WGS302: Gender(s), Sexualit(ies), and Homophobia(s)

Summer 2010 – Online

This Course’s Facebook Group: WGS302: Gender, Sexuality, and Homophobia

Please join this group no later than Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Instructor: Ami Blue Email: blueami@msu.edu

Facebook: www.facebook.com/abluedude Skype: abluedude

WGS Course Description: Formerly WMS 300. Intensive study of selected topics highlighting the
interdisciplinary nature of gender studies, including feminist theory and practice. Special topics courses
include, but are not limited to: Gender, Sexuality and Homophobia; Masculinity and Contemporary
Culture; Gender and Terrorism; and many others. May be retaken for a maximum of six hours, provided
the topics are different.

Materials
Fausto-Sterling, Anne. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York:
Basic Books, 2000.
Bohjalian, Chris. Trans-Sister Radio: A Novel. New York: Harmony, 2000.
Additional readings made available through email attachment, Facebook links to free online content,
and Blackboard.
Other required materials: EKU email address, Internet access, Facebook account, YouTube account,
access to webcam (optional, for optional video uploads).

WGS Course Objectives: This course addresses the following learning objectives.
1. Students will apply critical thinking and social analysis to prepare themselves for effective
participation in increasingly complex national and global multicultural relations.
2. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the historical, cultural, political, economic, and
social influences that have contributed to the development of expectations based on race,
gender and sexuality for the purpose of developing an understanding that goes beyond
stereotype, myth, and prejudice.
3. Students will demonstrate an ability to understand race, gender, and sexuality as social
constructions.
4. Students will demonstrate an ability to gather, interpret, and assess materials (or information) to
help them to appreciate the historical struggles for racial/ethnic minorities’, women's, and gay
rights in the United States.

Course-Specific Objectives: Upon completion of the course, students will:

1. Assess the impact of social structure and culture on gender and sexuality
2. Analyze gender as a social construction
3. Demonstrate the ability to gather, interpret and assess materials relating to the historical
struggle for LGBT rights in the United States
4. Analyze LGBT issues from multi-ethnic and multi-cultural perspectives
5. Evaluate the current debates and issues in the field of LGBT and queer studies

General Course Overview

This course’s title, “Gender(s), Sexualit(ies), and Homophobia(s),” parenthetically illustrates the need to
examine all of the multiple and various enactments of genders, sexualities, and homophobias, not just
the one or two, socially-approved ways that are marketed to us through popular media and other
institutions. This course, dependent on technology and self-education through participation and
activism, will introduce you to the ever-expanding and diverse fields of Women and Gender studies,
particularly the current focus on gender and sexuality; while our readings concern themselves mostly
with gender and sexuality, it is your responsibility to bring out the theme of “homophobias.” To do this,
while you are reading, you should be constantly on the lookout for homophobia and its closely-related
allies, homonegativity and heteronormativity. In addition to the textbooks you should purchase (see
above), each of you will build your own reference manual that includes sources not found in your
textbook. I’ll help you to compile readings and videos on women, men, feminism, masculinity, and
sexuality so that by the time the semester is over, you will understand the broad scope of the
intersecting and overlapping course themes, gender, sexuality, and homophobia.

Each week, you will be responsible for 100-150 pages of reading from the textbook, free Internet,
novels, and PDF’d articles that I’ll send you through your EKU email account. You should critically read
each article and watch any accompanying videos I post on Facebook, sometimes rereading or
rewatching until you’re sure you understand the scope of the readings. This class depends on your
enthusiastic engagement, so it’s up to you how much effort you put into understanding difficult
vocabulary or heretofore foreign concepts; you’d be surprised at how much better you’ll understand
new information if you keep a dictionary site and a Google search screen up on your nearby computer.
Take the initiative in online summer classes to teach yourself. Each week, Monday through Wednesday,
you will have conversations with the instructor and other students through informal, loose Facebook
Wall chatter; this will take place on Fb Discussion Boards clearly labeled for each specific topic. At the
end of each week, on Thursdays and Fridays, you’ll post a more formal, academic response to the wall of
that week’s Fb Event (see details below in Assignment Descriptions). You can navigate to these separate
sections of our Fb Group using the tabs at the top of the Facebook Group wall, primarily “Discussions”
and “Events.” (Note that you must mark Events as “Attending” before you can access the Events wall.)

