RACE, GENDER, AND SCIENCE
SOCIOLOGY 499 | FALL 2012
Professor Katie Hasson
Email: khasson@usc.edu
Office hours: Thursday 10:30-12:30, KAP 364A
Tuesday 4:00-6:50
Vivian Hall 214
Is race biological? Do men and women really have different brains? As sociologists, we are
trained to seek out the social sources of difference between individuals or groups, and we often
take for granted that race and gender are socially constructed. And yet, every day we hear of
studies claiming that hormones, genes, or brains determine differences between men and women
or among racial and ethnic groups. In this course we will learn how to think sociologically about
these scientific claims as we explore the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, science and
medicine. We will begin by examining how scientific thought about race and gender has changed
over time, how it is socially and culturally influenced, and what is at stake in scientific practices
of categorization. We continue by exploring how medical research has incorporated race and sex,
as well as how medicine constitutes and acts on raced and gendered bodies. We conclude with a
consideration of genetics. Throughout these discussions, we will pay close attention to the
processes through which knowledge is produced, to science as a practice and an institution, and
to the question of who gets to “do science” and how this affects the knowledge produced.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS (AND GRADING):
Attendance and Participation (15%): Your participation is essential for this seminar. This is
not a lecture course and you are expected to take an active role in shaping the class. Therefore, I
expect you to come to class having read the assigned texts and prepared to share your thoughts,
questions, and observations about them as we collectively work through the material. Attendance
is mandatory. I will take attendance during each class meeting, and two or more absences will
negatively impact your grade. Please talk to me in advance if you know you will miss class, or
contact me as soon as possible afterward in the case of unexpected absence.
Reading Response Blog Post (25%): Students will post responses to the week’s readings five
times during the semester (your choice). In these short posts (~350-600 words), you will briefly
summarize a few key points made by the authors and then go beyond what the authors have
written to provide your own critical commentary or reflection on the issues they raise. For
example, you might write about how the readings connect to or contradict other readings from
the course, think through the implications of the authors’ arguments for a topic you are interested
in, or raise questions you think the author has not taken into account. You could also use the
readings to analyze a related news article or other media text – or even to start analyzing your
own research data! Each blog post should conclude with at least one substantive question or
point that could be used to spark discussion in class or in the comments. I highly encourage you
to read and comment on each other’s posts. Commenting on the will count toward your
participation grade.
Reading responses must be posted to the blog (on Blackboard) by 8pm the night before class to
get full credit. They will be graded on a scale of 0 to 5. You must complete all 5 reading
response blog posts by NOVEMBER 6.
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Glossary and Background Presentation (10%): Starting in Week 7, students will work in
groups to collect and present to the class background information and context for the scientific
issues covered in the readings for the week. On Monday by 5pm, the group will post to the
course wiki a short glossary of ~5-10 technical terms/concepts necessary for understanding the
readings, as well as links to resources where classmates can find basic information, related news
articles, images/video clips, etc. At the beginning of class, the group will provide a very brief (<
10 minutes) presentation outlining the scientific concepts/issues.
Research Paper
All seminar participants will write a 15-page research paper that addresses a sociological
question related to the intersections of race, gender, and science/technology/medicine. Your
research will include reading existing literature and collecting and analyzing your own original
data (interviews, observations, statistics, or texts (legal documents, newspaper articles, novels,
etc.). Throughout the semester, you will complete several smaller assignments that will help you
through the research and writing process. In the first few weeks of class you will pick a topic,
formulate a research question, choose a source of data and method of analysis, and meet with me
to discuss your research project. As the semester continues, you will workshop your research
question, theoretical framework, and initial findings with your fellow classmates. At the end of
the semester, you will present a 10-minute summary of your research to the class.
Research Paper Proposal – Due September 25, in class (5%)
Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography – Due THURSDAY, October 18
(5%)
Data and Analysis Memo – Due THURSDAY, November 15 (5%)
In-Class Research Presentation - Weeks 14 and 15 (5%)
The last two class meetings are reserved for 15-minute presentations of your research to
the class. By this time you should have a nearly-complete draft of the research paper,
which you will use to prepare a summary of your research to present to the group.
