WGS.700 | Spring 2017 | Graduate

Changing Life: Reading the Intersections of Gender, Race, Biology, and Literature

Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Seminar: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session

Prerequisites

Students from all fields and levels of preparation were encouraged to join the course; advanced study in the sciences or in literary analysis was not required.

Description and Goals

In this course students will develop their abilities to expose ways that scientific knowledge has been shaped in contexts that are gendered, racialized, economically exploitative, and hetero-normative. This happens through a sequence of four projects that concern:

  1. Interpretation of the cultural dimensions of science
  2. Climate change futures
  3. Genomic citizenry
  4. Students’ plans for ongoing practice

The projects also draw students’ attention to areas such as museum displays, science fiction, and internet-mediated discourse, and involve close reading and literary analysis of texts—whether in science, social studies of science, or science fiction.

The course uses a Project-Based Learning format that allows students to shape their own directions of inquiry in each project, development of skills, and collegial support. Students’ learning will be guided by individualized bibliographies co-constructed with the instructors, the inquiries of the other students, and a set of tools and processes for literary analysis, inquiry, reflection, and support. By the end of the class, students will have:

  • Generated products for each of the projects and so charted a path into an ever-growing body of work on the interpretation of sciences in contexts, to which feminist, anti-racist, and other critical analysts and activists have made significant contributions
  • Formulated a personal plan for ongoing inquiry that troubles the boundaries of knowledge production in the academy and sciences, especially as they concern race and gender. 

Key Texts

Gross, Alan G. Starring the Text: The Place of Rhetoric in Science Studies. Southern Illinois University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780809326969.

 Hiltner, Ken. Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader. Routhledge, 2014. ISBN: 9780415508605.

Buy at MIT Press Hackett, Edward J., Olga Amsterdamska, et al. The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. The MIT Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780262083645.

 Wyer, Mary, Mary Barbercheck, et al. Women, Science, and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies. Routledge, 2013. ISBN:9780415521109.  

Recommended as a source for the process side of the course:

 Taylor, Peter J., and Jeremy Szteiter. Taking Yourself Seriously: Processes of Research and Engagement. The Pumping Station, 2012. ISBN: 9780984921607. [PDF version available for purchase through The Pumping Station.]

Blog

The private WordPress blog serves as the out-of-class-time space for sharing and exchange, including posting of annotations and project products (after revision in response to instructor and peer comments). After the class is over, students can continue to refer back to the resources accumulated there.

Check-in

Classes will generally begin with a warm-up and check-in, e.g., sharing of highlights of reflections and annotations added to the blog or a reflective activity, except weeks 1, 14, and weeks when there are presentations.

Focal Weekly Reading

The diversity of students’ inquiries on the four projects and thus range of reading is unavoidable and important. However, as a response to the need expressed by past students for some shared referents, one focal reading will be assigned each week to be discussed in various modes (to be specified), such as annotations posted online ahead of class, time-limited spoken reports on the nine categories of note-taking, guided close reading, and five-phase dialogue.

Workshop

Except when there are presentations, most class sessions, after the check-in and discussion of the focal reading, take the form of a workshop, in which various activities are used to move along your inquiry for the given PBL project. Details of these activities are linked to the class session on the course website.

Presentations and Plus-Delta Feedback

When you prepare to give a well-prepared presentation, when you hear yourselves speak your presentation, and when you get feedback, it usually leads to self-clarification of the overall argument underlying your inquiry and written product. There may or may not be time for extensive discussion, but your revision of the draft product will be informed by everyone else in the group providing “plus-delta” feedback: plus = something appreciated; delta = something to help further development, e.g., suggestions, questions, contacts, and references. You can also learn from compare-contrast with the other students’ presentations.

Visual aids should be prepared without diverting your time away from your ongoing inquiry.