At the end of the semester, you will post a final project that you will work on throughout the semester (I
will post the assignment description for this project no later than week 2 of the semester as an email
attachment; I will post on the Fb wall once I’ve sent the email so that you can get started right away).
This project, loosely defined, will ask you to zoom in on a specific subtopic of the course, keep track of it
as you progress through the reading, and then produce a written or oral report of your findings at the
end of the course, which will include both material from the 6 end-of-the-week posts you’ll submit as
well as your own independent research throughout the course of this semester. In week three, you’ll
post your research question, by week 5, you’ll start to map out your final paper, and by the last week,
you’ll submit a thorough response to your own question. Your semester grade will be determined based
on your weekly participation and active engagement on the Discussion Boards and Events walls, as well
as your progress throughout the semester toward—and your creativity and presentation of—your final
project. You should always keep in mind as you’re creating each week’s informal and formal responses
that your goal in doing so is to engage other thinking minds in academic discussion about gender;
mindless bickering should be avoided.

Technology and Reading Component

This course depends heavily on technology and on reading. You will read resources from the Internet,
participate in Blackboard discussion boards, access information through a variety of electronic means,
prepare YouTube.com presentations, and check your email and Facebook daily. You will read a lot each
week from the textbook or materials I link/send. I will say again: this course relies heavily on reading and
reading comprehension; in addition to the 100-or-so pages you’ll read more formally for the class, you’ll
also get to know other classmates and the instructor primarily through textual interactions. Please be
aware before we even begin this semester that you will spend the majority of your time interacting with
me through writing and reading, although you have the option of using alternative media for your
responses (such as YouTube.com, see below).

Assignment Descriptions
Facebook Discussion Board Chatter
Mondays through Wednesdays, you will participate in a Discussion Board on Fb by chiming in with your
comments, concerns, questions, reactions, responses, etc. These are informal, friendly discussions like
the ones you would have in a lecture classroom, a place where students should feel free to say what
they want as long as it’s respectful, thoughtful, and moves the conversation about gender forward into
new and unexplored territories (this can mean a variety of things to each person in the course, as we all
come from different gender histories). To prepare for these DBs, you should read all or part of the
material, stop in and browse the site, then go back and finish reading or skim the readings for the week.
You should stop in and add your thoughts to the wall more than once a week; you should stay active on
the walls and help others examine their own topics or questions by constantly referring back to the text
and to your own independent research.

You should avoid making a lot of statements that begin with “I believe,” challenging yourself instead to
ask questions of the text or to apply the texts’ ideas to your own research question, experiences, or
observations. You should post links to videos and websites you’ve found that address the topic under
discussion as well as responses to other students’ comments and questions; if you post something, you
should always contextualize it by telling why you’re posting it, how it fits into the discussion we’re
already having, or why it affirms/contests a topic we’ve been considering. Similarly, be sure if you are
responding to someone you make it clear to whom and to what you’re responding so the students and I
know where your comment fits in to the larger discussion.

So much of our class depends on your ability to keep up with the forum-like discussions, so to facilitate
that, you should make at least three responses to each weekly Discussion Board and you should check
back a few times a week to read what others have said (and respond to others if you so choose). I will
also be contributing to the chatter with news articles, YouTube videos, and other posts to expand our
discussion outside of the confines of our textbook. So should you! Discussion board chatter will count
toward your weekly attendance and in-class participation. You should spend approximately 45 minutes a
day Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday catching up with the Fb chatter on DB walls, which means you
should be reading them thoroughly and offering thoughtful and possibly even researched responses that
will help us dive further into the intersecting and overlapping concepts of gender, sexuality, and
homophobia.

These DBs are supposed to help each one of us as we conduct our own research on our theme
throughout the semester. Present some thoughts you’re trying to work out in your mind and let other
people react. Ask questions that your research is bringing up and see how others, with their own
research in mind, respond. It’s meant to be a place for intellectual banter, much like a professional
listserv, but that means that your job is to bring research and helpful information, not your personal
beliefs, complaints, or stereotypes. Keeping the level of these DBs “academic” and “professional” will
require some boundary-setting and policing in the first few weeks, but we’ll get it worked out together.
End-of-the-Week Facebook Events
At the end of each week, on Thursday and Friday, you will post a 500-word more-formal discussion of
the week’s topics onto the “Event” wall marked for that week. In this response, you should reference all
of the sources we’ve read from that week’s syllabus. You do not need to include a Works Cited, but you
should make sure that readers know which source you’re using by supplying us with the name of the
author as well as the title of the work. You might even include a page number in parentheses if you’re
referring to a specific page. I’ll post new events weekly with questions for you to consider as you’re
reading, but you should feel free to take your own approach to these end-of-week responses if you’ve
really been pondering something and feel like you need to express your thoughts about it. These
reflections should be academic in nature, critically engaged, mature, and thoughtful. Your responses
should be composed in a word processor (like MS Word) so that you can insure good spelling and
grammar, then you should copy/paste them onto the wall of that week’s event.

