People of color, women, differently labeled communities, and people in the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgender (LGBTQ) community have historically faced oppression and inequality in society, and they continue to fight for equal treatment and opportunities. This introductory course to the minor provides an introduction to the methods, ideas, and theories used in race, gender, and social theory research and studies. Reading and oral communication skills will be stressed. No previous background is required. This course develops the Oral (O) Communication Skill and serves as a foundation for other courses in the minor.
Meeting Times, Location, & Course Delivery Details
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Gain skills in critical thinking and written communication while learning:
--the vocabulary of race, gender, and sexuality studies
--the history of race, gender, and sexuality-related inequality
--theories used to understand and end inequality
Tentative Schedule
| Week One: | Why Words Matter |
| T 8/25: | Introduction to the Course |
| R 8/27: | Vocabulary, terminology, and the power of language Read: How Real is Race? Chapter 1, p 1-12 |
| Week Two | |
| T 9/1: | Class topic: Privilege, oppression, and who gets to speak for whom Read: John McWhorter, "How the N-Word Became Unsayable" (Blackboard) Read: Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” In-class short essay |
| R 9/3: | Read: Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, Intersectionality, p 17-22 (Blackboard) Blackboard Richard Dyer, White, p 23-40 Content quiz #1 |
| Week Three: | Understanding Identities |
| T 9/8: | Read: Shuddhabrata Sengupta, “Identity as a Weapon of Mass Destruction” p. 86-91 Read: Gloria Anzaldua, “Feminist Architecture,” p 107-110 Read: Deborah Tannen, “Marked Women, Unmarked Men” Read: Richard Reeves, In-class short essay |
| R 9/10: | Read: Simone de Beauvoir, Introduction to The Second Sex: “Woman as Other” Read: Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, p 1-15 Content quiz #2 |
| Week Four: | |
| T 9/15: | Read: Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, excerpts Pre-Write/outline for Essay #1 in class |
| R 9/17: | Read: Susan Stryker, Transgender History, Ch 1 (Ch 2 is in the PDF too, but save that for later in the semester) Content quiz #3 |
| Week Five | Troubled Histories: 19th century |
| T 9/22 | Read: Manning Marable, Let Nobody Turn Us Round, p. 34-65, p. 70-83, p. 88-106 Essay #1 First Draft Due |
| R 9/24 | Read: White Women’s Rights, p. 1-21 Content quiz #4 |
| Week Six | |
| T 9/29: | Read: 19th-century: immigration/Latinos Paul Spickard, “Immigration, Race, Ethnicity, Colonialism,” in Almost All Aliens (New York: Routledge, 2007), 4-11 Read: Madeleine Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home, Ch 3, p. 55-71 Revision exercise in class |
| R 10/1: | Read: Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies, Ch 1-2, part of 3, p. 1-41, 55-67 Blackboard: David Halperin, How to Be Gay, p 38-81 |
| Week Seven | |
| T 10/6: | Essay #1 Final Version Due |
| R 10/8: | Read: Ida B. Wells Barnett, “Lynch Law” Read: Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown, Ch 1, 2, and 3 Explore Equal Justice Initiative’s website Lynching in America, https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org |
| Week Eight | Oppression and Resistance: Twentieth Century |
| T 10/13: | No class: Teacher in-service day |
| R 10/15: | Midterm Exam |
| Week Nine: | |
| T 10/20 | Read: Erika Lee, “‘Military Necessity’: The Uprooting of Japanese Americans,” in The Making of Asian America Read: Mary Stout, Native American Boarding Schools, Introduction, Ch 3 |
| R 10/22 | History: Civil Rights: Eyes on the Prize Content quiz #5 |
| Week Ten: | |
| T 10/27 | Civil Rights History: Eyes on the Prize In-class Short essay due |
| R 10/29: | Excerpts from The Black Panthers Speak Content quiz #6 |
| Week Eleven: | |
| T 11/3: | Read: Joshua Bloom, Black Against Empire, Ch 2-3, p 44-98 In-class Short Essay Due |
| R 11/5: | Read: Scot Brown, “The Politics of Culture: The US Organization and the Quest for Black ‘Unity,’” p. 223-247 Content Quiz #7 |
| Week Twelve: | |
| T 11/10: | Second wave feminism: Read: Gloria Steinem, “If Men Could Menstruate” Read: Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” Read: Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, Ch 1 In-class Short Essay Due |
| R 11/12: | Read: Browse photos in Love and Resistance Read: Mark Stein, The Stonewall Riots, introduction In class browsing from The Stonewall Riots Content Quiz #8 |
| Week Thirteen: |
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| T 11/17: | Pre-write/outline for Essay #2 Read: Browse ACT UP original documents Sarah Schulman, Let the Record Show, Preface (p. 1-33); Ch 3 (p 99-135) |
| R 11/19: | Read: Lillian Federman, The Gay Revolution, p 505-512; p 537-551, p 610-629 Read: Arlene Stein in Mary Bernstein and Verta Taylor, The Marrying Kind, p 54-61 Content quiz #9 |
| Week Fourteen | |
| T 11/24: | Essay #2 First Draft Due |
| R 11/26: | Thanksgiving: No Class |
| Week Fifteen | |
| T 12/1: | Read: Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home, p 1-10 Read: Eli Sanders, “Searching for Richard Spencer: What I Found in a Small Montana Town at the Center of a White Nationalist Troll Storm,” The Stranger, 2017 |
| R 12/3: | Read: Jonathan Weisman, (((Semitism))), introduction and Ch 3 |
| Week Sixteen | |
| 12/8: | Essay #2 Final Draft Due Final exam review |
| FINAL EXAM: Tuesday, December 15: 10:15-12:15 | |
- Short essays: Each week, you will complete an informal writing assignment in response to a prompt from me. These essays will often be done as in-class writing.