Peter: “These days I use pdf’s, not Powerpoint, for all my talks, in part because of bad experiences with some images not showing up when ppt files got shown on a different operating system. But mostly because I can write and revise outlines in Microsoft Word and then, when I’m ready, I change the font size, “print” as a pdf, and I’m ready to go live. Preparation time for my talks is not diverted into making animations, backgrounds, fade-ins and other non-essential features of a talk. Even if you don’t take this tip, try to make one introductory slide that captures the overall structure and logic of your inquiry. This might be enough of a visual aid that you can talk to that slide and not have to prepare many others.”

Mary: Agreed. I would also point to Edward Tufte’s work, especially The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (and his cheap but excellent and hilarious pamphlet “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint.”)

Annotations

In order to learn from the inquiries of the other students, annotated references or resources (= person, organization…) related to the projects or common readings should be added (regularly, not all in a clump) to the evolving bibliography. (Annotations should convey the article’s key points as well as its connection to the student’s own inquiries and interests. Examples from past years will be provided. Prepare first on your computer, then copy and paste the annotated reference into blog. Specify the category Bibliography.)

Dialogue Around Written Work

The instructors try to create a dialogue with each student around written work, that is, around your writing, our responses, and your responses in turn. For each submission one of us makes comments on a cover page that aim to show you your voice has been heard and to reflect back to you where you were taking us. After the overall comments we make specific suggestions for how to clarify and extend the impact on readers of what was written. You then revise and resubmit the submission in response to our comments and peer commentary (see below). The goal is not that you make changes to please me us or to meet some unstated standard, but that you as a writer use the eye of others to develop your own thinking and make your written exposition of that thinking work better on readers.

Peer Commentary

An instructor will forward another student’s project drafts to you by email for peer review after you submit your own draft. One component of cultivating support for ongoing learning is sharing one’s work at the same time as defining the kinds of response you need at that point. Peter Elbow provides valuable perspectives and options for when you decide what approaches to commenting you ask for as a writer (which you should state at the top of your draft) and what to use as a commentator. You may be used to making lots of specific suggestions for clarification and change in the margins, but such suggestions do not often lead students to go beyond touching up into re-thinking and revising their ideas and writing. This said, all writers value comments that reassure them that they have been listened to and their voice, however uncertain, has been heard.

 Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process. Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780195120189.

 Elbow, Peter, and Pat Belanoff. “Summary of Kinds of Responses.” In Sharing and Responding. Random House, 1989. ISBN: 9780394386225.

Private Learning Journal

Reflection on your experience of the course process, especially in relation to the two desired outcomes, namely: you will have charted a path into an ever-growing body of work on the interpretation of sciences in contexts, to which feminist, anti-racist, and other critical analysts and activists have made significant contributions; and you will have formulated a personal plan for ongoing inquiry that troubles the boundaries of knowledge production in the academy and sciences. Students need only share enough of these journals with the instructors to show that they are making entries at least once per week. However, students may also share entries on the blog if they wish. Some prompts for journal entries are given in the class schedule.

Requirements

It is expected that you will spend several hours per week outside class time reading, researching, reflecting, and writing. The course works by building from one project to the next so being unprepared or submitting late detract significantly from the learning possible in class sessions. You keep track of your submissions and revisions on your own copy of a checklist of the presentations, written assignments, and participation items. An unconventional assessment system complements the innovative pedagogy. It is designed to keep the focus on interaction around written work and participation in the unfolding dynamics of the course. The initial submission of a written product from each project is commented on by one instructor, but not graded. In response to comments received from your peers and instructors on your presentation for the project and initial submission, you undertake further inquiry, revise thoughtfully, and resubmit. The product is recorded as completed provided it is evident that you have undertaken further inquiry and rethinking to address comments. For course participation you undertake a variety of items (listed below). 