To respond, you’ll first have to mark that you’re “Attending” the week’s events. Then, scroll down to the
bottom of the page where you will find the opportunity to add comments to the wall. Your first posted
comment should be the title of your posting; beneath the title, you should “respond” to your own post
with the body of your essay. I’ve given an example of this on week one’s Events wall.

Alternately, you can choose to respond each week via a video response, but you must master YouTube
on your own as we do not have time to teach it in this course. If you choose to upload a video response
rather than a written one, your video must still reference all of the week’s readings, as explained above,
and it should be 7-10 minutes in duration. You can record yourself speaking into a webcam or you can
use video editing software to come up with something more creative and dynamic. If you use
YouTube.com, you should create an account, upload, and then link us to the video in the appropriate
Discussion Board or Event. If you choose to create a video, you should insure that the video is of high
quality, that you’ve practiced what you will say so that your argument is cogent and well-articulated. In
short, your video should be as well-polished, revised, and edited as the written work that you’d submit.

I will respond to these posts over the weekend, and in addition to grading the responses with a point
value (see below), I will let you know in my response what you’re doing really well and where you might
improve in the future. Your course grade will reflect your ability to take my advice and suggestions and
to build on them in order to become a more academic and critically-engaged Women’s Studies student.

Final Project: Theme and Question Analysis

This project will be announced shortly after the semester begins, and you will have until the end of the
term to complete it. It can be completed in the form of a 7-10 page essay response or a 10-15 minute
YouTube video upload.

Course Policies
General Questions
I’ve created a Discussion Board on Facebook called “General Discussion” for your general questions,
comments, and concerns. Rather than emailing the instructor to ask general questions or make general
observations, you should post them here so that other students can benefit from your questions and the
responses that the instructor or other students post. Feel free to ask anything here, and you should also
feel free to answer questions or comment if you know how to help a student in need.

Facebook, Skype, and “Office Hours”

Because we will be using Facebook to conduct class, those who do not feel comfortable sharing their
“real” Facebook page with the group should create a new account for the purposes of this class. If you
choose to use your real Facebook page, you should be aware of your privacy settings, which dictate who
can see what on your Facebook page, including wall posts, photos, comments, updates, notes, etc. You
can limit who sees what, and you do not have to ‘friend’ anyone in our class in order to participate in
Discussion Boards and Events in our group.

As the first block of information at the top of this document suggests, I will be holding office hours
throughout the semester via Facebook chat and Skype. These office hours will not be scheduled, but if
I’m at my computer reading your responses, I will have both Facebook chat and Skype open; if you’ve
friended me on Facebook, or if you’ve added me on Skype, you should feel free to chat with me when
you see me online so that you can ask me questions about the course or just talk through some issues
you’re having with the work load, readings, and Facebook layout. If you would like to meet with me at a
specific time, send me a Facebook or email message and we can negotiate a time to text chat using
either of these services. My Facebook address and Skype account are listed at the top of this document.

Late Work
Absolutely no late work will be accepted during the semester without an extremely worthwhile excuse
(I’ll judge). Computer and technology problems are not worthwhile excuses, so you should always be
sure to save often and occasionally email yourself assignments or upload the important ones to a web
server or hard drive. You can contact EKU’s ITDS at (859) 622-3000 for assistance with on-campus
Internet connections.

Grading
The semester’s assignments are listed below alongside their point values. You should assume that you’re
in good standing in the course unless I email you specifically to encourage you to engage more
specifically in some aspect of the class. There’s no competition for grades here; everyone can get an A if
each of you demonstrates a willingness to think, participate, and critically engage the readings and
classroom discussions. Your grade will be lowered if you fail to participate, critically read and respond, or
fall behind in the assignments.

