Sociology Department

Department News

NEW CLASS

Sociology 312: Sociology of Gender
Instructor: Penelope Huang, Ph.D.
Spring 2008

Mondays and Wednesdays, 4:00 – 5:50pm
Stevenson 2091

Professor Penelope M. Huang, Ph.D
penelope.huang@sonoma.edu

Course Description

People often have strongly held beliefs about gender—about femininity, masculinity, and the “natural” or “proper” ways that men and women should behave. These ideas organize our behaviors, interactions, and thought processes in significant ways, despite the fact that they often go unnoticed. Such taken-for-granted assumptions about “normal” or “innate” characteristics of men or women prevent a thorough understanding of the complexity and diversity of reality.

This class challenges gendered assumptions by understanding gender as socially roduced in order to develop a more sophisticated and critical sense of how gender shapes and is in turn shaped by behaviors, beliefs, and social structures. In particular, this course will discuss how gender is created and recreated in media, education, families, employment, medicine, and social movements. In addition, we will address diversities in men’s and women’s gendered experiences as they relate to race/ethnicity, class, and sexualities.

Course Goals

Upon completion of this course, students will:

• Understand how gender is socially constructed;
• Understand how social institutions are gendered and how this affects women’s and men’s experiences within them;
• Understand the social consequences of systems of gender.
• Recognize how race, class, sexuality, and gender interact to shape women’s and men’s experiences;
• Become familiar with some important findings in recent sociological studies of gender.
• Have improved writing, reading, and critical thinking skills

Readings for the course include:

Kimmel, Michael S. 2007. The Gendered Society, 3 rd Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kimmel, Michael S. 2007. The Gendered Society Reader, 3 rd Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.