*GUIDELINES FOR WEEKLY ASSIGNMENTS
*GUIDELINES FOR GROUP EXERCISE
*RESEARCH PAPER TOPICS & GUIDELINES

Dr. Monisha Das Gupta
George Hall 306
Ph: 956-2914
dasgupta@hawaii.edu

Office Hours: Tues: 1:30pm - 2:30pm
Th: 11am - 1pm and by appointment

All updates will be posted this page: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~dasgupta/ (The page can also be accessed through the Ethnic Studies Home Page)

Course Description:

This course looks at the interlinked social processes that make gender and race in the United States.  How have social relations like colonization, slavery, and migration shaped social institutions like the courts, media, and health care?   How have people fought back against gender and racial subordination?  We examine particular historical contexts and contemporary issues to answer these questions. Thus, the entire course asks you to reflect on the ethics of building a society that is free of racial and gender discrimination. In doing, so we come to realize that concepts of race and gender change over time and that people do not experience their racial and gender identities apart from each other. Furthermore, one’s race and gender also send out messages about one’s sexuality and economic class.  Thus, the thematic units in the course build on each other to communicate that:

1. Experiences of gender and race are also mediated by the role of sexuality, class and nationality.  Therefore, a comprehensive vision of social justice must take into account the intersections of different types of social hierarchies.
2. This intersectional approach helps us place the contemporary experiences of different racial groups in historical context.

• Please use my office hours.  If you cannot make those, make an appointment to see me.  One-to-one meetings enable us to discuss your ideas, help you with any difficulty you face with the course material, and help me to get to know you better.
• Students who have special needs should make an appointment to see me within the first week of class so that we can ensure your full participation.

Contemporary Ethical Issues Focus

Most often we use a binary moral framework of “good” or “bad” to judge the contemporary social problems that face us.  Social problems, like racism and sexism, are multidimensional.  To understand the complex roots of these problems and to effectively address them, we need finer tools that are based in ethics, rather than morality, so that we can see that there are more than two opposite sides of an issue.   In this class, we will focus on the complexities of the ethical questions that each of the units raises, to learn how to develop appropriate ethical positions.  In doing so, we will learn how to bridge the gap between normativity (how society should be) and reality (the way society is).

Required Readings:

WS/ES 390 Reader is available at Professional Image, 2633 S. King St, 973-6599.

The following books are available at Revolution Books 2626 King Street, 944-3106.

1. David Stannard.  2006. Honor Killing: Race, Rape, and Clarence Darrow's Spectacular Last Case. Penguin. [Stannard in Course Outline]
2. Andrea Smith. 2005. Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide.  South End Press. [Smith in Course Outline]
3. Sunaina Maira . 2009. Missing: Youth, Citizenship, and Empire after 9/11.  Duke University Press. [Maira in Course Outline]

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the ethical issues embedded in race and gender relations in U.S. society
• Evaluate the range of anti-racist and anti-sexist responses in order to arrive at ethical means of social action
• Link historical events and issues to contemporary concerns; trace change over time in the ethical frameworks of antiracist and anti-sexist efforts
• Think relationally across racial and gender groups
  
• Become critical thinkers.  The course challenges you to move away from description to analysis by learning to ask “what,” “why,” “how” questions about the material.
• Develop writing and oral presentation skills

Getting a major, minor or certificate in Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies:

Many of you have been taking Ethnic Studies or Women’s Studies courses that qualify you for a major, minor, or certificate in these fields.  ES/WS 390 fulfills Ethnic Studies’ course requirements in Category C and Women’s Studies’ requirement of coursework with a focus on gender, race and ethnicity in transnational perspective.  To learn how to get a major, minor, or certificate in Ethnic Studies go to the Ethnic Studies Academic Programs webpage and contact Prof. Ibrahim Aoude at aoude@hawaii.edu  (956-4000). For Women’s Studies, go to Women’s Studies Degrees webpage and contact Prof. Kathy Ferguson at kferguso@hawaii.edu (956-6933) or me at dasgupta@hawaii.edu (956-2914).

Assignments and Grade Distribution (Total=100)

• Weekly assignments: (2points X 5)=10%
  
• 2/28 (T): Mid Term  (20%)
• 3/27 (T): Thesis Statment  (5%)
• Oral Group Excercise (10%)
• 4/19 (Th): Short Essay (15%)
  
• 5/7 (M): Research Paper (30%)
• Participation (10%)
• Extra Credit  (4 extra points)

Course Requirements:

ATTENDANCE:

Attendance is mandatory.  You are not supposed to be anywhere else during the scheduled class period.  An attendance sheet will be passed around at the beginning of class.  You cannot sign the sheet if you come in late.  Early departures or coming late to class — unless by permission — will be considered as absences.  You are allowed two unpenalized absence during the semester (amounts to a week's worth of classes).  But in all cases of absence, you need to inform me via e-mail.  I reserve the right to fail a student whose attendance is irregular.  Please understand that if you are absent then you obviously cannot participate in class.  Your absences will be reflected in the grade you receive for participation.

