Spring 2011 Socl 7256: Graduate Concentration Foundation Course- - Sociology of Gender
Professor Linda M. Blum
Office: 543 Holmes (ext. 4995)
Class Mtgs: Tues 4:30 to 6:30 pm,
Office Hrs: Tues/Fri 2 to 3 pm & by
In 540 Holmes
appt at l.blum@neu.edu
Description: This course, the foundation for the graduate concentration in the sociology of
gender, introduces the key contributions which feminist sociologists have made to gender
studies and to sociology itself. As such, it provides a more disciplinary rather than
interdisciplinary focus for the graduate level of study, but is an appropriate elective for those
pursuing the graduate certificate in Women’s/Gender/Sexuality Studies. We will examine the
origins of the field, but will spend the majority of the semester scrutinizing important directions
in research within the burgeoning of both conceptual and empirical work on the sociology of
gender in the last three decades.
We will first examine the emergence of feminist critiques of mainstream sociology in the mid20th-century, i.e., of Parsonian structural functionalism, as well as feminist critiques of critical or
Marxist sociology. To move to current research, we will summarize key conceptual, theoretical
developments, to rapidly move through the critique of “sex role” theory to the complex,
multilayered notions of gender we now employ. These incorporate institutional and symbolic
interactionist/performative perspectives and conceptualize gender as macro-institutional and
ideological, yet also as an interactional accomplishment and an aspect of identity.
Intersectional theories and research will also be emphasized, as we examine how gender is
constructed within, and co-constructs, historically specific class and ethnoracial formations.
Current debates in the field will be introduced, including the incorporation of
global/transnational concerns, studies of masculinities, and the place of the body and sexuality
studies. As possible, core faculty from the Sociology of Gender concentration will join us for
discussion of their research and how it fits into the burgeoning field.
Requirements
Preparation and Participation:
25%
The course will be run on a seminar basis, relying on all members to prepare conscientiously
and participate actively each week. To facilitate this, 5 short reaction papers will be required.
These should be two double-spaced, succinctly written pages (12pt, 700 words) which do not
summarize, but engage with major arguments. You might compare and contrast articles,
connect them to those discussed in previous weeks, and/or identify puzzles, contradictions, or
problems in the readings important to your own research interests. Each reaction paper should
raise two “middle-range” discussion questions aiming to strengthen our grasp of the required
readings; that is, questions should emerge directly from and speak directly to the materials at
hand rather than any global conundrum.
Please post to Bb Discussion Board within the week’s thread by 6pm on the Sunday prior to
the seminar meeting scheduled for these materials.
Discussion Leader:
15%
Each member (in pairs depending on enrollment) will facilitate or lead discussion twice during
the semester. This involves making a brief introductory presentation (aim for 10 minutes as
total for both together) whose purpose is to compare and contrast major
arguments/theories/research approaches and findings from the week’s required readings, with
2
the option to add a very brief review of any recommended reading. The leader/s should also
complete a careful reading of members’ reaction papers and organize or synthesize member’s
discussion questions for us, including the latter in a two-page (max!) hand-out which also lays
out the week’s central questions, key concepts and/or theoretical frameworks, research
approaches and findings.
Paper proposal:
5%
A two-page proposal for the seminar paper will be due on Tues Feb 22nd. This should include
a central research question or a theoretical framework to be tested or extended; if a research
option (see below) then also include a brief explanation of primary or secondary data to be
used; and for either approach (as below) a preliminary bibliography including at least 3
academic books (university presses preferred) and 5 articles from academic or scholarly peerreviewed journals.
Peer review:
5%
Seminar paper drafts will be exchanged via email by 6 pm Mon Apr 11, with peer review
comments due by Tues Apr 19 with a copy to your peer-partner and to LMB.
Seminar Paper:
50%
Course members have two options:
1. a literature review paper attempting to answer a theoretical question from the Sociology
of Gender. Students may choose this option to prepare for comprehensive exams or
dissertation proposals, but should understand that such essays do not summarize one study
after another. Essays should be synthetic and critical, illuminating debates in the field in a
pointed manner to clarify both “the state of the art” on your topic and the direction you think
the field should move in.
2. an empirical research paper based on data you have, will collect (rapidly), or are
currently analyzing (secondary data). Such papers should include a review of pertinent
literature to frame your research question and your original analysis and findings. Students may
choose this option to “pilot” a dissertation project, to prepare a paper for conference
submission, or (with approval of COGs and your committee) in preparation for a comp exam.
