I just got an email that brought this new interdisciplinary group to my attention. I thought some of us may be interested, so here it is!

Title: Graduate Interdisciplinary Group in Sexuality Studies Open Forum
> Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2009
> Time: 10:00 am to 11:30 am
> Location: Appleby Hall 41
>
> We would like to invite all interested faculty, graduate students,
> and scholars to join us for an organizational meeting to discuss
> ideas for promoting interdisciplinary teaching and research on
> Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. A more extensive
> description of the group is attached.
>
> We have been given some financial support to fulfill this mission
> and we ask you to join us at this meeting - either in person or
> electronically - with ideas on using the allocated funds. Perhaps we
> could bring in speakers, artists, have discussion groups, retreats,
> workshops, etc. Please forward this invitation to other graduate
> students and faculty members.
>
> Please RSVP to Beng Chang, either by email schochet@umn.edu or call
> (612) 626-2562. Also feel free to contact me if you have any
> questions, comments, or suggestions.

NAME OF GROUP:  Graduate Interdisciplinary Group in Sexuality Studies

Primary Contact Person:  Edén E. Torres torre007@umn.edu

                                                Dept. of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies

                                                425 Ford Hall

                                                612-625-5035

Description:

This interdisciplinary group of faculty and graduate students brings together their collective experiences, epistemologies, cultures and diverse perspectives from across the disciplines and colleges in an effort to better understand the social, historical, psychological, literary, legal, and political contexts in which human sexualities have been and are currently being expressed and theorized.   This is an advanced discussion group focusing on the relation of gender and sexuality to structures of power and inequality.  Our mission is to advance interdisciplinary teaching, research and advocacy in Sexuality Studies, as well as to promote sexual literacy, sexual well-being and social justice.  Our goals include but are not limited to: promoting interdisciplinary and collaborative discussions and research; to provide a rich environment for graduate students from across the university to think through their projects in dialogue with experienced researchers; to supplement the educational experiences and training of graduate students interested in sexuality studies; to foster an atmosphere that is increasingly open to and excited about research addressing sexuality, gender, and GLBTQ  sociopolitical issues; to enhance and complement the educational missions of various departments and colleges; to investigate the ways that sexuality is shaped by social roles and intersecting or overlapping identities based on race, gender, dis(ability), nationality and socioeconomic class; and to enhance and enrich the students' regular curriculum opportunities by exposing them to expertise in a truly interdisciplinary forum that will position them to compete on the academic job market or in professional fields where such training is vital.

The proposed activities would provide a forum for graduate students from across the disciplines to interact with an interdisciplinary group of faculty members-many of whom they might not otherwise have a chance to meet, especially if they are working in non-interdisciplinary programs.  As sexuality studies transcends the boundaries of single disciplines and colleges, we expect to draw in students from across the university.  Because these issues and scholarly inquiries have global implications, it is important for students to have a strong interdisciplinary background from which to address questions around citizenship and the role of sexuality in determining varying relationships to power that influence not just our personal but also our social, economic and political lives.  Because expressions of sexuality differ across cultures, time and space it is imperative that students learn to carefully analyze the nature and effects of sexualities and socializations in order to produce new research instruments, theories, and practices. Clearly, the impact of such scholarship is or will be important in almost every academic discipline in universities around the globe. 

Working on my syllabus and reading those of my group gave me a very practical question about the implications of how we make available readings for our classes. I know that some folks prefer to supply them online so that students need not buy course packets, whereas others prefer the course packets so that 1) students can bring them to class and 2) because it's cheaper for students than printing each reading on their own. I'm interested in where y'all fall in this debate, but I also have a series of other related questions that relate to reproduction costs and ethics. Do any of you have answers or know who might?

1. Are there different copyright and/or printing issues between WebCT, Moodle, and the library's e-reserves?
2. What determines the cost of reproducing essays in course packs? Especially if I'm using essays that have appeared in multiple sources, are there reasons to choose the original version vs. various anthologies?
3. Where does the money actually go? Does it stay with the publisher or does it ever reach the author?
4. What are the political and/or ethical issues of avoiding reproduction fees (via online distribution methods, etc.) when the authors we're using may be under-published, under-supported, and under-paid? It may be one thing to avoid paying fees when they'll only go to the publisher (like very old texts), or for authors/publishers that run a racket, but "hiding" our support for others may be detrimental to our intellectual communities and commitments.