Research Paper Final Draft – Due December 18 (30%)
COURSE POLICIES:
Statement for Students with Disabilities:
Any student requesting academic accommodations based on a disability is required to register
with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of verification for approved
accommodations can be obtained from DSP. Please be sure the letter is delivered to me as early
in the semester as possible. DSP is located in STU 301 and is open 8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m., Monday
through Friday. The phone number for DSP is (213) 740-0776.
Statement on Academic Integrity:
USC seeks to maintain an optimal learning environment. General principles of academic honesty
include the concept of respect for the intellectual property of others, the expectation that
individual work will be submitted unless otherwise allowed by an instructor, and the obligations
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both to protect one’s own academic work from misuse by others as well as to avoid using
another’s work as one’s own. All students are expected to understand and abide by these
principles. Scampus, the Student Guidebook, contains the Student Conduct Code in Section
11.00, while the recommended sanctions are located in Appendix A:
http://web-app.usc.edu/scampus/1100-behavior-violating-university-standards-and-appropriatesanctions/
USC has provided a very helpful guide to recognizing and avoiding plagiarism. Please
familiarize yourself with this guide and ask me if you have any questions. The guide can be
found here:
http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/SJACS/forms/tig.pdf
Students will be referred to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards for
further review, should there be any suspicion of academic dishonesty. The Review process can
be found at: http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/SJACS/.
Plagiarism or cheating will result in a failing grade for the course.
Policies on Extensions:
Illnesses. Only students who can produce medical documentation from a licensed health
professional will be granted an extension on papers and other assignments.
Family Emergencies. Other sudden and unexpected circumstances will be considered if students
can produce a letter of support from campus student services.
Criteria for Assessing Participation
Grade
You frequently make original and thoughtful contributions that spark discussion, offering
analytical comments based on the readings and relevant topics. You engage with other
students, always come prepared.
You make significant and frequent contributions that demonstrate insight as well as
knowledge of readings and relevant topics.
You make useful contributions and participate voluntarily, based upon some reflection and
familiarity with required readings.
You sometimes voluntarily make comments, though infrequently and only linked to the most
basic points of readings or topics.
You make limited comments only when asked, do not participate in conversations and show
little in-class engagement with the readings and topics.
You rarely make comments, come to class unprepared, or make irrelevant comments
disruptive to class discussion
You make no contributions to discussion, are not actively engaged in class or rarely attend.
A+
A/AB/B+
BC+
C/CD
Electronics Policy:
This is a small class that is based primarily on student discussion and participation. It is thus
extremely important that you give your full attention to the class and your classmates. For this
reason, I ask you to please turn off all cell phones, tablets, ipods, and any other electronic
communication devices before class starts. Further, I strongly discourage you from using your
laptop during class. If you do use your laptop during the class, please turn off your wi-fi access
and use your computer only to take notes or read course-related documents. Failure to do so will
negatively impact your participation grade.
REQUIRED TEXTS
Selected readings available on blackboard and through electronic reserve (ARES)
Roberts, Dorothy E. 2011. Fatal invention: how science, politics, and big business re-create race
in the twenty-first century. New York: New Press.
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Jordan-Young, Rebecca. 2010. Brain storm: the flaws in the science of sex differences.
Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Metzl, Jonathan. 2009. The protest psychosis: how schizophrenia became a Black disease.
Boston: Beacon Press.
COURSE SCHEDULE AND READING ASSIGNMENTS
Part I: Science of Race and Gender
WEEK 1: AUGUST 28 // Intro
WEEK 2: SEPTEMBER 4 // Histories of Sexed and Raced Bodies
Roberts, Dorothy. 2011. Fatal Invention. Ch. 1, “The Invention of Race,” and Ch. 2, “Separating
Racial Science from Racism.” Pp. 3-54.
Oudshoorn, Nelly. 1994. Beyond the Natural Body: an archeology of sex hormones.
Introduction, pp. 1-14. (Bb)
Fausto-Sterling, Ann. 1995. “The Five Sexes” (Bb)
Suggested reading:
Roberts, Celia. 2002. “A Matter of Embodied Fact: Sex hormones and the History of
Bodies.” Feminist Theory 3(1): 7-26.
Reardon, Jenny. 2005. Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of
Genomics. Ch. 2: “Post-World War II Expert Discourses on Race” (17-44).
