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COM 370–Communicating Gender in America

Professor Dana Cloud

Note: This is a course in radical gender politics masquerading as a course in communication theory

Course Description:

This Senior Fellows class focuses on how our ideas about sex and gender and our identities as men, women, and sexual beings are influenced by and contested in the communication around us, from interpersonal relationships to the mass media, from legislative debates to social movements.

Schedule of Topics and Readings

Unit I: Communicating Gender and Sexuality in Culture, Mass Media and Politics

What is gender?
Gender and language
Gender, family, relationships
Gender and work
Gender and media
Gender in mainstream politics
Consequences of gender for men, women, and society

Unit II: Contesting Gender in Social Movements and Personal Life

Feminist Frameworks–Liberal Feminism
 Early feminisms and suffrage movement
 Feminist Frameworks–Radical & Socialist Feminism
 Feminist Frameworks–Black and Chicana Feminism
 Blues and Black Feminisms
Gay and Lesbian movement
Contesting Gender in the Body
Transexualism and Performance of Gender

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~dcloud/Communicatinggender.html

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Syllabus for Cloud’s Course: Feminist Theory and Rhetorical Criticism

Note: Yet another course in feminist theory masquerading as a course in communications studies.

The purpose of this class is to introduce students to a range of feminist political and critical theories and to explore the ways those theories can be combined with rhetorical critical methods to understand the gendering of public and cultural texts.

Syllabus

What is feminism? What is rhetoric?

Introduction to to Feminist Theories

Liberal Feminism

Questions: What is liberal feminism? What is radical feminism? How might liberal and radical feminists approach rhetorical texts differently? What kinds of questions would they ask of rhetorical texts?

Continue Liberal Feminism

Radical Feminism

Continue Radical Feminism

Questions: What are some connections between feminist movements and critical methods? Can criticism be a form of activism? How so or how not? What are the similarities and differences among Marxist, Socialist, and Materialist Feminisms?

Marxist Feminism

Socialist Feminism

Materialist Feminism

Questions: How are the rhetorics of racism, sexism, and class hierarchy linked? How are they different? What are the various ways of approaching the intersections of gender, race, and class? How might a textual critic put these approaches into practice?

Race, Sex, and Class

Race, Sex, Class cont.

Questions: What are postcolonial and third world feminisms? What are postcolonial or third-world feminisms? Approaches to texts? How do poststructuralist feminisms attempt to account for the disparate positions occupied by women? In what ways is queer theory a product of poststructuralism?

Decolonial Imaginary

Introducing Poststructuralist Feminisms
Queering Feminism

Questions: How have poststructuralism and postmodernism changed feminism? What are the consequences of postmodern ideas about text, identity, and movement? What are some bases for identification and action among women? What is identity politics and what are criticisms of it?

Problems of Solidarity and Identity

Identity, Text, Materiality and Movement

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~dcloud/CloudFeministTheory.htm 

Syllabus for Cloud’s Course: Rhetoric and Ideology

Note: A course in Marxism dressed up as a course in rhetoric. Marx made no contributions to rhetorical theory.

Course Description:

This course will explore Marxist contributions to rhetorical theory and criticism, with particular emphasis on a survey of the concepts of ideology and hegemony. We will contrast rhetorical notions of human discursive agency with classical, structuralist, and post-structuralist Marxist and Marxist-influenced discourse theories. We will also discuss what the notion of ideology, as a mode of rhetorical influence, contributes to rhetorical theory and criticism.

Readings and Topics

Rhetoric-Ideology tensions

Materialist approach to discourse

Classical Ideology Critique I

Classical Ideology Critique II

Hegemony Theory

Frankfurt School

British Cultural Studies

Althusserian Structuralism

American Rhetorical Ideology Studies

Post-Marxisms and Ideology Critique

Gender, Sexuality, Ideology

Racism and Ideology

Culture and Imperialism                                   

Rhetoric and Materialist Ideology Critique

Syllabus for Cloud’s Course: Rhetoric of Social Movements

Note: Yet another deceptive course presentation. This is a training course in the theory and practice of radicalism, presented as a course in rhetorical theory.

Introduction: This is a survey class covering the range of U.S. social movements from the 19^th century to the present, including the labor movement, first- and second-wave women’s movements, the anti-slavery movement and civil rights movements, the gay and lesbian rights movement, the global justice movement, and other movements of interest to students (e.g., the conservative movement, the environmental movement, socialist movements). Our purposes are to become acquainted with primary rhetorical documents from each movement and to consider theoretical and critical issues in the study of social movements and their rhetorics. These issues include the question of violence and coercion in movements, the relationships among economic, political, cultural and rhetorical agency; the limits of rhetorical influence, debates between scholars of “new” and “old” social movements,” and other topics.

Syllabus

Stages, purposes, and effects of American social movements            

Agitation and Control: Global Justice Movement

Theoretical Controversies: Ego or Altruism                                                                     

Abolition Movement

Persuasion or Coercion: Labor Movement                                                                    

Dilemmas of Radicals and Reformers:   

Early Women’s Movement

Civil Rights Movement        

Media Framing                                                

Phenomenon or Meaning                                 

Economics or Ideas                                                                                                                                                                               

Second-wave Women’s Movement                 

New and Old Social Movements                     

Student and Anti-War Movement                    

Environmental/Animal Movements

Gay and Lesbian Movements

Revolution or Reform  

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~dcloud/CloudMovements.htm

Professor Robert Jensen

SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE MEDIA

Note: Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism. He has no professional credential for teaching about justice, or how social and economic systems produce justice. Or about race, feminism, the environment and war, which are other topics covered. This course is unprofessional and non-academic. It is an exploration of Professor Jensen’s personal ideology and prejudices, which are Marxist.

Couse Description:

Everyone is for justice, just as they are for peace, freedom, and democracy. The question is: What kind of justice? Achieved through what kinds of systems and institutions? What constitutes a just society? Which political, social, and economic systems and institutions are most likely to produce justice? We will ask these questions and then move on to assess the role of mass media in social justice. What role can journalists and media institutions play in the quest for justice? Do contemporary commercial news outlets help or hinder the work of building a more just society?

Syllabus:

WEEK 1: January 26
topic: what is justice?
WEEK 2: February 2
topic: what is democracy?
WEEK 3: February 9
topic: this is democracy?
WEEK 4: February 16
topic: Marxism
WEEK 5: February 23
topic: anarchism
WEEK 6: March 1
topic: feminism
WEEK 7: March 8
topic: critical race theory
reading: Du Bois, Winant, Lipsitz, Delgado/Stefancic, Parker
WEEK 8: March 22
topic: sustainability
WEEK 9: March 29
topic: propaganda
WEEK 10: April 5
topic: professional journalists
WEEK 11: April 12
topic: propaganda and professional journalists
WEEK 12: April 19
topic: war coverage

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/%7Erjensen/tc357/tc357syllabus.htm

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