WGS.172
For Love and Money: Rethinking the Family
See description under subject 21A.111[J] .
Spring 2016
Topics
- Introduction to the study of family, gender and sexuality
- Gender acquisition: Learning (and unlearning) the “facts of life”
- Arranged marriage, ascribed status, inheritance and gendered divisions of labor in pastoral and agrarian societies
- Gender, agency, and virtue
- Chosen marriage, achieved status, and gendered divisions of labor in wage labor societies
- The racial and gendered economy of social reproduction
- Family, class and social mobility in the U.S. (1)
- Family, class and social mobility in the U.S. (2)
- Consumption and social citizenship
- Rethinking the meaning(s) of love
- Marriage and heteronormativity
- Is “the family” a cultural universal?
- Not all happily ever after: Anger, violence & harm
- Making families, making citizens
- The problem of childlessness, the problem of ‘familylessness’
- The labor of reproduction: Surrogacy
- Reproductive rights, redux
- Where to go next: “Having it all,” or reframing the question?
- Student presentations
- Student presentations (cont.)
Readings
- [P] = Park, Lisa Sun-Hee. Consuming Citizenship: Children of Asian Immigrant Entrepreneurs . Stanford University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780804752480.
- SES #: 1 · TOPICS: Introduction to the study of family, gender and sexuality · READINGS: No readings assigned
- Thorne, Barrie. “Children and Gender: Constructions of Difference.” In Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference . Edited by Deborah L. Rhode. Yale University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780300052251.
- Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Preface.” In Writing Women’s Worlds: Bedouin Stories . University of California Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780520083042.
- Rapp, Rayna. “Family and Class in Contemporary America: Notes Toward an Understanding of Ideology.” Chapter 10 in Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions . Edited by Barrie Thorne with Marilyn Yalom. Northeastern, 1992. ISBN: 9781555531454.
- Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. “From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor.” Chapter 26 in Unequal Sisters: An Inclusive Reader in U.S. Women’s History . 4th edition. Edited by Vicki L. Ruiz with Ellen Carol DuBois. Routledge, 2007. ISBN: 9780415958417.
- [W] Chapter 1: A World of Iron and Steel: A Family Album.
- [W] Chapter 2: It All Came Tumbling Down: My Father and the Demise of Chicago’s Steel Industry.
- [W] Chapter 3: Places Beyond.
- [P] Chapter 1: Consumptive Citizenship.
- [P] Chapter 2: Minding the Family Store.
- [P] Chapter 3: Searching for a “Normal Family.”
- [P] Chapter 4: The Business in Children’s Lives.
- [P] Chapter 5: The American Narrative of Asian Immigration.
- [P] Chapter 6: Consumption Fantasies of Upward Mobility.
- [P] Chapter 7: Consumption, Democracy, and the Good Immigrant.
- SES #: 13 · TOPICS: Searching for a happily ever after? · READINGS: Constable, Nicole, ed. “A Tale of Two Marriages: International Matchmaking and Gendered Mobility.” Chapter 9 in Cross-Border Marriages: Gender and Mobility in Transnational Asia . University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780812218916.
- Davis, Maxine. “The Importance of Sexual Harmony.” Chapter 2 in The Sexual Responsibility of Women . William Heinemann Medical Books, 1957. ISBN: 9780434179022.
- Hugh Hefner’s inaugural editorial statement. Playboy , December 1953.
- Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Continuum.” In Women-Sex and Sexuality . Edited by Catharine R. Stimpson and Ethel Spector Person. University of Chicago Press, 1980. ISBN: 9780226774763.
- Gordon, Linda. “Voluntary Motherhood: The Beginnings of the Birth-Control Movement.” Chapter 5 in Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: Birth Control in America . Penguin Books, 1990. ISBN: 9780140131277.
- ———. “Social Purity and Eugenics.” Chapter 6 in Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: Birth Control in America . Penguin Books, 1990. ISBN: 9780140131277.
- Roberts, Dorothy. “The Dark Side of Birth Control.” Chapter 2 in Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty . Vintage, 1998. ISBN: 9780679758693.
- Collier, Jane, Michelle Rosaldo, et al. “Is There a Family? New Anthropological Views.” Chapter 2 in Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions . Edited by Barrie Thorne with Marilyn Yalom. Northeastern, 1992. ISBN: 9781555531454.
- Hart, C.W.M., Arnold R. Pilling, et al. “Tiwi Marriage.” Chapter 1 in The Tiwi of North Australia . 3rd edition. Cengage Learning, 1987. ISBN: 9780030120190.
- Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion on marriage equality (read prologue + pp. 1–22):
- Landsman, Gail. “Real Motherhood,’ Class, and Children with Disabilities.” Chapter 6 in Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism . Edited by France Winndance Twine and Helena Ragoné. Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 9780415921107.
- Kanaaneh, Rhoda A. “Conceiving Difference: Birthing the Palestinian Nation in the Galilee.” Critical Public Health 7, no. 3–4 (1997): 64–79.
- Inhorn, Marcia. “Missing Motherhood: Infertility, Technology, and Poverty in Egyptian Women’s Lives.” Chapter 5 in Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism . Edited by France Winndance Twine and Helena Ragoné. Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 9780415921107.
- Park, Lisa Sun-Hee. Consuming Citizenship: Children of Asian Immigrant Entrepreneurs . Stanford University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780804752480.
Prerequisites & course information
Same subject as 21A.111[J] Prereq: None Acad Year 2027-2028: U (Spring) Acad Year 2028-2029: Not offered 3-0-9 units. HASS-S
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Spring 2016
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.