Written Assignments and Presentations (3/5 of grade)

For each PBL project the following is required:

  • One presentation
  • One initial submission of the product requested in the scenario (at least 800 words)
  • One product revised in response to comments

Participation and Contribution to the Class Process (2/5 of grade)

  • Attendance and participation in class meetings based on preparation between classes, including focal reading (14 items)
  • “Treasure Hunt”, to get familiar with organization of course materials and requirements in the booklet and online (1 item)
  • Annotated reference or resource (such as a person, organization, website) added at regular intervals to the evolving bibliography on the blog (8 items)
  • Reflection on your experience of the course process and your learning in the PBL format (at least 10 weekly entries, each worth 1/2 an item, adding up to maximum of 5 items.)
  • Minimum of two in-person or phone conferences on your assignments and projects—one before class 5, the other, with the other instructor before class 10 (2 items) 
  • Exercises to prepare for class workshops (4 items)
  • Peer commentary on other students’ draft products (3 times, by the class after presentations)(3 items)
  • Your assignment checklist filled-in during the semester and submitted with your self-assessment on the rubric below; due at the last class (1 item)
  • Bonus item: Participate in the April session at the Cambridge Science Festival

Grading

In recognition of the contingencies of your lives, around 20% of written assignments, presentations, and participation items may be skipped without penalty. Specifically, if you complete three of the four products and 30 of the 38 participation items, you get an automatic B+ and the Grading Rubric (see below) is used to assign B+, A- or A. Only if you miss that target—we hope you don’t—are points tallied: You get 10 points for each completed product (or 5 points if you only make an initial submission), and you get 5 points for each presentation made, up to 50 points maximum. You get 1 point each participation item completed up to 35 maximum. These points are converted to letter grade:

GRADE POINTS
B+ ≥80
B ≥72.5
B- ≥65
C+ ≥57.5
C ≥50
F <50

If you qualify for an automatic B+, you get 80 points. In that case, the following rubric is used to add points (likely moving the grade above a B+). The total points are converted to letter grade:

GRADE POINTS
A ≥95
A- ≥90
B+ ≥ 80

Grading Rubric (for grades of B+ or above)

For each quality “fulfilled very well” you get 2 additional points. If you “did an OK job, but there was room for more development/attention,” you get 1 point. If “to be honest, this was not fulfilled,” you get 0 points.  

  1. Written submissions are paced as specified in the schedule, including timely revisions.
  2. Initial submission of each project’s product are revised thoroughly, showing further inquiry and new thinking in response to comments.
  3. Work on projects is innovative and well planned with respect to generating the required product in the time available.
  4. Work on projects indicate that you can extend tools and processes from the course to your specific situation so as to “trouble…the boundaries of knowledge production in the academy and sciences.”
  5. Written submissions are clear, well structured, and address the specification of the products given in the Project descriptions.
  6. Written submissions have supporting references and detail, and are professionally presented.
  7. Participation in classes is active and shows preparation, as evident in exercises to prepare for class workshops and discussion of the shared focal reading.
  8. Involvement in building the class as a learning community is active, as evident in participation in student-student activities and helpful peer comments on drafts and presentations.
  9. Reflections on the course process and your learning in the PBL format, as recorded in your private learning journal, is thoughtful.
  10. Contributions to the evolving bibliography are well annotated.

KQ Exercise

Preamble

This exercise comes with expectations that you’ll do some exploration without worrying about whether there’s a “right way” to do PBL and to pursue cultural interpreation of science (and of other knowledge making, such as interpreation of science). Instructor feedback will help you tease out various lines of questioning that occur to you and then focus those inquiries. 

You should do steps 1 & 2 before Class 2. You are welcome to start the video and the following steps, but we will also do this together during class. Be reassured that there will be a Focusing In phase in Class 3 after the Opening Up exercise.

Exercise

  1. Re-read scenario for Project 1. Read and post an annotation of Haraway, Donna J."Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936." Social Text 11 (Winter 1984–1985): 20–64. View the Paper Tiger video, stopping every few minutes to make notes (4 parts; 1, 2, 3, 4). 

