For Love and Money: Rethinking the Family

Calendar

SES #	TOPICS	KEY DATES
1	Introduction to the study of family, gender and sexuality
Part I: Family And Gender As Social-Economic Institutions
2	Gender acquisition: Learning (and unlearning) the “facts of life”
3	Arranged marriage, ascribed status, inheritance and gendered divisions of labor in pastoral and agrarian societies
4	Gender, agency, and virtue	Reader response due
5	Chosen marriage, achieved status, and gendered divisions of labor in wage labor societies
6	Social reproduction: Reproducing formal and informal class relations Guest: Brandyn McKinley, Pre-Doctoral Fellow at MIT, Anthropology program
7	The racial and gendered economy of social reproduction
8	Family, class and social mobility in the U.S. (1)	Argumentative essay 1 due
9	Family, class and social mobility in the U.S. (2)
10	Immigration, dislocation and legal limbo Screening Which Way Home. Directed by Rebecca Cammisa. Color, 90 min. 2009.
11	Consumption and social citizenship	Reader response due
12	Rethinking the meaning(s) of love
13	Searching for a happily ever after? Screening In The Name of Love. Directed by Shannon O’Rourke. Color, 46 min. 2003.
Part II: Sex, Sexuality, Reproduction And Kinship
14	Marriage and heteronormativity
15	The history and role of birth control Screening Tommy Mabry. “American Experience The Pill.”  February 28, 2017. YouTube.	Reader response due
16	Is “the family” a cultural universal?
17	De-essentializing motherhood Guest: Emily Xi Lin, Post-Doctoral Fellow at MIT, History program
18	Not all happily ever after: Anger, violence & harm	Argumentative essay 2 due
19	Making families, making citizens
20	The problem of childlessness, the problem of ‘familylessness’	Argumentative essay 3 proposal due (1 paragraph theses statement + bibliography)
21	Infertility, secrecy and silence Guest: Burcu Mutlu, MIT Doctoral Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS). Screening Sperm Donor X: A Different Conception. Directed by Deirdre Fishel. Color, 56 min. 2011.
22	The labor of reproduction: Surrogacy
23	Reproductive rights, redux
24	Where to go next: “Having it all,” or reframing the question?
25	Student presentations
26	Student presentations (cont.)	Argumentative essay 3 due