I've been thinking about a central irony in feminist pedagogical writing on the importance of valuing student voice and experience: the absence of student voice in the writings themselves.  My critique is not that there are "better" articles not on the syllabus that do incorporate student voice, but rather that such texts do not seem to exist (or are extremely scarce).  Plenty of articles incorporate scenarios where the professor reportedly "makes sense" of a classroom response with a student in an office hour interaction, and certainly there are discussions centering on student responses in the classroom that aim to theorize what classroom happenings are "symptomatic" of.  I have also come across collaborative articles written by grad students critiquing a grad seminar they took part in, and as we've seen, collaborative articles written by professors--but where are the collaborative texts by students and professors?  Certainly there are institutional restraints on such processes (namely time and concerns about what constitutes appropriate relationships with students), but this seems like a very meaningful way to make students aware of the value of their input and to claim a stake in their education.  To clarify, I am not suggesting that including student voices would allow for a more "real" picture of what is going on in the classroom (although...), but what I am suggesting is that we miss out on a lot by speculating and theorizing what worked/what didn't without working through these ideas with other people who were involved (i.e. countering master narratives through partial perspective).  I also raise this issue because I do plan on incorporating student-reflections in my dissertation project that critiques the university's model of multiculturalism, and I'm wondering what people think about the possibilities, limitations, contradictions, and challenges of such ventures.     

I just read this article by Merry Merryfield that discusses how she has used WebCT in her teacher education classes over 2 years with students from diverse cultures. Because the classes she taught were online she often had students from other states or countries enrolled and she wanted to see how the technology was used as a pedagogical tool. It reminded me of the blog in a way because similar discussions happened.

What I was surprised by was this: She and her TAs made sure that they posted a response to every entry and they set a number of minimum and maximum posts for each person in each threaded discussion so that one person could not monopolize. They found that this equalized the discussions online and that the course was qualitatively different from one where some dominate and others are silent.  For whatever reasons, I know that our blog has some members who are more vocal/silent than others. Would adding these elements to future class blogs be too limiting? Is it an administrative nightmare to keep track of it all? Would it help equalize if everyone got at least one response to a post? Does that control add too many requirements and de-rail the nature of what a blog is supposed to be?

She also talks about the privacy of the secure discussions and how this closed online environment allows her students to take risks, admit to the realities of prejudice and discrimination or ask questions that they would otherwise censor. I have thought about this with the public nature of our blog and how I really think carefully before posting anything because it will be in public forever. What do you think? Do closed online environments aid in risk-taking or is there enough anonymity on a blog that doesn't identify last names?

Merryfield, M. (2003). Like a veil: Cross-cultural experiential learning online. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 3(2), 146-171.

• I asked you all for advice on a teaching question
• I encouraged you to turn your questions about the effectiveness of feminist pedagogy strategies onto our class by asking you to assess how we negotiate the various levels of knowledge about feminism/feminist theory/feminist pedagogy
• During discussion, I remained silent so as to listen to what you all had to say

Complying with 200 word limit...

After reading, "TA/TG: The Pedagogy of the Crossed Dressed," I was totally in love with it. Beyond that, I noticed it was published by Bad Subjects, which always seems to have bad ass articles. Bad Subjects is also a public-access website...which made me think of open access journals (which BA practically is). I recently attended a COGS meeting, in which a librarian came in and schooled us on the concept of open access databases and journals. So I know enough about open access to abuse my 200 word limit. We could talk more in class, but my question is:

Is the concept of open access a form of feminist pedagogy? Would open access journals privilege any subsection of the academy?

I had a question about troublemaking too:  Do you think that certain troublemaking creates a space for retribution? It seems like some of the trouble I make in academia and elsewhere could cause me serious problems--problems that would be rooted in misogyny and corporate greed. I just find that there are pressures I feel as a female troublemaker that men may not feel...

Social Justice and Technology

Kristi Rudulius-Palmer and Natela Jordan will discuss "This is My Home," an innovative web tool designed to help educators locally, nationally and internationally teach human rights in a multicultural context.

Walt Jacobs will discuss making digital stories - short 3-5 minute videos that combine voice, images, text, and music to preserve memory, write history, learn, entertain, organize, and heal in various communities. He will detail both the process and outcomes of making these digital stories.

In my research, I intentionally question how and why certain histor(iograph)ical narratives were constructed (by white, male scholars) in the twentieth-century. In this way, I see the project of my own research as inherently aligned with Caughie and Pearce's project in their article, "Resisting "the Dominance of the Professor": Gendered Teaching, Gendered Subjects." Caughie and Pearce question hegemonic authority in the classroom through a dialogic analysis of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. The authors read Woolf's discontinuous narrative form as a pedagogical model to be employed in feminist classrooms.

They outline, rather than the more traditional, patriarchal model of educational authority, a model in which multiplicity, flexibility, and overlapping voices are to be heard. Though I fully support their model for a classroom where multiple, overlapping narratives are located and encouraged, I have a harder time imagining how such a model should be mobilized in introductory courses where students might encounter certain topics for the first time.

In a university setting where prerequisites are increasingly rare, students don't always come to the classroom with the same level of knowledge as their classmates might. Some students are seniors fulfilling introductory-level credits while others are freshmen in their first semester. So how can and should instructors negotiate a classroom in which socially constructed narratives/norms are reconsidered while simultaneously providing students with information that may or may not be new to them? How might we present information in such a way that it seems less "foundational," but still provides students with a framework in which they can be critical and self-reflexive?

