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Fall, 2003
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MWF Glatfelter 001 Instructor: Jean L. Potuchek Email: jpotuche@gettysburg.edu |
Office: Glatfelter 008 Office Hours:M 10-12; T 2-3:30; W & F 1-3 and by appointment Telephone: 337-6196 |
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All of us are experts, of sorts, on the family; we have lived in
families, observed family dynamics, and compared our own family experiences
with those of others. Families have been at the center of our personal and
emotional lives. This course will provide an opportunity to look at something
familiar (the family) in a new way. We will focus on the family as a social
institution – a set of structured social arrangements for meeting certain
human needs – and we will examine the larger social forces that shape those
structures. We will use a comparative approach to families, emphasizing their
diversity both across time and space and within present-day
Readings The following
required readings for the course are either available for purchase at the
College Store or on reserve (in Musselman Library and as electronic reserves): Books
to Purchase: Susan J. Ferguson (editor), Shifting the Center:
Understanding Contemporary Families (2nd edition) ( Laurel Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale (Ulrich) Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., et al., Managing to Make It:
Urban Families and Adolescent Success (Furstenberg Et Al.) Raquel Kennedy Anita Ilta
Garey, Weaving Work & Motherhood (Garey) Reserve Phillip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, American Couples,
excerpts (Blumstein & Schwartz) Tamara Hareven, Family Time and Industrial Time: The
Relationship between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial
Community, pp. xi and 154-188 (Hareven) Because
both research on how people learn and my own experience indicate that most
people learn best when they are actively involved in the learning process,
this course is designed to emphasize active student involvement and
participatory learning. On Monday of each week, I will give
a lecture that sets out the issues and provides a theoretical framework for
the week's class sessions. Wednesday and Friday classes will be devoted
primarily to discussion. Much of this discussion will take place in
student-led groups of five or six. Each of you will be assigned to one
of these small groups at the beginning of the semester. Group
discussions will revolve around clearly delineated tasks, and the roles of
discussion facilitator and reporter will rotate within the group.
Groups will be reassigned at mid-semester so that each of you can participate
in two different groups during the semester. In addition, each of you
will be part of a panel responsible for leading class discussion on one of
the course films. Discussion Papers: Each of you is responsible for coming to class
prepared to participate fully in discussion of the reading or film assigned
for that day. In order to improve the quality of preparation and
discussion, you will write a 250-400 word "discussion paper" for
each discussion or film panel class; in this paper, you should explore your
thinking about some issue in the reading or film assigned for that day and
relate it to either the lecture material or to previous readings and class discussion.
Discussion papers must be printed out before class, brought with you to the
discussion, and turned in at the end of class; NO LATE DISCUSSION PAPERS WILL
BE ACCEPTED. There are twenty-eight discussion/film panel classes
during the semester; you must complete discussion postings for twenty-two of
them to earn a passing grade for class discussion. Integrative Essay: In lieu of a mid-term exam, each student will
write an "integrative essay," designed to help you think about and
integrate course material. The integrative essay will be 5-7 typed
pages (1200-1800 words), will cover Parts 1 and 2 of the course and is due on
Monday, October 20. The topic for the essay is as follows: Evaluate Tilly and
Scott's theory about the relationship between family change and economic
change. How well do the substance and sequence of Tilly and Scott's
three stages fit what you know about families from various times and
places? How would you extend or revise the theory to explain the
relationship between family change and economic change at the beginning of
the twenty-first century in the Term Paper: Each student in the class will
complete a major written assignment, a 14-16 page term paper.
This paper will pose a very specific sociological research question about
families and analyze the available research evidence to develop an answer to
that question. Because this is a different kind of research paper than
many students are used to writing, the assignment is divided into four steps
to provide extra help and guidance along the way.
Final Exam: The final exam for this course is a take-home
exam. The questions will be handed out on the last day of class, and
finished exams will be due in at the exam time designated for the course by
the registrar. All assignments are due in at Specific grading criteria for the course will
be established by individual contract between each student and the instructor. Blackboard Web Site An extensive Internet
web site for this course is maintained in Blackboard. There, you can
find course information and assignments, copies of course handouts and
discussion exercises, PowerPoint summaries of the most important lectures,
and a grade book for the course (where you can check your attendance,
discussion paper status, and grades at any time). You can get to this
web site via CNAV. Simply go the Sociology 206 section of your
"This Semester" page and click on "Blackboard."
PART 2: THE MAKING OF THE MODERN
FAMILY
PART 3: RELATIONSHIPS
IN FAMILIES
Work-Family Links
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