    Note questions that interest you opened up by connections that Haraway draws. Prepare, then later post as comments/replies on the blog, at least 5 Knowldege claims of Haraway’s in the video or “Teddy Bear Patriarchy” chapter, related to the issue of establishment of knowledge in a certain place at a certain time for a certain people. 

    Prepare, then later post as replies to your own comment at least 5 Questions that you might like to inquire into, raised by the video, the chapter or Project 1 itself, about how to place. 

    Review Ks and Qs from other students. 

    Pursue inquiries (on the web, in publication) that build on the Questions you raised and anything else that arises subsequently. Post as comments/replies to the designated blog post, queries and requests for assistance and clarification to the instructors, who will try to respond before Class 3. 

    Bring to Class 3: Notes about inquiries you undertook, including inquiries that did not yield answers yet, and any new Knowledge claims and Questions that have arisen relevant to Project 1 and its central issue of how knowledge gets established in a certain place at a certain time for a certain people. 

    In Class 3, we will review these inquiries with a view to your inquiring further over the next week and preparing focused presentations for Week 4. Feedback from the instructors on this exercise should help in focusing your inquiries and preparing your presentations.

  2. Work in progress presentation on Project 2 as described by Taylor and Szeiter: “When you prepare to give a presentation, when you hear yourselves deliver your presentations, and when you get feedback, it usually leads to self-clarification of the Overall Argument underlying your research and the eventual written reports. This, in turn, influences your priorities (see Research Design) for the time remaining.”

  3. Situational Map 

    Map some of the complexity of promises, fears, and claims being made about genetics in this evolving digital era, especially as they concern race and gender. Use the websites listed below as entry points to the complexity. If you have a definite angle of your own (e.g., incarceration), feel free to follow leads into the complexity that take you away from or beyond these websites. 

    Method of mapping = Situational map as described in Clarke (2005, chap. 3). The map should convey what you learn or discern about: 

  4. Rapid PBL 

    A ‘briefing’ to help you and other (prospective) teachers learn and get support to move in the direction of more feminist and/or anti-racist pedagogy, especially around science. 

    Project 3 asks you to “contribute to a syllabus for a course that would prepare someone like you to study and engage with [the] promises, fears, and claims being made about genetics in this evolving digital era, especially as these developments shift our ideas and actions concerning race and gender.” 

    Given this project’s focus on building a syllabus, today’s class activity is a rapid PBL on what can we learn from sources on the internet about how teachers (incl. grad. students) learn and get support for experiments in teaching that might take them in the direction of more feminist and/or anti-racist pedagogy around science (in the various ways that you might see that evolving ideal of feminist and/or anti-racist pedagogy)? 

    The product of the PBL is a ‘briefing’ to help you and others learn and get support to move in the direction of more feminist and/or anti-racist pedagogy, especially around science. The briefing is simply a blog post that provides or points to about six key resources, e.g., issues or controversies, concepts and arguments, evidence, annotated references or websites, summaries of case studies, quotes, images, organizations, people to contact, research already under way, research questions and proposals, statements of principles or guidelines. Exactly what might be a ‘resource’ concerning feminist and/or anti-racist pedagogy is up for you to decide. 

    Aim to post the briefing by 7:15 and then spend 30 minutes a) reading the briefing posts of others, and b) adding a comment on your own post, in which you copy and paste (with attribution) about six items from other students’ briefings that supplement your briefing. That is, the items add to what you have proposed will help you learn and get support to move in the direction of more feminist and/or anti-racist pedagogy, especially around science. 

    To get warmed up, we’ll start with free-writing about angles to pursue, then share our thinking in pairs, then in 20-minute turn-taking dialogue in one of two small groups. After that, each of us will explore resources on the internet (*) and draft a briefing. Feel free to sound out ideas with instructors and other students along the way. The last 10 minutes of the class will be a reflection on the experience of this rapid PBL format. 

