or Health Services.

Problems:

Each week presents a new aspect of gender that is currently under study in the sciences, but is not being problematized from a social scientific perspective in the academic mainstream. With your group, you will approach these problems as cases to be analyzed with the theoretical readings on the syllabus. Science, Nature, Journal of the American Medical Association, and New England Journal of Medicineare great places to find articles on the topics. You can also do an advanced search on GoogleScholar using the problem as search term and limiting the search to 2000-2011.

Readings:

The readings listed on the syllabus are a required component of the course. It is most helpful to read the material before and after you have presented on it, so you get a deeper understanding of it. I have listed the readings for each week in an order from most general and introductory to most specialized, therefore it would be best to read them as such. There will be time each class for you to pose questions about the readings to the larger group. I encourage you to bring at least one question each class.

Presentations:

Weekly presentations are designed to help you explore contemporary issues in new ways. Each presentation will consist of: 1) presentation of articles that your group has culled from the science literature, 2) analysis of the articles using one of the readings. Social science concentrators will be required to present the articles, while natural science concentrators will present your group’s analysis. In your out-of-class meeting, you should coach one another on how to best present the material. There are 3 slides to each presentation: the article description slide, the interpretation with the readings slide, and further discussion questions slide. Groups will present in rotation, but all the powerpoints will be made available as an archive for the entire class.

Portfolio:

Midterm and Final:

For the midterm, you and your group will source and analyze existing Wikipedia pages that pertain to one of the problems we address in class. Groups must critique three webpages and provide a written copy of that critique on MyCourses. Each group must present their analysis.

Growth and Evaluation:

This course will be graded S/NC. You will be graded on your progress as evidenced by a portfolio of your participation in class assignments.

Some of the skills I will measure your progress by are your ability to work in an interdisciplinary mode, source and critically analyze science articles, respond to and discuss the readings, make connections between the readings and current science, and critique knowledge claims and create alternative knowledge claims with the entire class. Specifically, I will evaluate these skills in terms of your ability to communicate and use sources and readings effectively.

In general, each student will start at different levels for each of the above skills. I will consider you as emerging, developing or having mastered the above skills and during the semester I will look for progress in each area.

“Emerging” is a polite way of saying you are a total beginner. That ought not to be the case for most of you, since you are seniors and have been developing skills in college for three years.
“Developing” suggests that you have the outlines of each of these skills but you still have a way to go (e.g., a “developing” communicator uses language pretty well, errors are infrequent but there are still problems of style, voice and audience). Basic organization is visible but format can be inconsistent, and most of the time sources are cited and used correctly.
A “Master” communicator means you are ready for graduate school, to excel at a job and to be a brilliant political actor. Your language use is nuanced and eloquent; minimal errors and appropriate style for the audience of choice; clear organization; correct source citation.