PARTICIPATION:

Speaking and active listening in class counts for participation.  The success of this E-focus class depends on honest and respectful discussion that engages with the ideas presented in the readings, lectures, videos, and by your classmates.  The grade of students who do not participate in class discussion will automatically drop to a “B.”  If you have problems speaking in a classroom setting, please talk to me about it.

READING:

You must come to class having done the assigned reading.  You cannot participate in class discussions or do the weekly assignments without doing the readings.  This is an upper level class.  In taking it, you are making a commitment to come to class prepared.  Please bring the readings we are covering on a particular day (books or reader or both) to class.

WRITING:

All written work for this course needs to be word-processed, grammatical, free of spelling errors, and well-organized.  All direct quotations taken from the readings must be cited.  A paper that does not cite direct quotes taken from the readings by author and page number or that inadequately paraphrases the readings will receive an "F." For the purposes of this class Wikipedia is not a valid source of reference.
For all writing assignments refer to Common Grammatical Mistakes so that you may avoid them.  For the Midtem, short essay, and research paper refer to either the ASA Style Sheet or the MLA Style Sheet.  You may also use the Chicago Style Manual or the APA style sheet.

Weekly assignments (10%):

You will submit a response (max 1 page) to a prompt based on the readings for the weeks marked in the Course Outline.  The response must reflect critical thinking.  It should not be a summary of the readings. It cannot be e-mailed or dropped off by a friend.  There are no make-ups for these assignments.

Mid Term (20%) and Short Essays (20%):  

Research Paper (30%): 

Group Exercise: Thinking Ethically: (10%):

Each student will sign up for one of the topics listed below to formulate group exercises that will allow students to deliberate on the range of ethical positions that one can take on the topic.  The topics are based on the materials you will be covering in class. See these guidelines as you prepare for the exercise.  The leaders in charge of the topic will design the exercise following the guidelines and during the in class discussion ensure that a) students discuss the ethical dilemmas and arrive at ways to address them; b) everyone present gets an opportunity to participate in discussions and share their ideas.  The group exercise is not a traditional presentation.  The students responsible for a topic will design in-class exercises that will best stage the ethical questions outlined in the guideline, facilitate disucssion, guide students through the ethical dilemmas, and summarize the student's insights into how to tackle the ethical issues raised.

•    2/21 (T): Moral Panics and the Massie Case

•    3/15 (Th):  Reproductive Choice, Reproductive Rights

•    4/10 (T): Gender and Culture

•   4/24 (T): Cultural Appropriation, Cultural Appreciation

•    5/1 (T): Complicity, Solidarity, and Dissent

Extra credit: (4 credits per semester)
You can earn your four extra credit by attending events on campus that I will notify you by e-mail or a combination of attending events.  To get credit for attending the event, you need to submit a short write-up within a week of the event.  The write-up should explain the event and your response to it, including a question you asked or wanted to ask.

POLICIES:

Protocol:
Cell phones need to be turned off.  Text messaging, surfing the internet, doing work for another course, reading the newspaper, or other activities not related to the course will not be tolerated in this class.  If you want to do these things, please do not come to class. If I notice that you are engaged in any of these activities, you will be asked to leave. Students who breach classroom protocol, and take away from our learning environment risk penalties including a failing grade in the course.

Late papers:
All assignments are due at the beginning of the class. The dates on which the papers are due are firm deadlines.  You will lose 1/3 of a grade for every day that an assignment is late.  For eg., if you submit a A- paper a day late, the grade will be scaled down to a B+.  There are no late submissions allowed for the weekly assignments and for the final research paper.

Absences:
Attendance is mandatory.

Academic honesty:
Any infraction of codes of academic honesty will lead to sanctions from the instructor. You will receive a failing grade if you copy or submit other people's work, or do not properly attribute ideas that are not original to you. Please read section IV B of Proscribed Conduct of the Student Conduct Code for familiarizing yourself with what constitutes academic dishonesty.  See also the Academic Grievance Procedure to familiarize yourself with the process.

COURSE OUTLINE
Unit I: Core Concepts
Week 1
1/1o: Introductions
1/12: AAA Statement ; Lorber, “Social construction of gender”

Week 2
•   1/19: Weekly assignment 1:  In your own words, briefly explain the following concepts: racialization, intersectionality, and the "possessive investment in Whiteness."