    * Briefings, which include sources, of past students will be made available during the rapid PBL (2013, 2015).

Mary Baine Campbell

A headshot of a woman wearing a white shirt with short grey hair. Mary Baine Campbell is a professor in English, Comparative Literature, and Women’s and Gender Studies at Brandeis University. Professor Campbell brings to the course experience designing two team-taught seminars for Graduate Consortium for Women’s Studies (GCWS), as well as, long-term scholarly engagement with the literary and colonial pre-history of the modern sciences, social and “natural,” and experience teaching graduate seminars aimed at analysis and critique of knowledge and the texts that encode it. She has a long standing interest in climate change and aims to help students become self-aware skeptics of the authoritative narratives that our graduate education itself inclines us to honor rather than question. The narratives of the biological sicences have been perhaps the most authoritative in our society for decades. 

Peter Taylor

A photo of the profile of a man wearing sunglasses with trees in the background. Peter Taylor is a professor and Director of the Science in a Changing World graduate track at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Professor Taylor brings to this course a) the experience of teaching a PBL-format GCWS course on gender, race, and science four times with three quite different co-instructors; b) openness to learning from the literary interpretive expertise of his co-instructor; and c) a desire to bring front and center the challenge for students of developing a narrative or plan for themselves as inquirers who trouble the boundaries of knowledge production in the academy and sciences and cultivate the support needed to continue to do so.

Written Assignments and Presentations

  • The specifications and deadlines for each written assignment are given in the description for each project.
  • Presentations derived from time spent between classes and during in-class workshop on each PBL project.
  • Initial submission and revised products are submitted by email, with the subject line GCWSassignment. Files should be renamed before submission to read GCWSxyProjectz + revised (when revised) where xy=your initials and z=the project number.
  • Alternate which instructor you submit the initial submission to.
  • Professional presentation of written submissions means typos and spelling mistakes are eliminated, pages are numbered, fonts are consistent, and references are cited in a consistent format.

Participation Items

  • Attendance and participation in class meetings based on preparation between classes, including focal reading. Includes punctuality, no cell phone calls. (14 items)
  • “Treasure Hunt”, to get familiar with organization of course materials and requirements
  • Annotated reference or resource (such as a person, organization…) added at regular intervals to the evolving bibliography on the blog. (8 items)
    • Annotations should convey the article’s key points as well as its connection to the student’s own inquiries and interests. Examples from past years are provided. Prepare first on your computer, then copy and paste the annotated reference into blog. Specify the category “Bibliography”.
  • Reflection on your experience of the course process and your learning in the PBL format (at least 10 weekly entries, each worth ½ an item, adding up to maximum of 5 items)
    • Although posting the entries to the blog is optional, interaction between class meetings is valuable in this course because we are based on different campuses and because of the evolving nature of the PBL experience. Specify the posting category Reflection.
  • Minimum of two in-person or phone conferences on your assignments and projects—one before class 5, the other, with the other instructor before class 10 (2 items). These are important for checking in, taking stock, getting a recharge, ensuring timely resolution of misunderstandings, and opening up significant issues about one’s relationship to the course material and objectives. If you are falling behind, conferences are especially important.

Schedule

Class runs from 5–8pm.

5:00: Usual class check-in & discussion of focal reading

5:30: Intro to rapid PBL

5:35: Free-writing

5:45: Dialogue groups

6:05: Individual searching on internet, composing, and posting of briefing

7:15: Reading briefings of others and copy-paste items from them

7:50: Reflection on the experience

  • Peer commentary on other students’ draft products (3 times, by the class after posting; 3 items) An instructor will forward another student’s project drafts to you by email for peer review after you submit your own draft.
  • If you won’t be able to review an assignment sent to you, immediately reply to the instructor so the assignment can get sent to a different student. Send comments by a week after the draft submission date to the student with cc to the instructor. Make sure the subject line remains GCWSassignment. To get the kinds of response you need, state what you are looking for at the top of your draft.
  • Your assignment Checklist filled-in during semester and submitted with self-assessment on the rubric at the last class (1 item).