I've got a lot of dream syllabi, many of which I'll be proposing over the next couple of months: Food and Literature; Reading/Writing Illness; Literary Oddities & Outcasts; The Mississipppi River in American Literature and Culture; Writing Geographies: Place, Space, and Landscape; and Writing Processes & Generative Practices. Some of these classes I hope to run at the Loft Literary Center or through the U's OLLI program. But for this syllabus project, I figure I should go with the sure thing. I'm slated to teach Introduction to Fiction Writing next semester, so here are my tentative plans/concerns for that class.

Content/Canonicity: I'm considering including work by Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin, John Barth, Charles Baxter, TC Boyle,  A.S. Byatt, Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, Raymond Chandler, Anton Chekhov, Kate Chopin, Junot Diaz, William Faulkner, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ray Gonzalez, Ernest Hemingway, Amy Hempel, James Joyce, Jamaica Kincaid, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jhumpa Lahiri., Kelly Link, Katherine Mansfield, Bobbie Ann Mason, Lorrie Moore, Vladimir Nabakov, Tim O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Dorothy Parker, Edgar Allan Poe, Katherine Anne Porter, George Saunders, Julie Schumacher, Amy Tan, John Updike, Alice Walker, David Foster Wallace, Eudora Welty, John Edgar Wideman, Jeanette Winterson, and Richard Wright. Clearly, I need to whittle this list down and figure out exactly what kind of focus I want this class to have.  I know I want to include some canonical texts (like Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants") and some less traditional ones (like one of Kelly Link's stories). It's very important to me to address, both implicitly and explicit, the bias towards white male Christian writers that often is the norm in classes (at least, classes that aren't already designated to cover "Multi-Cultural Lit" or "LGBT Voices" or some other label like that). In part, I hope that the course's reading list will become a kind of text, a focal point for talking about the canon (in writerly terms, that is--whose voice is heard, whose is missing, what kinds of cultural judgments are inherent in the canon, what the canon teaches us about "good" writing and "worthy" voices, why and how we should struggle against these prescribed lists and discover what else is out there). I'm also debating whether to present the readings thematically around subject matter, thematically around craft and technique, or from a critical/cultural perspective--postmodern British women writers, contemporary genre writers, etc--or if this will force unwanted binaries and further marginalization of already understudied work.

Structure: My class meets three times a week for fifty minutes each; this means (gulp) meeting 44 times over the semester. I've only ever met once per week with any student group (with the exception of May Session, which was 4x/week for 4 hours each meeting, but that only lasted 3 weeks). I'm struggling to figure out how to structure these classes. With only 50 minutes, it's hard to do much intensive work. I'm thinking about using Mondays for close reading, Wednesdays for writing exercises, and Fridays for either workshops, conferences, or getting out into the world and seeing where fiction and literature overlap with other arts like visual art, music, and theatre. But I worry that this kind of segmentation will only reinforce rigid boundaries and undermine my attempt to elucidate connections among reading, writing, and other creative processes.

Questions of Genre: Though this is billed strictly as a fiction course, I plan to occasionally integrate poetry and creative nonfiction; instead of being constrained by prescribed boundaries, I want to encourage students to find points of overlap and opportunities for transgression. I believe the genres complement each other and want to encourage students to read/write from this perspective as well (or at least give it a shot); I'll include readings  of  hybrid/short forms and cross-genre pieces and assign writing exercises in the same.

Student-Centered Activities: Each student will be responsible for leading a discussion on a short story once during the semester. They'll sign up early in the semester. I may also assign students to lead workshops for others' work; however, every student will be responsible for writing a letter to the writer of the piece being workshopped, offering constructive feedback and suggestions for revision. Finally, since I'm planning on using an anthology, I'll ask students to select pieces they want to read in addition to the pieces I've assigned (I guess they could find pieces from outside the anthology as well). So, I'll be able to revise the syllabus w/in the first 2 weeks to reflect the stories that my students are most interested in reading, and they'll see their interests and preferences reflected in the (semi-) permanent document of the class syllabus.

 Other Possibilities: I may ask students to pick one novel from a list of 10 or so; the students will be responsible for reading and responding to the novel of their choice (I may also incorporate a presentation/led discussion as well). Another possibility is giving students the option to work in a volunteer capacity at a reading enrichment or literacy program around the cities; they could do this instead of one of their major written assignments, though they'd still have to turn in a written assessment of their experience.

Tone: Given some of our earlier discussions on whether to include "feminist pedagogy" as a guiding term on the syllabus, I've been thinking carefully about what kind of authority I want to convey in the syllabus, through tone/language/etc. I do think it's always possible to go "nicer" or "easier" but never a good idea to become stricter or harder. I've been gathering syllabi from other graduate students who have taught this course, and I'm learning a lot about what I do and do not want to convey in my syllabus. I can share this info during workshop or in my draft reflection, or post them here if people are interested in the specific examples.

I have many more questions & concerns but want to spend some time really fleshing this out in proper syllabus form, looking more closely at sample syllabi, and brushing up on how to actually teach fiction. I'm a poet first and foremost, and I've have dabbled in nonfiction, primarily the poetry-analogous lyric essay - I actually haven't taken a fiction class since college! While I love to read modern and contemporary fiction, being a reader and being a writer/teacher of writing require two totally different outlooks and skill sets. I feel like a bit of a sham teaching this class, but I'm also really excited to take on the challenge and  hope to learn as I go along.