WEEK 3: SEPTEMBER 11 // Thinking about Science as Social and Cultural
Nancy Leys Stepan. 1993. “Race and Gender: The Role of Analogy in Science.” In The Racial
Economy of Science, edited by Sandra Harding. Bloomington: Indiana Univ Press, 359-376.
(Bb)
Martin, Emily. 1991. “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based
on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles.” Signs 16(3): 485-501. (Bb)
Oudshoorn, Nelly. The Male Pill: A Biography of a Technology in the Making. Ch. 1 “Designing
Technology and Masculinity: Challenging the Invisibility of Male Bodies in Scientific
Medicine” (3-17). (Bb)
Suggested reading:
Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modest Witness@Second.Millennium. FemaleMan Meets
Oncomouse. New York: Routledge. pp. 23-39 in Ch. 1.
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WEEK 4: SEPTEMBER 18 // Human/Animal and Nature/Culture
Schiebinger, Londa. 2004. Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science. New
Brunswick: Rutgers Press. Ch. 2, “Why Mammals are Called Mammals” (40-74). (Bb)
Terry, Jennifer. 2000. “‘Unnatural Acts’ in Nature: The Scientific Fascination with Queer
Animals.” GLQ 6(2):151-193. (Bb)
Thompson, Charis. 2002. “When Elephants Stand for Competing Philosophies of Nature:
Amboseli National Park, Kenya” in Complexities: social studies of knowledge practices. (166190). (Bb)
Suggested reading:
Haraway, Donna. 1996. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and
the Privilege of Partial Perspective” In Feminism and Science, edited by Evelyn Fox
Keller and Helen E. Longino. New York: Oxford Press, 249-263.
Part II: Race, Gender, Medicine
WEEK 5: SEPTEMBER 25 // Medical Research: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Sexuality
Briggs, Laura. 2002. Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto
Rico. Berkeley: UC Press. Ch. 4, “Demon Mothers in the Social Laboratory: Development,
Overpopulation, and “The Pill,” 1940-1960” (109-141). (Bb)
Washington, Harriet. 2006. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on
Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Doubleday. Ch 7, “‘A
Notoriously Syphilis-Soaked Race’: What Really Happened at Tuskegee” (157-185). (Bb)
Landecker, Hannah. 2000. “Immortality, In vitro: A History of the HeLa Cell Line.” Pp. 53-73
in Biotechnology and Culture: Bodies, Anxieties, Ethics, edited by Paul Brodwin. (Bb)
Suggested reading:
Marks, Lara. 2001. Sexual Chemistry: A History of the Contraceptive Pill. New Haven:
Yale Press. Ch. 4, “Human Guinea Pigs?” (89-115).
Epstein, Steven. 2007. Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research, Ch. 9
“The Science of Recruitmentology and the Politics of Trust” (182-202)
Due in class: Research Question and Methods Memo
WEEK 6: OCTOBER 2 // The Politics of Medical Research: Inclusion, Difference, and
Globalization
Library Class – MEET AT THE LIBRARY AT 4PM – Location TBA
Roberts, Dorothy. 2011. Fatal Invention. Ch. 5, “The Allure of Race in Biomedical Research.”
Pp. 104-122.
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Epstein, Steven. 2004. “Bodily Differences and Collective Identities: The Politics of Gender and
Race in Biomedical Research in the United States.” Body & Society 10:183 (Bb)
Petryna, Adriana. 2007. “Globalizing Human Subjects Research” Pp. 33-60 in Global
Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practices, edited by Petryna, Lakoff, and Kleinman. Durham:
Duke Univ Press. (Bb)
WEEK 7: OCTOBER 9 // Diagnosing Difference and Producing Raced (and Gendered) Bodies
Shim, Janet. 2005. “Constructing Race across the Science-Lay Divide: Racial Formation in the
Epidemiology and Experience of Cardiovascular Disease.” Social Studies of Science 35(3): 405436. (Bb)
Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 2008. “The Bare Bones of Race.” Social Studies of Science 38(5): 657694. (Bb)
Kaw, Eugenia. 2003. “Medicalization of Racial Features: Asian-American Women and Cosmetic
Surgery,” pp.184-200 in Rose Weitz (ed.), The Politics of Women’s Bodies (2nd ed.). (Bb)
Suggested reading:
Kahn, Jonathan. 2008. “Exploiting Race in Drug Development: BiDil’s Interim Model of
Pharmacogenetics.” Social Studies of Science 38(5):737-758.