1/17: Omi and Winant, “Racial Formation” (Reader); Zinn and Dill, “Theorizing Difference from Multiracial feminism” (Reader)
1/19: Lipsitz, “Bill Moore’s Body” and “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness” (Reader)

Week 3
•    1/26: Weekly assignment 2:  How do race and ethnicity come together in "cultural racism" and what examples of cultural racism do you see in McIntosh's list. 

1/24: McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” (Reader)
1/26: Smith, Ch 1

Unit II: Honor Killing: Race, Masculinity, and Femininity
Week 4
•   2/2: Weekly Assignment 3: Why, according to Angela Davis, is "the Black rapist" a myth, and when did this myth emerge? Why is her analysis relevant to the alleged rape of Thalia Massie by five local men?
Attach a separate page with your research topic, first draft of list of references, and timetable for research tasks due

1/31: Stannard, Chs 1-6
2/2: Stannard Chs 7-10; Davis, “Race Racism and the Myth of the Black Rapist” (Reader)

Week 5

2/7: Stannard: Chs 11-15
2/9: Stannard: Chs 16-21, Chesney-Lind and Brown, Hawaii incarceration rates
Video: Impact of Massie Case, and guest speaker

Week 6

•    2/16: Weekly assignment 4:  What was "moral" yet unethical about the panic generated about the release of the five local men after the hung jury in the first trial?

2/14: Stannard, 22-24
2/16: Stannard, 25-28; Review Stannard
Video: Excerpts from Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai'i
UARC: Prof Ruth Dawson on Ethics of UARC, Keever, UARC and Agent Orange, Ethnic Studies Statement on UARC, DMZ Hawaii, Militarized Sites in Hawai'i

Unit III: Violence against Women and Sexual Economies
Week 7

• 2/21: Group Exercise: Moral Panics

2/21:  Roberts, Dorothy, "Who may give birth to citizens? Reproduction, eugenics, and immigration"
2/23: Salgado, "Queer, Undocumented, and Unafraid"
Guest Speakers

Week 8

2/28:  Adrienne Davis, “’Don’t let nobody bother yo’ principle” (Reader)
3/1:  Smith, Ch 3
Video: No! 

Week 9

•   3/6: Mid Term due in class (20%)

3/6: Roberts, “The Dark Side of Birth Control" and “From Norplant to Contraceptive Vaccines” (Reader);  Making Contact, "Who Controls Black Women's Bodies?"

3/8:  Smith, Ch 4

Week 10
•   3/15: Group Exercise: Reproductive Choice, Reproductive Rights

3/13: Rudrappa, “Finding our Home in the World” (Reader; Reading Guide); Class meets at Crawford 115 for Dr. Nazli Kibria's lecture, "Muslims in Motion"

3/15:  MacFarquhar, Abused Muslim Women in US Gain Advocates; Group Exercise 

Week 11

•   3/20: Bring a draft of your paragraph-long thesis statement; To draft the thesis statement see p2 of Research Paper Topics and Guidelines

3/20: Smith Ch 7 (Anti-colonial Responses to Gender Violence) ; Thesis exercise

3/22:  Guest Lecture:  Jennifer Rose, advocate for immigrant survivors of domestic violence, lawyer, and UHM Gender Equity Specialist

Week 12

3/24- 4/1: SPRING BREAK: Work on research paper

Unit IV: Transnational Contours of Empire

•   4/3:  Thesis statement (argument) for your research paper (5 points)

4/3:  Smith Ch 8
4/5:  H.J. Kim-Puri, Conceptualizing gender-sexuality-state-nation; David and Ayouby,“Studying the Exotic Other in the Classroom” 

Week 14
•    4/10: Group Exercise: Gender and Culture
•    4/12: Weekly Assignment 5: Based on your reading of Said, discuss one feature of "Orientalism."  According to H.J. Kim-Puri, why is transnationalism not the same as nation-to-nation comparisons?

4/10:  Said, “Orientalism” (Reader); Maira, Introduction (1-25), Ch 1
4/12: Maira, Ch 2
Video: Under One Sky: Arab Women in North America Talk about the Hijab

Week 15

•   4/19: Short Essay due in class (15 points)
4/17:  Planet of the Arabs; Maira, Chapter 4
4/19:  Maira, Ch 4 (contd)


Week 16
•   4/24: Group Exercise: Cultural Appreciation/ Cultural Appropriation
4/24: Maira, Ch 5
4/26: Maira, Ch 5 (Contd)
Video: Excerpts from Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

Week 17
•   5/1: Group Exercise: Complicity, Solidarity, and Dissent

5/1: Maira, Ch 6; Last thoughts

RESEARCH PAPER (30%) DUE ON 5/7 (M), GEORGE HALL 301, 3PM

* This syllabus is subject to minor changes.  All updates will be posted online.