Draft (as above) for peer review -- 6 pm Mon Apr 11 email to assigned partner
Peer review comments -- 6 pm Mon Apr 18
email to partner and to LMB
Final Paper due – 9 am Mon Apr 25
digital and hard-copy to LMB
Schedule of Course Meetings:
Week 1
Intro to the Course
Required: Acker, Joan. 1992. “From Sex Roles to Gendered Institutions.”
Contemporary Sociology 21, 5: 265-269.
Recommended: Blum, Linda M. and Nena F. Stracuzzi. 2004. “Gender in the Prozac Nation:
Popular Discourse and Productive Femininity.” Gender & Society 18, 3: 269-286.
Lorber, Judith. 1993. “Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology.” Gender & Society 7, 4:
568-581. (Often reprinted.)
Lorber, Judith. 1994. Paradoxes of Gender. New Haven: Yale University Press.
3
Week 2
Second-Wave Feminists In/Responding to Sociology – Mainstream and Critical
Required: Parsons, Talcott. 1958. “The American Family: It’s Relation to
Personality and to the Social Structure.” In Parsons and Bales, ed. Family, Socialization and
Interaction Process.
Oakley, Ann. 2005. “Part 4: Doing Social Science, Introduction” and “The
Invisible Woman: Sexism in Sociology” (orig. 1974). In Oakley, The Ann Oakley Reader: Gender,
Women and Social Science. Bristol, UK: Polity Press.
Hartmann, Heidi. 1979. “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism.”
Capitalism and Class 8. (Often reprinted.)
Stacey, Judith, and Barrie Thorne. 1985. “The Missing Feminist Revolution in
Sociology.” Social Problems 32: 301-216. (often reprinted.)
Recommended: Blum, Linda M. rev. of Gatrell, C., Hard Labor: The Sociology of Parenthood
and Ann Oakley, The Ann Oakley Reader. Sociological Review (UK) 54, 3: 595-598 (1500 words).
Engels, Freidrich. 1884. “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.” In
R. Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader.
Smith, Dorothy. 1987. Intro and Part Two, Chapter Two, “Sociology for Women.” In The
Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology.” Boston: Northeastern University Press.
2006. Special Issue, “The Missing Feminist Revolution in Sociology.” Social Problems 53:4.
Week 3
From Adding Women to Gender as a Category of Analysis
Required on gendered institutions: Acker, Joan. 1990. “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A
Theory of Gendered Organizations.” Gender & Society 4: 139-158.
Spalter-Roth, Roberta and Heidi Hartmann. 1996. “Small Happinesses: The Feminist
Struggle to Integrate Social Research with Social Activism.” In Feminism and Social Change, ed.
Heidi Gottfried. Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press.
And required on gender interaction/performance: West, Candace and Don H.
Zimmerman. 1987. “Doing Gender.” Gender & Society 1, 2: 125-151.
Messner, Michael A. 2000. “Barbie Girls versus Sea Monsters: Children Constructing
Gender.” Gender & Society 14, 6: 765-784.
Recommended:
Jurik, N.C. and Siemsen. 2009. “Doing Gender as Canon or Agenda: A Symposium on
West & Zimmerman. Gender & Society 23, 1: 72-122.
Steinberg, Ronnie. 1996. “Advocacy Research for Feminist Policy Objectives: The Case
of Comparable Worth.” In Feminism and Social Change, ed. Heidi Gottfried. Urbana IL:
University of Illinois Press.
Thorne, Barrie. 1993. Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers
University Press.
Week 4
Intersectionality: Class, Gender, and Ethnoracial Assignment
Required: Brodkin, Karen. 1998. How Jews Became White Folks. New Brunswick NJ:
Rutgers University Press.
Strongly Recommended: Collins, Patricia Hill; and Barrie Thorne. 1995. Symposium:
Responses to West and Fenstermaker, “Doing Difference.” Gender & Society
4
Recommended: Collins, Patricia Hill. 1990. Black Feminist Thought. NY: Routledge.
Week 5
Intersectionality: Bringing in Bodies and Sexualities
Required: Pascoe, C.J. 2007. Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High
School. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.
