Sociology 131b
BIOGRAPHY, GENDER & SOCIETY
Brandeis University
Fall 2013
Tuesdays 9 - 12
khansen@brandeis.edu
Professor Karen V. Hansen
Pearlman 209
Office Hours: Tue. 1-2, 3:30-4:30
and by appointment
(781) 736-2651
Course Description
“Neither the life of an individual, nor the history of a society, can be understood without
understanding both.” C. Wright Mills (The Sociological Imagination, p.3)
This course investigates the relationship between individual lives, historical period, and the
sex/gender system. Through an examination of people famous and unknown, political radicals
and artists, working-class and middle-class men and women, it poses questions regarding
methodology, epistemology, sociological conceptions of gender and sexuality, social structure,
and everyday life.
The course uses biographical portraits, case studies, and biographies to examine gender identity
and practice across racial-ethnic groups and class lines. It does so through the lenses of
sociological theory and history. The readings consistently prompt questions about sources of
evidence: whose voice is recorded and preserved? How do we authenticate the claims? And how
can twenty-first century scholars can interpret those accounts of the past and a particular self?
How does the relationship of an author to his/her subject shape a portrait? As readers, what do
we make of that? As biographers, how do we work with the constraints that inevitably exist? The
methodological limitations of certain sources and the implications of their use will be part and
parcel of our semester’s discussions.
Although social scientists study patterns of behavior, the individual variation that falls within
those patterns often challenges generalizations. The quest to observe, understand, and analyze
human behavior--its meanings and its unpredictability--prompts scholars to search for multiple
methods that capture pieces of the human whole. At one level, the biographical method seems
antithetical to sociology. At another, it engages the insight offered by C. Wright Mills that our
social world is a product of individual action.
The course is structured as a seminar and incorporates Experiential Learning. It is cross-listed
with Women’s and Gender Studies.
This course has a LATTE page: http://www.brandeis.edu/latte/
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Course Requirements
The class will be run as a seminar in order to create an environment that is conducive to an indepth exploration of the historical variation in the lives of North American women and men. It
demands a great deal from the student through extensive reading, class participation, and a major
research project. The seminar will be successful only if its participants make a serious
commitment to it and their fellow students. The commitment involves being prepared for the
weekly meeting by reading the required texts prior to class, preparing discussion questions on the
readings, insightfully engaging the complexities of individual lives, and exploring how they
reflect and reject the sex/gender system and racial-ethnic structures of their time.
The grade for the course will be determined as follows:
1) Class Participation
15%
The grade includes attendance and active engagement that reflects careful reading
of the texts. Students will make three presentations over the course of the
semester, two in collaboration with other students on the week’s readings, and one
on research work-in-progress. Students will be expected to help each other with
the challenges of biographical research throughout the semester, including
commenting on another student’s draft paper.
2) Biographical Portrait
50%
The major project of the semester is to write a 15-20 page biographical portrait of
a man or woman based on original sources. The component steps of the process
include submitting:
 a proposal (due October 8);
 a human subjects proposal, including a list of interview questions
(due October 15);
 an outline with a bibliography (due October 29 );
 8-10 page draft (due November 19); and
 the final paper (due the last day of class, December 3).
3) Portraits
20%
Students will write two brief (2-3 page) portraits, worth 10% each, capturing an
aspect of the subject that illuminates something important about him/her. The
first will be of a friend or family member. The second will be of the student’s
biographical subject.
4) Take Home Final
15%
The final will consist of an essay on the challenges and dilemmas of the
biographical method. Due Tuesday, December 10, at noon.
Late assignments will be graded down one-third of a letter grade for each day they are late.
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Learning Goals for the Semester:
1. Critically read texts and distinguish between the author’s point of view, the evidence
presented, and how those might confirm or disconfirm understandings in the field;
2. Identify and evaluate sources of evidence used by the author;
3. Communicate (orally and through writing) the central argument and point of view of
a biographer;
4. Conduct original research (in archives or through interviews) in order to write a
biographical portrait; and
5. Triangulate conflicting accounts of an event or a person and develop an independent
interpretation.
Accommodations for disabilities:
If you are a student who needs academic accommodations because of a documented
disability you should contact me, and present your letter of accommodation, as soon as
possible. If you have questions about documenting a disability or requesting academic
accommodations you should contact Beth Rodgers-Kay at Undergraduate Academic
Affairs (x63470, brodgers@brandeis.edu) or the appropriate person in the Graduate
School office. Letters of accommodations should be presented at the start of the semester
to ensure provision of accommodations. Accommodations cannot be granted
retroactively.