TA/TG: The Pedagogy of the Cross-Dressed

Tanya Olson

Issue #59, February 2002

I realize I am a bit late with this, but for the longest time I couldn't decide whether I am going to design a syllabus for a course I might possibly teach here in the next couple of years, or design my own 'dream course'. Seeing that I will be probably TAing till my Prelims next Fall, and thus probably not teach a course till Spring 2011, I eventually decided to let myself go ahead and imagine a course that I'd really like to teach at some point - taking into account the practical opportunities and constraints of doing it at the U.

Though I (think I) know what I want to do with the course, I am having a difficult time coming up with the title, which has to do with the nature of the course itself. Broadly speaking, I want to design a course that looks at the intersections and co-constitution of gender and caste in postcolonial South Asia. I envisage the course as being cross-listed for graduate students in South Asia studies (under the Asian Languages and Literatures department in the U.) as well as in the GWSS department, and would like to design it in a way that both retains its area-specific focus as well as a 'broader' theoretical interest for Feminist Studies graduate students. One way to do this could be by bridging the literature on intersectionality and the Postcolonial feminist scholarship that challenged the universalizing category of 'woman' with theories of global modernity and historical time. To unpack that statement: unlike, say, gender and race or gender and class, the co-implications of gender and caste have been undertheorized and neglected at least in the metropolitan academia. One big reason, it seems to me, is that unlike race or class, caste has been seen in a lot of older literature as a 'relic' of premodernity, the survival of brute tradition into the 'enlightened present'. This of course dovetails with developmentalist theories of modernization that paint certain regions of the world as backward or lagging behind others, and caste in South Asia becomes a paradigmatic case; apart from being colonizing this approach is also ineffective for it might prompt righteous anger against caste discrimination but does little to explain, for instance, the role of gendered caste hierarchies into making labor pools for contemporary global capitalism, and the role of capitalism itself in reforming and (in some cases) reinforcing caste structures. More recent scholarship in Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Studies has questioned the modernity-tradition binaries that 'caste' as an analytical category seems to be often caught in, but gender and caste are still relatively understudied with an emerging academic literature (of course, 'outside' academia there is a long and vibrant tradition of writing by lower caste or Dalit women, some of it accessible but much of it untranslated into English). Bringing the literature on intersectionality and postcolonial feminism in conversation with the older and more recent scholarship on caste seems (to me) to be theoretically exciting.

As for practical considerations, the course would have to have both sufficient background information so as to not throw off those new to the context of South Asia, but not go on with it so much that those who aren't get bored. Possibly the first (or second, actually) week would be thus spent in doing the more 'basic' stuff and giving the historical context; then on we would plunge into the theoretical literature that could lay the ground for more specific reflections. I wish this to lead up to two crucial texts that reflect on gender and caste, one the pioneering 1989 anthology Recasting Women (ed.s Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid) and the other Gender and Caste (edited by Anupama Rao), coming almost two decades later in 2007. I am debating whether to place these texts near the end of the course or somewhere in the middle; this would of course also depend on how I am able to bring together and place the different literatures in relation to each other. I envisage that doing the pacing logically such that students can both keep up and make connections would be the greatest challenge for designing a course like this, which thus requires me to lay out a detailed conceptual schema at the outset for the sake of my own and the students' clarity, rather than keeping it flexible. But this raises the other challenge, that is to balance the lecture component with space for student discussion and intervention, given that many of the concepts that we will be working through (like intersectionality for instance) haven't been exhausted in gender/caste studies at all and thus there is much scope for fresh conceptual linkages and insights - the excitement of which I want my students to sense, as a process in which they would be encouraged to participate.

I am perhaps rambling on at this point and a lot of the thought is preliminary, thus any suggestions and comments would be most welcome.

Politics of Language

Cisneros, Sandra.  Woman Hollering Creek.

Anzaldúa, Gloria.  "How to Tame a Wild Tongue."  Borderlands/La Frontera:  The New Mestiza.  San Francisco:  Aunt Lute Books, 1987. 

Jordan, June.  "Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan." 

Feminist Reading Praxis

Allen, Paula Gunn.  "Kochinnenake in Academe:  Three Approaches to Interpreting a Keres Indian Tale."  The Sacred Hoop. 

 Dimock, Wai-Chee.  "Feminism, New Historicism, and the Reader."  Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl.  New Brunswick:  Rutgers UP, 1997.

hooks, bell.  "Theory as Liberatory Practice."  Teaching to Transgress.  New York: Routledge, 1994.

 Schweickart, Patrocinio P.  "Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of Reading."  Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl.  New Brunswick:  Rutgers UP, 1997. 

Abel, Elizabeth.  "Black Writing, White Reading:  Race and the Politics of Feminist Interpretation." Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl.  New Brunswick:  Rutgers UP, 1997. 

