sarjain@stanford.edu

The key theme of this seminar will be to explore how the production of gender and the production of science and technology have been mutually defining. By studying experimental science, engineering, consumer technologies, and biology, as well as feminist approaches to the discipline of science and technology studies, students will analyze how gender has been central to scientific endeavors — not only through the exclusion of women, but in the ways that masculinity has been shaped and performed through its practice. Students will further study how this has affected the built environment, consumer choices, and women’s and men’s lives.

*Please register at

http://panfora.stanford.edu/casa132/

so that you will receive periodic announcements from the instructor.*

2) Group project: Gendered Spaces

Both projects should be handed in at the beginning of the class period on the due date.

3) Course Readings and Participation:

4) Attendance: Attendance is required for all classes.

On Purloined Passages: I encourage participants in the class to share and discuss ideas presented in lectures and in the reading materials. All written work, however, is to be done individually. Outside sources — including web sites — are to be referenced in accordance with either MLA or Chicago citation style.

David Nye, American Technological Sublime

Willa Cather, Alexander's Bridge

(also available at:

http://www.literature.org/authors/cather-willa/alexanders-bridge/)

Sandra Harding, The "Racial" Economy of Science

Ruth Oldenziel, Making Technology Masculine

Elizabeth Haikken, Venus Envy

Course Reader includes all articles listed below, including the recommended readings.

Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan and the Airpump, Chapter 2

Noble, World Without Women, Chapter 8

Recommended:

Discussion Guideline: These readings will introduce students to the key theme of the course: how the production of gender and the production of science have been mutually defining. David Noble’s chapters discuss the emergence of science from the ecclesiastical academy — a world without women. Shapin and Schaffer analyze the way in which the experimental method depended on certain assumptions about who could legitimately observe the operations of the natural world and thus declare matters of fact.

Nye, American Technological Sublime Chs. 1, 2 & 4

Article "The Great Quebec Bridge Disaster"

Recommended:

Winner, "Do Artifacts have Politics"

Discussion Guideline: What are the different formulations of the sublime that Nye presents? What does the natural sublime have to do with the technological sublime? How do notions of the sublime position humans in relation to nature and/or technology, and how might we problematize this? In this class we take up gender through the aesthetics of technology that emerged with new feats of engineering at the turn of the last century.

Jan 24: Masculinity and the Sublime

Willa Cather, Alexander’s Bridge

Oldenziel, Making Technology Masculine, Introduction & Chapter 1

Video (ZVC 6630): "Brooklyn Bridge" PT I only.

Recommended:

Oldenzeil, Chapter 2

Pursell, "The Construction of Masculinity and Technology"

Discussion Guideline: Willa Cather’s short second novel, Alexander’s Bridge (1912), presents us with a "great" engineer at the height of his career. While portrayed as the heroic male, Alexander falls with his bridge when he does not receive a message from his assistant in time. Students will examine the ways in which gender figures in Cather’s depiction of Alexander in light of the historical background of the rise of the engineer as a figure in American culture that Oldenzeil provides. We will further consider the idea of the sublime and gender.

Jan 29: Boy’s Toys: Making Masculinity

Jean Lipman-Blumen, "Toward a Homosocial Theory of Sex Roles: An Explanation of the Sex Segregation of Social Institutions" Signs (Spring 1976) 15-31.

Oldenzeil, Chapter 3

Irigaray, Selection from This Sex Which is Not One

Rossiter, "Mathilda Effect"

Pursell, Jr. "Toys, Technology, and Sex Roles in America, 1920-1940."

Recommended:

Discussion Guideline: Synthesizing the themes of the last two classes, students will further examine the ways in which social groupings prescribe gender and opportunity in relation to the making of science and technology. Women’s opportunities will be considered in relation to the constitution of gender categories and students will reflect on how categories of gender have shaped the practice of science.

Jan 31: Women Join the Ranks: WWII

Oldenzeil, Making Technology Masculine, Chapter 5 and epilogue.

Video (ZVC 4683): "Rosie the Riveter." On reserve.

Eaves, "Wanted: Women Engineers."

Discussion Guideline: In this unit students will study the way in which WWII provided unique opportunities for women in science and technology.

Feb 5: Women in Science

Haraway, "Apes in Eden, Apes in Space."

Drews, "Women Engineers" Scientific American, 1908

Pickel, "Warning to the Career Woman," New York Times Magazine, 1944

Florman, "Engineering and the Female Mind."

Dennis, "So- Your Daughter Wants to Be a Civil Engineer."