WEEK 8: OCTOBER 16 // Diagnosing Difference and Producing Gendered (and Raced)
Bodies
Karkazis, Katrina. 2008. Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience. Duke
University Press. Ch. 4: “Boy or Girl? Bodies of Mixed Evidence and Gender Assignment” pp.
89-122 and Ch. 5 “Fixing Sex: Surgery and the Production of Normative Sexuality” (133-176).
(Bb)
Roberts, Celia. 2007. Messengers of Sex: Hormones, Biomedicine, and Feminism. New York:
Cambridge Univ Press. Ch. 4 “Elixirs of Sex: Hormone Replacement Therapies and Everyday
Life” (111-136). (Bb)
In-class film: “XXXY” (12 min.)
Suggested reading:
Mamo, Laura and Jennifer Fishman. 2002. “Potency in all the Right Places: Viagra as a
technology of the gendered body.” Body and Society 7(4):13-35.
THURSDAY, October 18 – Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography DUE on Blackboard
WEEK 9: OCTOBER 23 // Race, Gender and “New” Reproductive Technologies
Almeling, Renee. 2011. Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm. Ch. 4: “Selling
Genes, Selling Gender” pp. 52-84. (Bb)
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Thompson, Charis. 2005. Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive
Technologies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ch. 5: Strategic Naturalizing: Kinship, Race, and
Ethnicity (145-178). (Bb)
Pande, Amrita. 2009. “It May Be Her Egg, But It’s My Blood: Surrogates and Everyday Forms
of Kinship in India.” Qualitative Sociology 32: 379-397.
WEEK 10: OCTOBER 30 // Race, Gender, and Mental Illness
Metzl, Johnathan. 2009. The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease.
 Preface “The Protest Psychosis” (ix-xxi)
 Ch. 7 “Categories” (56-69),
 Ch. 13 “A Racialized Disease” (95-108),
 Ch. 18 “Power, Knowledge, and Diagnostic Revision” (145-159)
+ additional selections TBA
Watters, Ethan. 2010. “The Americanization of Mental Illness.” (Bb)
WEEK 11: NOVEMBER 6 // Different Brains?
Jordan-Young, Rebecca. 2011. Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences.
(selections TBA)
Part III: Genetics/Genomics
WEEK 12: NOVEMBER 13 // Sex and Race – In the Genes?
Roberts, Dorothy. 2011. Fatal Invention. Ch. 3, “Redefining Race in Genetic Terms.” Pp. 57-80.
Richardson, Sarah. 2012. “Sexing the X: How the X became the “female chromosome.” Signs
37(4):909-933. (Bb)
Ossorio, Pilar and Troy Duster. 2005. “Race and Genetics: Controversies in Biomedical,
Behavioral, and Forensic Sciences.” American Psychologist 60:115-126. (Bb)
Suggested Reading:
Dupre, John. 2008. “What Genes Are and Why There Are No Genes for Race.” In
Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age, edited by Koenig, Lee, and Richardson. New
Brunswick: Rutgers Press, 39-55.
THURSDAY, November 15 – Data and Analysis Memo DUE on Blackboard
WEEK 13: NOVEMBER 20 // Making Use of Genomics and Race
Fulwiley, Duana. 2008. “The Biologistical Construction of Race: ‘Admixture’ Technology and
the New Genetic Medicine.” Social Studies of Science 38(5): 695-735. (Bb)
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Nelson, Alondra. 2008. “Bio Science: Genetic Genealogy Testing and the Pursuit of African
Ancestry.” Social Studies of Science 38(5):759-783. (Bb)
Benjamin, Ruha. 2009. "A Lab of Their Own: Genomic sovereignty as postcolonial science
policy." Policy and Society 28(4):341-355. (Bb)
Suggested reading:
Reardon, Jenny and Kimberly TallBear. 2012. “Your DNA is Our History: Genomics,
Anthropology, and Whiteness as Property.” Current Anthropology 53(S5):S233-S245.
Additional suggested reading:
Keller, Evelyn Fox. 2011. The Mirage of a Space between Nature and Nurture.
WEEK 14: NOVEMBER 27 // Student Research Presentations
WEEK 15: DECEMBER 4 // Student Research Presentations OR Peer Review of paper drafts
**FINAL PAPERS DUE**
Tuesday, December 18 by 6pm
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