Morrison, Toni.  "Recitatif."  1982.

Institutional Positionings

Alcoff, Linda.  "The Problem of Speaking for Others."

Christian, Barbara.  "The Race for Theory." 

Dingwaney, Anuradha and Carol Maier.  "Translation as a Method for Cross-Cultural Teaching."  Between Languages and Cultures: Translation and Cross-Cultural Texts.  Eds. Anuradha Dingwaney and Carol Maier.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995.

hooks, bell.  "The Oppositional Gaze."   

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade.  "Under Western Eyes."  Feminism Without Borders.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

---.  "Under Western Eyes Revisited."  Feminism Without Borders.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

Testimonio

Beverly, John.  "On Testimonio."  De/colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women's Autobiography.  Ed. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.

Gilmore, Leigh.  "The Limits of Autobiography."  The Limits of Autobiography.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.

Hirsch, Marianna and Valerie Smith.  "Feminism and Cultural Memory."  Signs 28:1 (2002): 1-19. 

Edwidge Danticat  Krik? Krak!

Fulani, Ifeona.  "Caribbean Women Writers and the Politics of Style: A Case for Literary Anancyism."  Small Axe 9:1 (2005): 64-79.

N'Zengou-Tayo, Marie-José.  "Rewriting Folklore: Traditional Beliefs and Popular Culture in Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory and Krik? Krak!"  MaComére 3 (2000): 123-140.

Scott, Helen.  "Reading the Text in its Worldly Situation: Marxism, Imperialism, and Contemporary Caribbean Women's Literature."  Postcolonial Text: 2.1 (2006).

Nawal el Sadaawi, Woman at Point Zero

Malti-Douglas, Fedwa.  "Writing Nawal el Saadawi."  Feminism Beside Itself.  Ed. Diane Elam and Robyn Wiegman.  New York: Routledge, 1995: 283-296.

Mitra, Indrani and Madhu Mitra.  "The Discourse of Liberal Feminism and Third World Women's Texts: Some Issues of Pedagogy."  College Literature 18:3 (1991): 55-63.

Mine Okubo, Citizen 13660

Readings from Following Her Own Road: "Gestures of Resistance"

Nora Strejilevich, A Single, Numberless Death

Maier, Linda S.  "The Case for and Case History of Women's Testimonial Literature in Latin America."  Woman as Witness:  Essays on Testimonial Literature by Latin American Women.  Ed. Linda S. Maier and Isabel Dulfano.  New York: Peter Lang, 2004.

I'm at a crossroads in my syllabus planning.  I had a pretty good start a few weeks back, however, now I just keep dreaming.  So far I'm preparing a syllabus for a class I've taught before and may teach again.  But perhaps I should think about the course that I dream of... teaching science educators when I complete my doctoral work. 

However, the department I work and study in is considering reworking the sequence of the licensure course offerings for science education this coming summer.  With that said, I've started to rethink what this fall methods course could look like.  I've been thinking about how it could be tweaked in addition to how much feminist pedagogies I'd like hidden and revealed in the syllabus.

The course is Middle School Science Methods for graduate students in the post-baccalaureate program at the U.  Some of the assignments that I've used in the past I'd continue to use. Changes I'd like to make include: increasing the number and kinds of personal narratives in journaling assignments, reducing the structure around lesson planning - allowing students the opportunity to find a method that works for them rather than prescribing a process, linking their observations to understanding culturally-relevant pedagogies and critical feminist pedagogies, and rather than relying on a textbook for readings, using the educational research literature to meet the needs of student understanding of the important concepts of science education (see bibliography listed). 

Assignments related to methods course:

1. Discrepant Event/Demonstration= (15%) (BOT standard 1-10)

Prepare, present and write-up a discrepant event and demonstrate in class. The demonstration should be made relevant to a middle school science concept and be presented in an enthusiastic style. Write-up due day of presentation with 5 copies for distribution. Keep to 10 minutes or less. Post on Moodle. Part I Due Date, Part II Due Date.

2. Clinical Interview = (25%). (BOT standard 1-4, 6-10)

Prepare, Conduct, and present Findings of a clinical interview with 4 middle school students, 2    boys and 2 girls.  Components of the interview must include: Interview Plan=10; Brief Description of  Students=5; Sample of the interview in the form of a transcription=10; and the Implications of  the Interview for science instruction=10. See Moodle and planning book for details. In class  presentation 10 minutes or less.  Presentations start on date.  Write-up Due            Date.

3. Original Observation Form = (10%). (BOT standard 1, 3-7, 10 )

Develop your ideal teacher observation/evaluation form with your partner.  Due Date.

4. Unit 1 Lesson Plan/Reflection = (30%). (BOT standard 1-9)

Due Date.

5. Unit 2 Lesson Plan and Reflections = (20%). (BOT standard 1-9)

Due Dec. 4.