A Note on Academic Integrity:
Academic integrity is central to the mission of educational excellence at Brandeis University.
Each student is expected to turn in work completed independently, except when assignments
specifically authorize collaborative effort. It is not acceptable to use the words or ideas of
another person – be it a world-class philosopher or your lab partner – without proper
acknowledgement of that source. This means that you must use footnotes and quotation marks to
indicate the source of any phrases, sentences, paragraphs or ideas found in published volumes,
on the internet, or created by another student.
Violations of University policies on academic integrity, described in Section 3 of Rights and
Responsibilities, may result in failure in the course or on the assignment, and could end in
suspension from the University. If you are in doubt about the instructions for any assignment in
this course, you must ask for clarification.
Required Readings
Falk, Candace, Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman
Goldman, Emma, Living My Life, v. 1
Guberman, Jayne K., ed., In Our Own Voices: A Guide to Conducting Life History
Interviews with American Jewish Women, http://jwa.org/stories/how-to/guide
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Lee, Mary Paik, Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America.
Martinez, David, Dakota Philosopher: Charles Eastman and American Indian Thought
Philipson, Ilene, Ethel Rosenberg: Beyond the Myths
In addition, the articles designated by an asterisk (*) are available on LATTE.
Recommended:
Alpern, Sara, Joyce Antler, Elisabeth Israels Perry, and Ingrid Winther Scobie, eds., The
Challenge of Feminist Biography
Gluck, Sherna and Daphne Patai, eds. Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History
Goldman, Emma, Living My Life, v.2
Lawrence-Lightfoot, Sara and Jessica Hoffmann Davis, The Art and Science of Portraiture
Turabian, Kate, A Manual for Writers
Course Outline
Week 1: September 3—INTRODUCTION AND DISCUSSION OF COURSE
*Lawrence-Lightfoot, Sara, “A View of the Whole: Origins and Purposes,” in The Art
and Science of Portraiture, edited by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot and Jessica
Hoffmann Davis (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997), pp. 1-16.
Movie: “Emma Goldman, The Anarchist Guest”
Recommended:
*Alpern, et al., “Introduction,” The Challenge of Feminist Biography, pp. 1-15
Week 2: September 10—AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND AUDIENCE
Introduction to Biographical Resources, Goldfarb Library—Gina Bastone (10:45-11:50)
Goldman, Emma, Living My Life, v.1: pp. 3-162; 178-237; 359-503
Recommended:
Emma Goldman, Living My Life, v.2
Week 3: September 17—BRANDEIS THURSDAY—NO CLASS
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Week 4: September 24—POINT OF VIEW: BALANCING FACT AND FICTION
***Portrait #1 due
Guest speaker: Professor Joyce Antler, American Studies Program (11-12)
Falk, Candace, Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman, pp.xi-122, 169-324
*Antler, Joyce, “Having It All, Almost: Confronting the Legacy of Lucy Sprague
Mitchell,” in Challenge of Feminist Biography, pp. 97-115
Week 5: October 1—SEARCHING FOR SOURCES & “TRUTHS”
Tour of Farber University Archives and Special Collections
*Lawrence-Lightfoot, Sara, “New Orleans” about Tony Earls, in I’ve Known Rivers:
Lives of Loss and Liberation (New York: Penguin, 1994), pp. 315-325.
*Childers, Mary, “A Spontaneous Welfare Rights Act by Politically Inactive Mothers: A
Daughter’s Reflections,” in The Politics of Motherhood: Activist Visions from Left
to Right, edited by Alexis Jetter, et al. (University Press of New England, 1997),
pp. 90-101.
*Lareau, Annette, “Developing a Child: Alexander Williams,” in Unequal Childhoods:
Class, Race, and Family Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003),
pp. 108-133
*Wickersham, Joan, “suicide: life summarized in an attempt to illuminate,” The Suicide
Index (Boston: Mariner Books, 2008), pp. 157-169
Recommended:
Bernardin, Susan, Melody Graulich, Lisa MacFarlane, and Nicole Tonkovich, Trading Gazes:
Euro-American Women Photographers and Native North Americans, 1880-1940 (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003)
Ephron, Nora, “Pentimento,” in I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections (New York: Vintage,
2010), pp.81-90
Week 6: October 8—CONDUCTING INTERVIEWS & ASKING QUESTIONS
***Biography proposals due
*Guberman, Jayne K., ed., In Our Own Voices, Part I, pp. 11-31
*Anderson and Jack, "Learning to Listen: Interview Techniques and Analyses"
(Women’s Words, pp.11-26)
*Stacey, Judith, "Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?" (Women’s Words,
pp.111-120)
*Olson and Shopes, "Crossing Boundaries, Building Bridges: Doing Oral History
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among Working-Class Women and Men" (Women’s Words, pp.189-204)
Week 7: October 15—CROSSING BOUNDARIES
***Human subjects proposals due in class
Martinez, David, Dakota Philosopher
Recommended:
*Hansen, Karen V., “Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography: Lillian Wineman
and the Trade in Dakota Beadwork, 1893-1929,” Qualitative Sociology 22 (1999):
353-368.
