Tuesday, 1:10-3:40 Weidensall 411 Jean L. Potuchek

Office: Glatfelter 008 Office Hours:      MW 1:15-3:45      and by appointment

WS 400, Issues in Feminist Theory and Methods, is intended to be the capstone experience in the Women's Studies major or minor. In this course, usually taken in the spring semester of the senior year, the Women's Studies student is provided with an opportunity to pull together what she has learned in her previous courses, to systematically review the variety of perspectives in feminist scholarship, and to create links between her undergraduate education and the world beyond college. The course moves toward these goals by considering feminist scholarship in relation to a specific topic. The topic for this year's seminar is "Women as Mothers."

Feminists have frequently turned their attention to women's experiences as mothers, and issues of motherhood and reproduction have often been central to feminist movements. In this course, we will explore the broad range of feminist responses to and analyses of women as mothers. In doing so, we will deepen our understanding of an important component of women's experiences, while simultaneously analyzing feminist perspectives (particularly theoretical perspectives) on those experiences. Our examination of the feminist scholarship will be organized around three major topics, Motherhood as a Cultural Institution, Women's Experiences of Mothering, and Cultural Representations of Women as Mothers.

Readings

The following required books for the course are available for purchase in the college bookstore:

Emecheta, Buchi, The Joys of Motherhood, Heinemann (Tx) March 1994.

Fineman, Martha Albertson and Isabel Karpin (editors), Mothers in Law: Feminist Theory and the Legal Regulation of Motherhood, Columbia University Press, 1995.

Glenn, Evelyn Nakano, Grace Change, and Linda Rennie Forcey (editors), Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, Routledge, 1993

Hays, Sharon, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, Yale University Press, 1998.

Jetter, Alexis, Annelise Orleck, and Diana Taylor (editors), The Politics of Motherhood, Dartmouth College, 1997.

Kaplan, E. Ann, Motherhood and Representation : The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama, Routledge, 1992.

Rich, Adrienne, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, W. W. Norton & Company, 1995.

Umansky, Lauri, Motherhood Reconceived: Feminism and the Legacies of the Sixties, New York University Press, 1996.

The following readings are on reserve, both in Musselman Library and on CNAV and are marked on the course outline by (R):

Shulamit Reinharz, Feminist Methods in Social Research (Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 240-269.

Liz Stanley and Sue Wise, "Method, Methodology and Epistemology in Feminist Research Processes," pp. 20-60 in Liz Stanley (editor), Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory and epistemology in Feminist Sociology (Routledge, 1990).

Sara Ruddick, "Maternal Thinking" Feminist Studies 6 (1980): pp. 342-364.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, "(M)Other Love: Culture, Scarcity, and Maternal Thinking," pp. 340-399 in Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (University of California Press, 1992).

Linda Blum, "'Mother to Mother' in La Leche League," pp. 63-107 in At the Breast: Ideologies of Breastfeeding and Mothering in the Contemporary United States (Beacon Press, 1999)

Martha McMahon, Engendering Motherhood: Identity and Self-Transformation in Women's Lives (Guilford Press, 1995), pp. 137-190.

Phyllis Chesler, With Child: A Diary of Motherhood (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979), excerpts.

Susan Douglas, "Mama Said," pp. 43-60 in Where the Girls Are:  Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (Random House, 1994)

Michelle Harrison, "Social Construction of Mary Beth Whitehead," Gender & Society, 1(3), 1987, pp. 300-311.

Patricia Hill Collins, "Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images," pp. 67-90 in Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Unwin Hyman, 1990)

Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins, Reading National Geographic (University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 1-14 and 166-185

Tillie Olsen, "I Stand Here Ironing," pp. 1-12 in Tell Me A Riddle (Delta, 1989).

Paulette Childress White, "Getting the Facts of Life," pp. 129-140 in Mary Helen Washington (editor), Memory of Kin: Stories About Family by Black Writers (Doubleday, 1991)

Tina Howe, "Birth and Afterbirth," pp. 45-114 in Rosette C. Lamont (editor), Women on the Verge: Seven Avant-Garde Plays (Applause, 1993)

Assignments

(1) In preparation for class meeting, each student will do the assigned reading and post a 250-350 word posting to the class discussion board. These discussion board postings are designed to get everyone thinking about the reading and to provide a jump start for class discussion. Each posting must include the following: (a) identifying and intellectually responding to one of the main ideas of the reading; (b) relating this idea or your response to it to one of the other course readings or to a reading from another women's studies course; and (c) a response to the ideas in at least one other class member's posting. (The person designated as the "first poster" is exempt from (c).) This means that you should complete all the reading for the week and read through all other postings before writing your own posting. Discussion board postings must be complete by midnight on the evening before each class meeting. Each week, one member of the class will be designated to make the first posting, no later than noon on the day before class meets. Every member of the class should read all the postings before coming to class.

(2) The major work of the course, in addition to reading and class discussions, will be a group project, the creation of a web-based resource guide to feminist analyses of women as mothers. This project is intended to make a significant addition to the information and research material already available on this topic. The contribution of our resource guide will not be so much that it makes new information available, but that it organizes available information in a way that makes it more accessible and usable. For purposes of carrying out this project, the class will be divided into three groups, one for each major unit of the course. Each group will be responsible for creating a single web page, and these pages will be linked together into a complete resource guide. In order to make this project more manageable, a series of intermediate steps and due dates have been designated throughout the semester. To provide training in the skills necessary to carry out this project, a portion of each class session will be devoted to "skills training," and a Student Technology Liaison from Information Resources has been assigned to the course.

Grading

Each Discussion Board posting will be evaluated on a scale of 0-2, where 0 designates that no posting was made or that the posting was inadequate, 1 designates that the posting was satisfactory or good, and 2 designates that the posting was very good or excellent. There are 12 classes for which discussion postings are expected. The final grade for discussion board postings will be based on the student's total score. Scores from 0-6 will be given a grade of F; scores from 7-10 will be given grades in the D range; scores from 11-13 will be given grades in the C range; scores from 14-17 will be given grades in the B range, and scores from 18-24 will be given grades in the A range.

Contributions during each class discussion will be evaluated on a scale of 0-4, depending on the extent to which a student contributes to the group's understanding of the course material. A score of 0 designates a student who was not present; a score of 1 designates a student who was present, but silent throughout the discussion; a score of 2 designates a student who made some small contribution to others' understanding of the course material; a score of 3 designates a student who made a significant contribution to others' understanding; and a score of 4 designates a student who made an outstanding contribution to others' understanding. The final grade for contributions during class discussion will be based on the student's total score for all class meetings. Scores from 0-13 will be given a grade of F; scores from 14-18 will be given grades in the D range; scores from 19-26 will be given grades in the C range; scores from 27-42 will be given grades in the B range; and scores from 43-52 will be given grades in the A range.