Assignments related to practicum:

Journal Assignments = (30%). (BOT standard 1-10)

You will complete five (5) journal assignments about different aspects of teaching middle school science and being a science educator. These assignments should always include your thoughts and reflections about the assignment as it pertains to your middle school experience and what you have learned in class and from our readings. These assignments should be one page in length (500 words), maximum of 2 pages (1000 words). The assignments will be posted on Moodle and you must respond to one student's posting (minimum 250 words). see calendar for due dates

Guided Observation Forms = (20%). (BOT standard 1-10)

You will complete guided daily observations entries during the first three weeks of your middle

school placement. These will be evaluated based on thoroughness and relationship to middle

school experience. Due Date.

Video Review = (10%) (BOT standard 1-10)

During your second teaching experience, your partner will videotape your teaching. Using the form provided, you will need to critique one of your lessons. Due Date.

Teaching = (40%). (BOT standard 1-10)

You will be engaged in microteaching twice during the semester. Each microteaching should be 3-5 days long. A University Supervisor will observe you a minimum of once during each of your microteaching experiences. Due Dates vary.

A list of readings that I have encountered and would plan to use (but have not sequenced or weeded out yet) includes:

Science Education as it related to girls in science:

Bailey, B. L., Scantlebury, K. C., & Johnson, E. M. (1999). Encouraging the beginning of equitable science teaching practice: Collaboration is the key. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 10(3), 159-173.

Barmby, P., Kind, P.M., & Jones, K. (2008). Examining changing attitudes in secondary school science. International Journal of Science Education, 30(8), 1075-1093.

Beghetto, R.A. (2007). Factors associated with middle and secondary students' perceived science competence. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 44(6) 800-814.

Calabrese Barton, A., Tan, E., & Rivet, A. (2008). Creating hybrid spaces for engaging school science among urban middle school girls. American Educational Research Journal, 45(1), 68-103.

Calabrese Barton, A. (1998).  Teaching science with homeless children: Pedagogy, representation, and identity. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35(4), 379-394.

Corbett, C., Hill, C., & St. Rose, A. (2008). Where the girls are: The facts about gender equity in

education.  Washington D.C.: AAUW.

Dentith, A. (2008). Smart girls, hard-working girls but not yet self-assured girls: The limits of gender equity politics. Canadian Journal of Education, 31(1), 145-166.

Greenfield, T.A. (1997). Gender- and grade-level differences in science interest and participation. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Kahle, J. B., & Lakes, M. K. (1983). The myth of equality in science classrooms. Journal of Research       in Science Teaching, 20(2), 131-140.

Lundeberg, M. A. (1997). You guys are overreacting: Teaching prospective teachers about subtle gender bias. Journal of Teacher Education, 48(1), 55-61.

Rennie, L. J. (1998). Gender equity: Toward clarification and a research direction for science teacher education. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35(8), 951-961.

Sadker, M, & Sadker, D. (1994).  Failing at fairness: How our schools cheat girls. Simon & Schuster: New York.

Science classrooms using fem ped and feminist/critical/queer pedagogy related articles:

Capobianco, B. M. (2007). Science teachers' attempts at integrating feminist pedagogy through collaborative action research. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 44(1), 1-32.

Eisenhart, M.A. & Finkel, E. (1998).  Women's science: Learning and succeeding from the margins.  Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Eisenhart, M. Finkel, E. and Marion, S.F. (1996).  Creating the conditions for scientific literacy:

A re-examination.  American Educational Research Journal 33(2), 261-295.

Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn't this feel empowering?: Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59(3), 297-324.

Freire, P. (1970/1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.

Howes, E.V. (2002). Connecting girls and science: Constructivism, feminism, and science

            education reform.  NewYork: Teachers College Press.

Johnson, A. G. (2006).  Privilege, power, and difference, 2^nd ed.  Boston: McGraw Hill.

Kleinman, S. S. (1998). Overview of feminist perspectives on the ideology of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35(8), 837-844.

Kimmel, M. (2006). A war against boys? Dissent,  65-70. Retrieved .....,

http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=700.

Kumashiro, K. (2002).  Troubling education: Queer activism and antioppressive pedagogy.

Routledge Falmer: New York.

Mayberry, M. (1998). Reproductive and resistant pedagogies: The comparative roles of collaborative learning and feminist pedagogy in science education.  Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35(4), 443-459.

McLaren, P. (1989). Life in schools: An introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education. New York: Longman.

Richmond, G., Howes, E., Kurth, L., & Hazelwood, C. (1998). Connections and critique: Feminist pedagogy and science teacher education. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35(8), 897-918.

Strike, K.A. & Posner, G.J. (1985). A conceptual change view of learning and understanding. In

L. H. T. West and A. L. Pines (Eds.), Cognitive Structure and Conceptual Change (pp. 211-230). Orlando: Academic Press.

Von Secker, C. (2004). Science achievement in social contexts: Analysis from National Assessment of Educational Progress. Journal of Educational Research, 98(2), 67-78.

Zozakiewicz, C., & Rodriguez, A. J. (2007). Using socio-transformative constructivism to create multicultural and gender-inclusive classrooms: An intervention project for teacher professional development. Educational Policy, 21(2), 397-425.