- Formal Essays: You will write two 5-6 pages essay based on your readings in this course. Each essay will have a formal draft, and you will receive an assignment sheet with details. In general, we will write essays by hand in this course, and you will be expected to be able to discuss and verbalize the ideas in your essay. I do not permit artificial intelligence assistance in any stage of the writing process in this class, including brainstorming, grammar checks, or citation assistance. This class is for learning to do those things yourself, and I understand that you may be imperfect at those tasks. I value your effort over perfection.
- Quizzes: Each week, we will have one content quiz that will cover ideas, concepts, and facts we have learned. On days that we do not have a content quiz, we may have reading quizzes to determine whether you have done the reading or not.
- Midterm and Final exam: The midterm and final exams will cover material from the content quizzes and will be cumulative.
The grading scale will be as follows:
Short Essays: 80 points
Content quizzes: 180 points
Essay #1: 150 points
Essay #2: 150 points
Midterm Exam: 150 points
Final Exam: 150 points
Reading quizzes: 50 points
Attendance and participation: 100 points
Each assignment will receive a percentile grade. 90-93% is an A-, 87-90% is a B+, 83%-87& is a B, etc. Grades will be posted regularly on Blackboard.
Instructor Course Policies
I place a high priority on attendance. In class, you will learn material via lecture, discussion, and in-class examination of our readings. Each class will also have in-class writing or quizzes. I will excuse one week's worth of absences without detail or question (2 absences for this course). If you have additional absences beyond two, even if they are excused absences due to illness or sports, you will see your attendance grade for the semester go down. If you have an emergency, I will work with you and I will make exceptions to this policy based on circumstances. However, I want to stress that even excused absences can harm your learning. Please prioritize class!
If you have to miss, please contact me, arrange to complete any missed work in a timely fashion, and get notes from a classmate. I do not have the capacity to deliver all the course material separately to each student who misses class, so develop a buddy system with a classmate who can help you take notes in your absence. I am happy to speak with you in office hours about readings and concepts that you are struggling with!
See the current Student Handbook for the college's Academic Integrity policies as they pertain to examinations, plagiarism, classroom behavior, and the process for handling academic misconduct charges. You may not copy the words or ideas of another without crediting that person in your text. This includes paraphrasing material or maintaining the same general sentence or paragraph structure as a source. Even credited material must be paraphrased in an original way that generates a new sentence and paragraph structure. Keep in mind that even unintentional copying of words, phrases, and sentence structures can sometimes be deemed plagiarism. I should always know, when reading a paper, which ideas, words, phrases, and paragraph structures originate with you and which originate with someone else. If I find that you have committed academic dishonesty on an assignment for this course, you will receive a zero for the assignment and, depending on the offense, you may receive an F for the course. In general, all offenses, minor and major, will be reported to the Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs, who will help me determine the appropriate consequences. If you have questions about what constitutes plagiarism, ask!
Any work that you produce in this class must be original and created by you, not by artificial intelligence (i.e., ChatGPT or other AI bots). I do not allow AI on any stage of the writing process in this class, including brainstorming, drafting, revision, grammar checks, or citation. I recognize that other settings and other classes may permit AI at different stages of writing, and that is ok for those courses. However, in this class, my goal for you is not to perform all tasks perfectly but to learn how to employ good grammar, critical thinking, and writing yourself, not with bot assistance. If I believe that your work reflects AI usage, I will ask you to re-do the assignment, and if the problem persists, you will receive a zero on the assignment and a report in your file with Academic Affairs.
Institutional and Program-Level Policies
All exams will follow the Final Exam Schedule. Students scheduled to take three or more final examinations on one day may request to arrange their examination schedule, so no more than two exams occur on one day.
Requests for early or late exams are considered only under extreme circumstances. Prior to the exam period, the student must file a written request on the Early/Late Exam Form available in the Student One Stop Center, Academic Records, and on the WC portal. The form must be signed by the Instructor and the Academic Dean, approving the alternate exam time. This process must be completed prior to the scheduled exam period.
Undergraduate: FA26 Final Exam Schedule
Out-of-class Work Expectation A minimum of 2 hours of out-of-class student work is expected for each hour of in-class time for traditional face-to-face courses. For online and hybrid courses, the combination of face-to-face time and out-of-class work should be equal to 3 hours per credit hour per week. |
Instructional Course Delivery Definition of Courses |
Academic Integrity Policy The use of generative AI is prohibited except where expressly allowed in assignment instructions. Academic Integrity Policy |
Class Attendance Policy Institutional Class Attendance Policy |