For me one of the most fascinating aspects of sociology is the ability to study social problems on many different, seperate but interacting elements of people and power. One of my biggest frustrations when learning and trying to understand the unfamiliar is not knowing where problems or phenomenons are situated in and what elements influence them. I wish our education, was less linear but more cyclical, converging or intersecting. 

When I was in 10th grade I first learned about the IMF and World Bank in my humanities class. I did not fully understand what it meant. I didn't know just how powerful it was or how it was connected to and related to people across all levels of power, privlege, access and suffering. It is through my sociology courses that I learned about how the IMF and WB affect the Global South in detremental ways--feminizing poverty, exploiting labor, stripping access to resources and perpetuating neocolonial ideology and structure. I think it is important that how we learn, question and inquire goes beyond what is in front of us. Socio-historical context needs to be explored. Macro forces and institutions need to be taken into consideration just as much as micro forces and interactions between people. 

This is one of the most exciting and challenging assignments I’ve ever received. Laying out a syllabus that uses science fiction to exemplify how and why genre borders blur is daunting. I’ve done the best with what I know, while striving to keep away from works I’ve already read. After all, if we are all going to read together, we might as well all start from A.

Anyway, we have 9 classes so I’ve chosen three books. I think it’s fair, and not too slow to explore one book for three classes. I’ve tried to choose books based on author, summary, theme, and recommendation. However, being that there are so many science fiction novels, I’ve also offered a supplement to try and feed everyone’s “English” hunger.

1st BOOK: 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke.

                I thought it would be best to start with a classic, and read a book that is “obviously” science fiction, just so we can all get our footing before being knocked over. This novel has also been made into a movie and has resulted in many adaptations on tv etc. This can provide us with a multi-media view if we want to go there.

2nd BOOK: Jay’s Journal by Beatrice Sparks.

First, an apology:

At the end of class today, Anne asked us: “What is science?”  Truthfully, I find this question (and all the other definition questions like it) incredibly irksome because I feel that it assumes 2 things:

1. That I haven’t thought about what science is (I have)

Lesson Plan?

Day 1- As several people expressed an interest in learning about the "basics" of feminism, we decided to dedicate the first class as a "Feminism 101" course.

Day 2- Continue with "Feminist Fairy Tales" by Barbara J. Walker

At this point we talked about having a week on Feminism and Sex Work 

Day 3- A documentary on sex workers? 

Day 4- First-hand accounts on sex-workers

We would then be able to discuss the role of the documentary in feminism, with the first-hand occurrences as well

Spend the next week looking at queer and sexuality? Some ideas for Day's 5 and 6:

Looking at the history of queer and sexuality. How does it relate to feminism?
Maybe "Khaos theory", or Judith Butler?

Day's 7 and 8:

Look at feminists who are not women

Men, transfolk etc. 

Look at Men's rights movement?
Discuss breaking down the binary? Feminism's role?

Last day before performances:

 Bring it home: Trans at women's colleges, which are traditionally feminist institutions. What is our role now? As feminist institutions? 

Since a # of you are interested in the question of motherhood, I thought you might be interested to learn about Demeter Press: a peer-reviewed scholarly press focused specifically on the topic of mothering / motherhood. It came to mind because this week I received two calls for papers: one on "Stay at Home Mothers: An International Perspective," and another on "Criminalized Mothers: Criminalizing Motherhood." There are others, viewable from the home page, on "Reconceiving Black Motherhood," "East Asian Motherhood," and "Exploring Gender Fluid Parenting Practices."

These are the notes from the discussion between FrigginSushi, MC, meowwalex, and I.

ISSUES WE WERE PARTICULARLY INTERESTED IN:

-       Globalize but also non-white American feminists

-       More theory – not necessarily gender and performativity but what do feminist writers think feminism is. More of a foundation.

• We would have to decide from where we want to draw that foundation. There is so much out there and we would have to determine what would be useful. We have to pick and choose.
• That is how most other English classes are structured, but is that how we want our structured?
• Pick one topic and give basic theories on that. But that is picking single women out to represent feminism and we’re trying to avoid that?
• Can’t really give a “crash course.” It would also be a lot of heavy academia reading.
• Look through Feminist Ryan Gosling tumblr and discuss the theories brought up in the memes. 

-       Liked the documentary. Do another one?

-       Poems are fun. Don’t have specific examples of feminist poetry.

-       Queer stuff. Other voices. Non cis women. It would be new, unexplored territory.  FrigginSushi really likes Tyra Banks.

This is what Ellen, Shannon, JD and I came up with:

Overall theme: less binary division; also recognizing that not all women are the same, want the same things, etc.

-Three classes focusing on controversial women (Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, potentially Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter); are their voices being heard? (potentially discussing motherhood more)

-Three classes looking at queer studies; Eli Claire--> disability and queerness; also exclusion of trans-women from feminist circles

-Three classes exploring sex work; interesting power plays, how women are viewed in sex work differently than men

Ideas regarding class structure in general:

-Having more optional/supplementary texts, films, and materials to account for the varying levels of experience with gender studies

-Looking at more films in general, also discussing the problems of documentaries some more

-Using hand-raising as simply a means to signal that you have something to say, not necessarily having to leave your hand in the air

-Trying to make the classroom seem smaller--> an actual circle, stop using the projector?

The topic I keep returning to and reflecting on is World Travel. More specifically I was thinking about World Sharing and how amazing and beneficial it could be for students to be able to share things with other students in different countries. I took Japanese my first year at Bryn Mawr and towards the end of the class we would make video files of us speaking in Japanese and English and send them to "buddies" we had in a university in Japan. They would then send us videos of them speaking in English and Japanese. We would all also type what we said in the language we were learning and then the native student speaker would correct it and write a reply in the language they were trying to learn. This was an amazing experience and obviously we were all nervous at first but you ended up really connecting with your buddy because you'd see them laughing when they knew they got something wrong or pulling their friend into the video. Obviously this requires technology and money but I just think it is such a unique way to share the experience of learning across the world.

Oops! In all the pre-trip excitement/chaos I forgot to post my blog this week! I hope this reaches you all in a not TOO delayed fashion. 

This week, I am going to blog about my group presentation on language diversity. Riley and I both worked on the portion of the presentation that connected the theme of language diversity, specifically in Ghana, to the theoretical frameworks we had opened in class at the beginning of the semester.  Undergoing this process was highly valuable for a few reasons.  For one, it gave us a way to reflect back on the texts we had read and the theories we had come to understand as valuable contributions to the discipline.  Also, we were able to observe tangible situations for the theories and seem them more practically applied.  Theoretical frameworks always have the ability to expand our knowledge base and encourage a deeper level of thought, and this was a very valuable experience, for the presentation, and for ourselves as well. Now looking at it and our presentation as a whole, the theory we had uncovered as pertinent to the discourse only began to brush upon the frameworks we could have opened up.  Language acquisition theories would have also been a very interesting segment of theory to open up for discussion, and could have added to the overall message and value of our presentation. 

Just wanting to be sure that "everyone" knows about the interesting and adroit (feminist?) move our team made last week: Bryn Mawr College books performance artist Villanova cancelled.

Also, here's French feminism updated -- a new study showing that young women deserve credit for pioneering vocal trends and popular slang: They're Like, Way Ahead of the Linguistic Currrrve.