I have decided to create a course for prospective school administrators focusing on leadership development.  This type of course is a requirement for licensure and is usually one of the first classes taken in a program.  Therefore, it will have to consist of a lot of leadership theory.  This is the type of class I see myself teaching down the road, so I will use this opportunity to get a jumpstart on the process.  I foresee feminist pedagogy in both topic and format at work in this class; the nature of the class itself, the topics discussed, my role as a facilitator, class activities, readings, and the role of the student will all be influenced by feminist pedagogy.  The most important thing for me will be creating obvious connections between how the class is run to how a building is run.

I am starting with a list of readings that have played a role in my leadership development.  However, I would also ask students to look over the outline of topics and choose a week where they will work with a classmate (or two depending upon class size) to suggest readings and create discussion questions for the rest of the class.  It is my hope that this will create a space in which we discuss relevant topics and students will ownership of the curriculum.

In terms of student assignments, as mentioned earlier, students will take part in a group activity in which they will choose a reading assignment for the class and formulate some discussion questions to shape class discussion.  Students will also spend some time thinking about their philosophy of leadership and present it in a paper format early in the semester.  Another paper that I would like to include would be about leadership for social change.  The intent behind this assignment would be to envision the modifications that have to take place in a school/district to accommodate a changing world (this is a hot button item in educational leadership).

I would also plan to include as many speakers as possible...community leaders, administrators, advocates, etc. 

I have a lot to do...what you see below is the skeleton of readings regarding leadership theory.

Week 1:

Positionality/Authority/??:  The relationship between ourselves, our world, and our leadership

 Week 2 - Leadership:  Chaos and Change

Wheatley, M.J.  (1999). Leadership and the New Science:  Discovering Order in a Chaotic World.  San Francisco:  Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

 Week 3 - Leadership:  Classic, Contemporary, and Critical Approaches

Rosener, J.B.  (1999).  'Sexual Static' in America's Competitive Secret:  Utilizing Women as a Management Strategy.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press.

Lilley, S.J. & Platt, G. M.  (1994).  'Correspondents' Images of Martin Luther King, Jr: An Interpretive Theory of Movement Leadership' in Constructing the Social.  London:  Sage.

Calas, M.B. & Smiricich.  (1991).  Coicing Seduction to Silence Leadership. 

Organizational Studies.  12, 4:  597-602.

 Week 4 - Caring:  Self and Community

Chapters 2-3 and 5-6

Noddings, N.  (1992). The Challenge to Care in Schools:  An Alternative Approach to Education.  New York:  Teachers College Press.

Assignment #1 Due - Leadership Philosophy

Week 5 - Caring:  Creating Caring Schools

Chapters 7-11

Noddings, N.  (1992). The Challenge to Care in Schools:  An Alternative Approach to Education.  New York:  Teachers College Press.

 Week 6 - Power:  "The Warriors Path"

Chapters 4-11 - The Seven Principles of Power

Brunner, C.C.  (2000). Principles of Power:  Women Superintendents and the Riddle of the Heart.  New York:  State University of New York Press.

 Week 7 - Social Change

Chapter 1 - Shallow Educational Response to Deep Social Change

Noddings, N.  (1992). The Challenge to Care in Schools:  An Alternative Approach to Education.  New York:  Teachers College Press.

 Week 7 - Educational Change

Assignment #2 Due - Leadership for Social Change

Week 8 - Vision:  The Leader You Will Become

Chapter 4 - An Alternative Vision

Chapter 12 - Getting Started in Schools

Noddings, N.  (1992). The Challenge to Care in Schools:  An Alternative Approach to Education.  New York:  Teachers College Press.

Are you interested in using video blogs in your pedagogy? Here is an example from Jay Smooth at ill doctrine entitled "How to tell people they sound racist." What do you think? How might we put his strategies into conversation with Berlak and Erickson? 

I'm finding this assignment a bit tricky in some ways because I have not been in school or teaching for several years. I feel a bit rusty, and I also don't have a drawer full of awesome readings that are fresh on my mind. So while I have a few dream syllabi in mind, I had to think of a practical way to apply what we're learning without making this more complicated than it needs to be! I just so happen to work in the Writing Studies department and I have experiences teaching high school composition so I've decided to design a syllabus for the First Year Writing course. This is a course required of all undergraduates at the University (excluding a few rare exemptions). As such it has some standardized components. But it is also a course that is taught by students from several different departments (American Studies, Writing Studies, Cultural Studies and English) each of which approach the teaching of writing from different disciplinary angles.

So far my primary "work" on the project has been to skim through the syllabi from last Fall (70 or so) looking for samples of syllabi with some kind of theme or angle over and above the standardized minimum syllabus requirements. There are a handfull that seem to mesh well with feminist studies and I hope to meet with a couple of the instructors for coffee or similar to discuss how they designed their syllabus, how it went, what they might change, etc. It seems that most of the syllabi that I connect with are using the same text book (First Year Writing has one required text book and allows instructors to assign additional readings as well). So I will review this text book and likely select readings from it. I can also speak to the director of the FYW program about what kind of flexibility instructors have and to see what his suggestions and thoughts would be and how these themed sections seemed to play with the students who enrolled them. 