Weekly Participation and Engagement 10 points @ 7 weeks = 70 points

End-of-the-week Events Wall Postings 20 points @ 6 weeks = 120 points
Final Project 100 points 100 points

A 90-100%
B 80-89%
C 70-79%
D 60-69%
F below 60%

Academic Honesty
Students are advised that EKU's Academic Integrity Policy will strictly be enforced in this course. The
Academic Integrity policy is available at www.academicintegrity.eku.edu. Questions regarding the policy
may be directed to the Office of Academic Integrity. I consider academic dishonesty at this level of
education to be any use of anyone else’s words or work without giving them proper credit (in this class,
this means citing the name of your source and its author, either through parenthetical citations or
through speaking their names in video posts). It also means you can’t reuse assignments from other
classes or concurrently submit assignments in two classes. If you plagiarize, you will receive an F on the
assignment.

Attendance
I’ll take attendance every week to insure that you’re responding to one another and keeping up with the
online chatter. You should strive to spend approximately 45 minutes to one hour a day on Facebook
catching up and adding your voice in the form of comments, questions, and critical interpretations, both
of the content you’ve read and the content that’s been posted by myself and your classmates. This one
hour a day on Facebook is the equivalent to the one hour a day you would spend in a summer class. The
readings are, of course, to be done outside of this class time, much like they’d be done outside of class
were we meeting face-to-face. As you know if you’ve taken summer classes before, keeping up with the
pace of the work is half the battle. You should set aside approximately 2.5 hours each weekday to
complete all of the assigned readings, viewings, chatter, and discussion.

Respect Clause
Class time is for sharing ideas about the topic at hand. Respect your classmates and me by treating
people kindly. This means reading each others’ posts with open minds, critically thinking instead of
dismissing comments without thought. I have the right to ask you to leave if you continuously disrespect
the class. Also remember that Facebook and MySpace are public networks, and the things you say or
post on these sites get around. Respect yourself and respect others.

Disabilities Statement
If you are registered with the Office of Services for Individuals with Disabilities, please make an
appointment with the course instructor to discuss any academic accommodations you need. If you need
academic accommodations and are not registered with the Office of Services for Individuals with
Disabilities, please contact the office on the third floor of the Student Services Building, by email at
disabilities@eku.edu or by telephone at (859) 622-2933 V/TDD. Upon individual request, this syllabus
can be made available in alternative forms.

Tentative Schedule of Readings and Assignments

Below, you’ll find the tentative schedule of assignments. Readings or postings below marked with an
asterisk (*) will be posted on Facebook as links to the free Internet or they will be sent to you at the
beginning of the week as a PDF through your EKU email. Those not marked with an asterisk can be
found in your textbooks. Some readings are extremely short; others are a bit longer. I ask that you read
and reread each article until you understand the content (some are more difficult than others).

Week/ Readings Response

Topic
Date Assignments
*Nielson, Walden, and Kunkel, Mon-Wed – DB/Wall
“Gendered Heteronormativity: chatter
Emperical Illustrations in Everyday
Heteronormativity
1 Life” (JSTOR) Thur-Fri – Events Wall
&
June 7-11 *CSUN, “Heterosexism and Post
Heterosexism
Heteronormativity” (Fb)
*Walter, “Why is There So Much More
Movie Violence Against Women?”
 (Fb)
*Healy, “Changing What We Mean”
(Fb)

Fausto-Sterling, chapters 1-2 (1-44) Mon-Wed – DB/Wall

Bohjalian, chapters 1-6 chatter
2 Intro to Sex and
Thur-Fri – Events
June 14-18 Sexuality
Posting, including
theme

Fausto-Sterling, chapters 3-4 (45-115) Mon-Wed – DB/Wall

Bohjalian, chapters 7-10 chatter
3
Gender & Sex
June 21-25 Thur-Fri –
Events/Theme

Fausto-Sterling, chapters 5-6 (115-69) Mon-Wed – DB/Wall

Bohjalian, chapters 11-16 chatter
4
Bodies, Brains,
June 28-
Genders, and Sexes Thur-Fri –
July 2
Events/Theme

Fausto-Sterling, chapters 7-8 (170-232) Mon-Wed – DB/Wall

Bohjalian, chapters 17-25 chatter
5
Gendered Bodies
July 5-9 Thur-Fri –
Events/Theme

Fausto-Sterling, chapter 9 (233-57) Mon-Wed – DB/Wall

Bohjalian, chapters 26-35 chatter
6 Conclusion: Gendered
July 12-16 Systems Thur-Fri –
Events/Theme

Bohjalian, chapters 36-40 Mon-Wed – DB/Wall

Homophobia
7 *Reading, TBA chatter
&
July 19-23
Homonegativity
Reread your own postings on your
theme and conclude the semester Final Theme
Final with your theme analysis & Presentation
synthesis.