We are familiar with the existence of art criticism and literary criticism, but, despite the importance of science and technology in today’s society, “science criticism” is not a widely accepted enterprise. With the goal of promoting a wider range of engagements in science and technology, this course uses a Project Based Learning (PBL) format to stimulate interdisciplinary inquiry, pedagogical, conceptual and practical innovation, and epistemological self-consciousness. The projects are designed to put into play a range of different kinds of resources, which include:

  • the diverse interests, skills, commitments, and passions of the instructors and the students
  • annotated bibliographies, syllabi, and review essays—especially material contributed by feminist, anti-racist, and other critical analysts of science and technology
  • the rich personal and intellectual connections made easier in this internet age
  • the instructors’ experience in stretching students and themselves beyond disciplinary and conceptual boundaries, especially as they concern race and gender
  • various course routines with related tools and processes

PBL is an approach that allows you to shape your own directions of inquiry and develop your skills as investigators and prospective teachers. At the same time, the PBL projects engage your critical faculties as you learn to contextualize science, especially as they address or suppress gender and racial difference, and especially as can be discerned by reading and analysis of texts—whether in science, social studies of science, or science fiction. The projects address different areas of life and environmental sciences, but are sequenced so as to first lead you into practice with the interpretation of the cultural dimensions of science. Building on that, we contrast the imaginaries of fiction writers with those of scientists and science-emphasizing commentators, and then address the complexity of promises, fears, and claims being made about genetics in this evolving digital era. In the final course project, you develop a personal plan to foster the development of others in their learning about the issues raised in this course, and to practice some of what you plan. This is an opportunity to develop your own projects for teaching, prepare grant proposals for further inquiry or activist engagement, or construct syllabi around topics in feminist and critical studies of science and technology.

Throughout the semester we navigate between two tendencies. On one side, there will be divergent, reticulating explorations of the implications that each of you draw from the project descriptions. On the other side, you will have to discipline these explorations so as to generate the final product specified in each project description. In that navigation, you address the bodies of substantive knowledge most relevant to your individual inquiries (guided by review essays in anthologies/handbooks, original scientific literature and informants identified by the instructors) and translate that knowledge into terms digestible by others with different levels of expertise around diverse (sometimes divergent) bodies of knowledge. You also navigate between generating a product for each project and practicing processes of close reading, reflection, dialogue, and articulation of identities. These different aspects of the course experience are animated by the challenging question of how each of us prepares for ongoing inquiry that troubles the boundaries of knowledge production in the academy and sciences. This last question is an obvious one for interdisciplinary work, but it also applies in any area of specialization that wants to stay relevant as the wider social context changes over time 

The PBL format of the course provides an opportunity to re-engage with yourself as an avid learner and inquirer. What makes this re-engagement possible is a combination of:

  • the tools and processes used during the course for close reading of texts, inquiry, dialogue, reflection, and collaboration
  • the connections you make among the diverse participants who bring diverse interests, skills, knowledge, experience, and aspirations to the course
  • our contributions to the topics laid out in the scenarios from which each project-based learning project begins

Reflection on this re-engagement feeds into the final project, in which you plan for your own ongoing learning that enables you to “trouble the boundaries of knowledge production in the academy and sciences, especially as they concern race and gender.” The PBL approach taken in this course makes the schedule of classes look incomplete—it doesn’t meet conventional expectations of weekly topics, readings, and pre-defined assignments. But the essence of the course is that we make the road as we travel. Expect this offering— this workshop-style collaboration of students—to result in a unique construction. This said, there is a definite set of routines that make up the class sessions and other learning interactions in the course—blog, check-in, one shared focal reading per week, workshop, presentations, annotations, dialogue around written work, peer commentary, and a private learning journal.

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