*Patai, Daphne, “U.S. Academics and Third World Women: Is Ethical Research Possible?”
(Women’s Words, pp.137-154)
Week 8: October 22— AUTHORSHIP, VOICE, & GENDER
***Outline and bibliography due
Guest speaker: Professor Margaret Anderson, Assistant Provost, University of Delaware (910:30)
*Andersen, Margaret L., “Thinking about Women: A Quarter Century View.” Gender &
Society 19 (2005):437-455.
Lee, Mary Paik, Quiet Odyssey
Chan, “Afterward,” in Quiet Odyssey
Recommended:
Chan, “Introduction” in Quiet Odyssey
*Pyke, Karen and Denise Johnson, “Asian American Women and Racialized Femininities:
‘Doing’ Gender across Cultural Worlds,” Gender & Society 17 (2003):33-53.
*Espiritu, Yen Le. “We Don’t Sleep around like White Girls Do’: Family, Culture, and Gender
in Filipina American Lives. Signs 26 (2001):415-440.
Week 9: October 29—LOCATING GENDER AND SEXUAL IDENTITY
***Portrait #2 due in class
*Hochschild, Arlie, “The Family Myth of the Traditional: Frank and Carmen Delacorte,”
in The Second Shift (New York: Viking, 1989), pp. 59-74.
*Garfinkel, Harold, “Passing and the Managed Achievement of Sex Status in an
Intersexed Person, Part I,” and “Appendix to Chapter 5,” in Studies in
Biography, Gender & Society
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Ethnomethodology (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1967), pp. 116-185 and 285-288.
*Rupp, Leila J. “Everyone's Queer,” OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 20, No. 2, History
of Sexuality (Mar., 2006), pp. 8-11
Recommended:
* Messner, Michael, “The Masculinity of the Governator: Muscle and Compassion in American
Politics,” Gender & Society 21 (2007):461-480.
*Lorber, Judith, “Shifting Paradigms and Challenging Categories,” Social Problems 53 (2006):
448-453.
Hansen, Karen V., “Challenging Separate Spheres in Antebellum New Hampshire: The Case of
Brigham Nims,” Historical New Hampshire 43 (1988):120-135.
Week 10: November 5—INTERPRETING EVIDENCE
Student Presentations on Work-in-Progress
*Bernhard, Virginia, “Cotton Mather's ‘Most Unhappy Wife’: Reflections
on the Uses of Historical Evidence,” New England Quarterly 60
(1987):341-362.
*Boag, Peter, “’Known to All Police West of the Mississippi’: Disrobing
the Female-to-Male Cross-Dresser,” in Redressing America’s
Frontier Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), pp.
23-58.
*Hansen, Karen V., “‘No Kisses is Like Youres’: An Erotic Friendship between Two
African-American Women During the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Gender and
History 7 (1995):153-182.
Recommended:
*Bederman, Gail, “Theodore Roosevelt: Manhood, Nation and ‘Civilization,’” Manliness and
Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 170-215.
Week 11: November 12—THE UNDOCUMENTED: MYTH-MAKING AND HISTORY
Student Presentations on Work-in-Progress
Philipson, Ilene, Ethel Rosenberg, pp.1-195
Movie: "Seeing Red"
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Week 12: November 19—THE UNDOCUMENTED WOMAN (continued)
Student Presentations on Work-in-Progress
***8-10 page drafts of biography due in class (bring 3 copies)
Philipson, Ethel Rosenberg, pp. 196-356
Week 13: November 26—WRITING WORKSHOP
Discuss 8-10 page drafts in class – in small writing groups
Read drafts of two other students, and
*“Suggestions for Giving Feedback to Colleagues”
Week 14: December 3—SOCIOLOGY AND THE DILEMMAS OF BIOGRAPHICAL
RESEARCH
***Final Biographies due in class
*Lawrence-Lightfoot, Sara, “Where the Rivers Join,” in The Art and Science of
Portraiture, pp. 601-644
***Take home final due Tuesday, December 10, NOON***