Recommended:
Bettie, Julie. 2003. Women Without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity. Berkeley CA:
University of California Press.
Blum, Linda. 1999. At the Breast: Ideologies of Breastfeeding and Motherhood in the
Contemporary United States. Boston: Beacon Press.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2005. Black Sexual Politics. New York: Routledge.
Ferguson, Ann Arnett. 2000. Bad Boys: The Making of Black Masculinity in Public
Schools. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press.
Gender & Society. 2008. Symposium on Anderson’s SWS Presidential Address on
Intersectionality, “Beyond Separate Silos.”
Week 6
Intersectionality, Reproductive Labor and Global Migration
Required: Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. 2001. Domestica. Berkeley: University of
California Press (or 2007, second edition).
Recommended:
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 1992. “From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities
in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor.” Signs 18: 1-43.
Any of burgeoning works cited in Hondagneu-Sotelo, Introduction to second edition.
Week 7
Using Psychoanalytic Theory
Required: Chodorow, Nancy. 1978. The Reproduction of Mothering. Berkeley CA:
University of California Press. selected chapters.
Stein, Arlene. 2005. “Make Room for Daddy: Anxious Masculinity and Emergent
Homophobia in Neopatriarchal Politics.” Gender & Society 19, 5: 601-620.
Recommended:
Breines, Wini. 1992. Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties.
Boston: Beacon Press.
Connell, R.W. 1995. Masculinities.
Martin, Karin. 1996. Puberty, Sexuality, and the Self.
Stein, Arlene. 1997. Sex and Sensibilities: Stories of a Lesbian Generation.
 Research Proposals are due 
*Mar 1 Break Week*
Week 8
Gendered Narratives and Religious/Ethnic Identities
– Joined by Professor Debby Kaufman
Required: Kaufman, Debra. 1991. Rachel’s Daughters. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press. Intro, Chs 1,3.
5
Kaufman, Debra. 2005. “Measuring Jewishness in America: Some Feminist Concerns”
NASHIM: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues, 10: 84-98.
Klatch, Rebecca. 1994. “Women of the New Right in the United States: Family, Feminism
and Politics.” Ch 18 in Identity Politics and Women: Cultural Reassertions and Feminisms in
International Perspectives, edited by Val Moghadam. New York, NY: Westview Press.
Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1994. “Identity Politics and Women’s Ethinicity.” Ch 20 in Identity
Politics and Women: Cultural Reassertions and Feminisms in International Perspectives, edited
by Val Moghadam. New York, NY: Westview Press.
Recommended: Kaufman, Debra. “Engendering Family Theory: Toward a feministinterpretive framework” pp. 107-136 in Fashioning Family Theory, (ed.) J. Sprey, Sage
Publications, 1990.
Week 9
Gender and the State: Western Welfare States
– Joined by Professor Kathrin Zippel
Required: Orloff, Ann Shola. 2009. Gendering the Comparative Analysis of Welfare
States: An Unfinished Agenda. Sociological Theory 27, 3: 317-343.
Zippel, Kathrin S. 2006. Selections from The Politics of Sexual Harassment: A
Comparative Study of the United States, the European Union, and Germany. Cambridge
University Press. Chs 1,6.
Recommended: Eisenstein, Hester. Gender Shock and other work on working within the
state as an Australian “femocrat.”
Ferree, Mrya Marx and Pat Martin, ed. 1995. Feminist Organizations. [US feminist
organizations and contradictions of articulation with the state]
Gornick, Janet and Marcia Meyers. 2003. Families that Work. New York: Russell Sage.
[comparative EU and U.S. work-family policies]
Haney, Lynne and Lisa Pollard, ed. 2003. Families of a New World: Gender, Politics, and
State Development in a Global Context. New York: Routledge. [even more broadly
comparative]
Hays, Sharon. 2003. Flat Broke With Children. New York: Oxford University Press. [US
welfare policy and gender relations]
Orloff, Ann Shola. 1993. “Gender and the Social Rights of Citizenship: The
Comparative Analysis of Gender Relations and Welfare States.” American Sociological Review
58, 3: 303-328.
Orloff, Ann Shola. 1996. “Gender in the Welfare State.” Annual Review of Sociology 22:
51-78. [extending framework from ‘93]
Week 10
Gender, Islam, and the State
– Joined by Professor Berna Turam
Required: Arat, Yesim. 2000. “From Emancipation to Liberation: The Changing Role of
Women in Turkey’s Public Realm.” Journal of International Affairs 54, 1: 107-123.
