SCSO1000: Gender, Science, and Society
Fall 2012
W 3:00-5:20PM
Prof. Catherine Bliss
Email: Catherine_Bliss@brown.edu
WILSON 203
Office: Sidney Frank 262
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 society as 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:
Participation 10%
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.
Presentations 20%
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%
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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.
Final
20%
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. 24555.
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. http://pumlagqola.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/semenya-as-the-21st-centurybartmann/.
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NPR. 2009. “Gender Questions Surround Track And Field Star: Interview with
Human Geneticist with Dr. Eric Villain.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112810116
Dreger, Alice. 2009. “The Sex of Athletes: One Issue, Many Variables” New York
Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/sports/25intersex.html.
Fausto-Sterling, Anne. “Testing for ‘real’ sex obscures a more important issue.”
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/21/testing-athletes/.
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 18thcentury Science.” Eighteenth Century 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 Evolution Cambridge, 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” in Biomedicalization: Technoscience and Transformations of
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Health and Illness in 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 Ethnic Inequality 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: 31940.
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.
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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 Anthropology 38:267–88.
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
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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 Medicine are 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.
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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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
1. “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.
2. “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.
3. 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.
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