Questions I'll be wrestling with:

• How can you implement feminist pedagogies with a "captive" audience? These students didn't signe up to have their consciousness raised, they want to learn how to do "academic" writing.

• How can you negotiate feminist pedagogies within a mass produced course like FYW. How much tweaking can you do before you begin to disadvantage students by not providing them base-level common experience that this course is supposed to create?

• How can my grading reflect my course goals that are specific to feminist pedagogy, or should I only grade based on the prescribed goals of the FYW course?

• How can I prepare for an unpredictable student demographic. It may be highly diverse, or not. Their understanding of and interests in feminist and critical perspectives could be wildly varying. They may fight me. I might terrify them. How can a syllabus be flexible enough to deal with whoever happens to walk through the door?

These are just some of the questions I have at the moment. I'm excited about seen how I can shape this course to address at least some of these questions. I have to try to not be immobilized by the impossibility of "perfect" feminist pedagogy. I just have to see what I can figure out. When/if I get to actually teach the class, I'll learn more, do better. AND I get the benefit of getting feedback from all of you, so I don't need to feel responsible for thinking of everything. We can help each other.

I've been waffling about this syllabus project for the past few weeks. My debate is between being highly practical or highly imaginative. Do I reform a current syllabus or do I dream big and create something that includes all of the elements that I find important (and none that I don't)? I've long desired to create effective change in the field of teacher education - that is why I left the classroom and entered graduate school - and I think that this project can help me reach that goal.

So, here is the deal: I have been told that I am slated to teach a 3 credit introductory social studies education course (CI 5741: Introduction to Social Studies Education) in the summer of 2010. The student cohort enters the program in May and spends the next 12 months earning a teaching license and a Master's in Teaching. (How someone can have never taught and be a master at teaching puzzles me, but this is the model that we work with here). Because the program is so spelled out (the sequence and course outlines fit into a coherent licensure program) the syllabus for CI 5741 is relatively prescribed. Interestingly, as a program we rail against "teacher-proof" curriculum for our students but what we have to work with is pretty durable. However, I do know that as the instructor I will have significant control over how I teach and what readings I choose to use. I see this syllabus assignment as an opportunity to re-model and refine the existing syllabus into something that reflects two of my educational philosophies: feminist pedagogy and human rights education. Both serve the future social studies teacher in providing theory, content, and methods that align with the goals of our program here at the U and those outlined by our professional organization, The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). There will be elements that I cannot get rid of, but I think that I can approach them in a feminist way. I will also be able to actually use this, so the level of authenticity and accountability is high.

I've also been thinking about how long this syllabus is going to be. There are goals and certain readings and assignments that I will have to include and I am guided (constrained?) by state and national standards as well as guidelines outlined by the accreditation body (NCATE) that we belong to. I have to include all of these elements for the U (diversity statements, college mission, late work, etc), elements that I want to make obvious, and the reading and assignment schedule. This syllabus is going to be so long! In the past some of the instructors have chosen to make multiple documents with the assignments and schedules, but I think that having everything in the same place is more efficient. If we need to make a schedule change or a date modification, I will be able to say, "make this change to your syllabus" not "find that particular piece of paper or link on WebCT and make the change there."

I'm deciding to look at all of these outside influences (with the standards and the like) as fuel for the process as opposed to looking at them as efforts to reign me in. I know that they are a reality for my field, so I may as well see how far I can go within these guidelines to bring FP and human rights education into this course. Knowing that I will be teaching it is a bit intimidating but it is also invigorating having an assignment now that gets me thinking about it. I know that when the time comes to order books and the course packet that I will be prepared with something that I feel good about rather than having to rely on what has been used in the past.

I've been planning on arranging my syllabus according to weekly themes, which represent various nodes in the field the course will cover, rather than chronological layers that build off of one another in a linear fashion.  I'd like to stick to this model, because it not only moves us away from linear thinking, but it's also impossible to cover the topics I feel are important chronologically; there are simply too many interconnections, overlaps, and interdisciplinarities to begin attempting this.  Yet I worry about the limitations of this model as well: Will certain points become redundant if they continually resurface?  Will students be comfortable with the inevitable gaps between weekly themes that will arise since the weeks won't necessarily "flow" into one another, and will that impede their learning?

I'd also like to roughly follow a weekly model of lecturing and discussion on Tuesday classes, with Thursday classes being reserved for more creative activities, like group work, hands-on learning, films, or other ideas that connect the week's theoretical or historical themes.  The advantages of this model is that their reading over the weekend can be digested right away at the beginning of the week, and then applied later on (or revisited, if need be).  I think it also ensures that students can expect a certain rhythm to the course, without being locked into one method of learning.  Yet I can see some disadvantages to this model, too.  I worry that students may not show up to Thursday's classes if they think the "real" work is covered on Tuesdays.  Have any of you had experience using this weekly model, and did you find it successful?

Michelle