Charrad, Mounira. Excerpts from 2001. States and Women’s Rights: The Making of
Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.
6
Turam, Berna. 2007. Between Islam and the State: The Politics of Engagement.
Palo Alto CA: Stanford University Press. Ch 5.
Recommended: Charrad, Mounira. 2009. “Kinship, Islam or Oil: Culprits of Gender
Inequality?” Politics and Gender 5, 4.
Turam, Berna. 2008. "Turkish Women Divided by Politics: Secular Activism versus
Islamic Non-defiance." International Feminist Journal of Politics 10, 4.
Week 11
Queer and Transgender Studies
Required: Meadows, Tey. 2010. “’A Rose is a Rose’: On Producing Legal Gender
Classifications.” Gender & Society 24,6: 814-837.
Valentine, David. 2007. Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category.
Chapter 5, “The Logic of Inclusion.” Durham NC: Duke University Press.
Valocchi, Stephen. 2005. “Not Yet Queer Enough: The Lessons of Queer Theory for the
Sociology of Gender and Sexuality.” Gender & Society 19, 6: 750-770.
Recommended: H. J. Kim-Puri. 2005. “Conceptualizing Gender-Sexuality-State-Nation.”
Gender & Society 19: 137-159.
Puri, Jyoti. 1999. Women, Body, Desire in Postcolonial India.
Schilt, Kristen. 2006. “Just One of the Guys? How Transmen Make Gender Visible at
Work.” Gender & Society 20: 465-490.
Schilt, Kristen and Laurel Westbrook. 2009. “’Gender Normals,’ Transgendered People,
and the Social Maintenance of Heterosexuality,” Gender & Society.
Also: many other feminist sociologists, now working in sexuality studies and social
construction of heterosexuality: P. England’s new work, E. Armstrong, A. Schalet, G. GonzalezLopez, L. Carpenter, C. Ingraham, K. Luker, etc.
Week 12
Global Masculinities – Alan Klein
-- joined by Professor Alan Klein
Required: Klein, Alan. 2008. “Tender Machos: Masculine Contrasts in the Mexican
Baseball League” Chapter 7 in American Sports: An Anthropological Approach. New York:
Routledge.
Klein, Alan. 2008. “Comic Book Masculinity” Chapter 6 in American Sports: An
Anthropological Approach.
Connell, R.W. and James Messerschmidt. 2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking
the Concept.” Gender & Society 19, 6: 829-859.
Connell, R.W. 1995. Masculinities. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Pp. 810, 20-27, 35-39.
Recommended: Blum, Linda. 2011. “Not Some Big Huge Racial-Type Thing” Signs:
Journal of Women, Culture and Society 36, 4.
Connell, R. 1995. Masculinities. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Week 13
Women, Gender, and Globalization
7
-- Joined by Professor Nina Sylvanus
Required: Freeman, Carla. 2001. “Is Local: Global as Feminine: Masculine? Rethinking
the Gender of Globalization.” Signs: Journal of Women, Culture and Society, Special Issue on
Gender and Globalization 26, 4:1007-1037.
Salzinger, Leslie. 1997. "From High Heels to Swathed Bodies: Gendered Meanings under
Production in Mexico's Export- Processing Industry." Feminist Studies 23, 3: 549-574
Sylvanus, Nina. 2011. “Gender Friction.” Working Paper, Northeastern University.
Bair, Jennifer. “On Difference and Capital: Gender and the Globalization of Production”
Signs: Journal of Women, Culture and Society 36, 1: 203-225.
Recommended: Wolkowitz, Carol. Book Review Essay, three books on gendered bodies
in the global economy. Signs 36, 1: 99-125.
Sylvanus, Nina. 2008. “Chinese Devils, the Global Market and the Declining Power of
Togo’s Commodity Queens” in The Fabric of Globality: West African Women in the World
Commodity Trade.
Week 14
Final Class Meeting - Student Presentations
Draft (as above) for peer review -- 6 pm Mon Apr 11 email to assigned partner
Peer review comments -- 6 pm Mon Apr 18
email to partner and to LMB
Final Paper due – 9 am Mon Apr 25
digital and hard-copy to LMB
Happy Spring-Summer Break!