Recommended:

Stanley, "Patent Office Clerk as Conjurer."

Discussion Guideline: Students will examine the ways in which femininity have circumscribed women’s entrance into science as practitioners. We will focus on Donna Haraway’s analysis of primatologists both as to understand how the coupling of women and nature has influenced women’s opportunities, as well as an example of feminist science studies.

Feb 7: Feminist Science Studies

Sandra Harding, "’Strong Objectivity’ and Socially Situated Knowledge."

Discussion Guideline: These readings will situate the study of science and technology in the discipline of science and technology studies, as well as consider the ways in which knowledge is situated.

Discussion Guideline: After WWII, the family structure emerged with a vengeance. New suburbs were built and the baby boom commenced. During the late forties and fifties, consumption increased drastically, and while women were largely excluded from working in science and technology production, many new products were marketed directly to women. In this session and the next, we will study the way in which we might analyze how objects and spaces are "gendered" — in design, marketing, and use.

Readings to be distributed separately:

Discussion Guideline: With these readings students will further consider the role of consumerism in technology development. Some of the key questions will be: how might we think about the sublime in relation to consumer products? How is a shoe a technology? How do and don’t women fit into already constructed notions of the masculine subject (as producers, as consumers)? What do we make of the thousands of women employed in developing nations that work on the assembly lines to make these products?

Sandra Harding, selections TBA

Feb 26: IN-CLASS CRITIQUES

Feb 28: IN-CLASS CRITIQUES, con’t

Haikken, Venus Envy pp. 1-130

Discussion Guideline: In this unit we will examine the rise of plastic surgery as a profession, and the ways in which it idealized and made possible racial and gendered bodies.

Recommended: Garbor, "Spare Parts"

Discussion Guideline: Building on Venus Envy, we will further examine the politicization of the physical body and the challenges posed by transsexual identities.

Due: January 31, 2001

1) View either or both of these videos, which are on reserve at Green:

2) Using these videos as a background to understand how gender has impacted women in scientific careers, interview a working woman scientist for at least 30 minutes. Use the video(s) to spur your thinking and go to the interview prepared with a list of questions (though feel free to ad lib during the interview and follow up on points of particular interest). Research as much as possible what she does in advance of your meeting so that your questions will be as relevant as possible. Provide a summary of the interview, your findings, and your analysis in a 5 page paper (double-spaced). Try to use direct quotes. (You may tape the interview if she is agreeable to that). Append your interview questions.

I will put these on reserve for other students to read.

Students will work in project teams of 2-3.

In this assignment students will document and analyze the way in which gender infuses our everyday lives. The project involves selecting an area (playground, kitchen, bathroom, home, shop, engineering classroom); documenting it; and analyzing, with reference to course literature, how the space is gendered. Look particularly at questions such as: who uses spaces, how they use it, and how spaces are designed and for whom.

Successful completion of this project requires several steps. You must select your "place" carefully and decide how you will document it. Will you visit a playground on Saturday morning for 2 hours? Or on weekday afternoons for 3 days in a row? Will you take pictures — and of what? What things will you observe in particular (who is playing, what are they playing on and how, their ages, whether they are with parents or child care workers — and how will you find out, how old they are and what gender)? Which of those questions are important to this assignment/class, and which will you follow up with library research (building on some of the analytic, historical, and sociological work that we have studied in this class), and with interviews (of parents or children, say)? Finally, how will you bring it together in a compelling and interesting presentation that will highlight and situate your most important findings?

Each group will present their work to the class in a maximum of twenty minutes (this is a strict time limit and projects going over time will be cut off), and a ten minute discussion will raise questions and critique the work. Groups are advised to think carefully about these presentations and to practice them in advance. Students are strongly encouraged to use the multi-media resources available at Stanford, and to plan in advance to get these resources as necessary. Students will be responsible to ensure that hardware and software are available and in working order in the classroom. All students are expected to participate in critique discussions.

i) Each group should submit two copies of the final presentation. This must be in hard copy and should demonstrate consideration of the comments and questions that you received after your in-class presentation. More detail will be provided in class.

ii) Each group member will submit a one-page single-spaced outline reflecting on their experiences of the project. In these, consider your experiences both working with your group (dynamics, what you learned about working in a team, the process of your team) and with regard to your involvement with the project.

Students who have a disability, which may necessitate an academic accommodation or the use of auxiliary aids and services in a class, must initiate the request with the Disability Resource Center (DRC). The DRC is located at 123 Meyer Library (ph 723-1066; TDD 725-1067).