Theorizing Gender
English 5454 (crn 92223)/ WS 5914 (crn 96092)
(Fall 2003)

Bernice L. Hausman

2-3:15, Shanks 352 (graduate classroom)

FINAL EXAM

The final exam is a take-home exam. You will have to answer two questions, out of the many questions detailed below. Please answer the questions in well-developed essay responses of 6-8 pages each, figuring approximately 250 words per page (courier 12 on most computers, double-spaced).

Please hand in your printed exam to Professor Hausman in her office in 206 Shanks Hall on one of the following dates/times: Monday, Dec. 15, 12:30-2:30pm; Tuesday, Dec. 16, 12:30-2:30pm; or Wednesday, Dec. 17, 12:30-2:30pm. If you cannot hand your exam in at one of these times, contact Professor Hausman to arrange another time (although not later than Wednesday, Dec. 17).

Responses will be assessed according to their comprehensiveness, their insight, their evident mastery of material read for class, and for their persuasive argumentation. References to materials read for class may be general, gesturing toward broad arguments and general statements, or more specific, depending on the question that you are answering.

All work for this course is covered by the Virginia Tech Graduate Honor System. Please make sure that the work you hand in is your own, and that you are citing sources correctly.

The questions are divided into two sections: one for general questions, and one for more specific questions. Please answer one question from each group.

A. General Questions (please answer one):

1. What kind of course would you substitute for this one? As we discussed throughout the semester, the singular focus on gender might not be just an analytical choice, that is, choosing to ignore linkages to race, class, sexuality, and other categories of identity and experience for the sake of a specific focus on one vector of experience. The singular focus of the course might be an effect of a white feminist intellectual tradition that sees gender as the main force constraining (white) women's choices and experiences. If you were to redesign this course, an introductory course in feminist theory for graduate students, what would you teach? To answer this question, consider what kinds of issues you would address, which readings you might keep, and what kinds of new ideas/concepts/terms you would bring into the course. Please do not detail other readings, but rather discuss what you think needs to be understood by graduate students studying feminist theory, and why you feel this would be an appropriate change in the course you took this term. How would your course address problems that emerged in the context of this semester, and how would its transformed goals recognize these problems and attempt to resolve them?

2. After your experience in this class this semester, how would you explain "sex" and "gender" to a group of undergraduates in a Women's Studies class? In discussing your response, remember to think through what register you think gender operates in predominantly (i. e., is gender mostly psychological? an effect of the economy? involved in interpersonal relations? effected through the family and growing up? an ideological state apparatus? etc.) and whether you think the sex/gender distinction, conventionally understood, is a useful way to present the two terms in the context of feminist scholarship.

3. How does the gender system affect the lives of women and men differently? This is a very broad question, and many readings from the course could profitably be used to respond to it. Please remember to refer to readings as well as personal/group experience, if you find the latter a compelling way to answer this question.

4. How do the theories covered in this course apply to and influence your discipline of study? How will the concepts we covered challenge you in your profession? What do you think the main influence of this course will be on your future work as a graduate student or in your profession?

B. Specific Questions (please answer one):

5. Using Unbending Gender and one or two other books/texts read for class, discuss how domesticity was created and how it is perpetuated, both ideologically and materially.

6. Compare Unbending Gender and How Jews Became White Folks in terms of how each text understands the economy to structure identity and racial or gendered belonging. How might you use the analysis of each to form a theory of gendered racial (or raced gender) identity and assignment that would explain the specificity of the American social experience?

7. What role does science (as research or technoscientific practice) play in determining gender? Choose two texts that address this issue and discuss their arguments and their conclusions in relation to this question.

8. What is the relationship between sex, gender, and sexuality as concepts? How does changing the definition or the accepted understanding of one term affect the social meanings of the others (you may want to think about this second, related issue in terms of social changes over the last 30-40 years)?

9. How does the concept of the body as a reality or as a social construct surface in the semester's readings? Choose representative texts to consider how these two different concepts of the body (might?) function together.