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Required Texts (available at the University bookstore and Mary Jane Books)
Baldwin, James. 1963. The Fire Next Time.
Clare, Eli. 1999. Exile and Pride: Queerness, Disability, and Liberation.
Smith, Andrea. 2005. Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide.
Course Packet – available at Mary Jane Books (hereafter abbreviated as CP).

Requirements: Activities | Assignments | Grades | Expectations

Activities

1. Class Participation - You are expected to contribute regularly to class discussions, to listen effectively to lectures and to others, and to bring reading materials to class. Due to the contents of this course concerning gender, sexuality, and racial issues, sensitivity and respect for all are a must. You are also expected to attend class regularly and are permitted 3 unexcused absences for the semester, after which you will lose 5 points for each additional absence from your final grade. An excessive show of lateness or failure to remain in class for the duration of class time will also impact negatively on your final grade, so please be judicious in how you use your allotted absences and how you monitor your presence in the classroom. Please turn off cellphones (or keep on vibrator alert in cases of "emergency" calls) before class begins.
2. Blackboard Online Discussions: On our Blackboard online classroom site, you will either facilitate and/or respond to student-led discussions over reading assignments and film/video screenings each week. You will be given the opportunity to sign up one week to lead a student-led discussion by raising an original, critical thinking question about the readings/videos assigned and then facilitate the ensuing discussion. Before you post a question or response, read the questions already posted (4-5 students will be assigned each week to raise discussion questions), and do not repeat a question asked by another student. Your discussion question should relate directly to an issue raised in the reading or video, and it should elicit a thoughtful response. Don't ask a question which can be answered by simply looking the answer up. Your question should require critical thinking and should be provocative in its ability to evoke commentary. In addition to facilitating the discussion on your own topic, you are also required to be an active reader in another discussion topic facilitated by another student. It is important to post your discussions as soon as you have completed the reading/screening and to return frequently to facilitate and participate in these discussions. You are expected to reply to all students who have responded to your discussion question. During the weeks when you are not facilitating Blackboard discussions, you will instead be required to read the student-led discussions and to post your responses to one discussion topic and occasionally participate in another discussion topic. You will also be expected to reply to students who respond to your own discussion postings in the main discussion topic that you have chosen. I will grade these discussions, but I will not be a participant. I will instead draw from these discussions to shape our in-class discussions. For those who are assigned to facilitate, please keep this in mind: If the online discussion you are leading gets off track, it is your responsibility to refocus it. You are responsible for maintaining the quality of the discussion threads you lead. Every posting to a discussion should add something substantive to that discussion. Be sure to read the detailed instructions provided online for facilitating and posting to student-led discussions. I will close discussion threads 2 weeks after the initial posting. These student-led discussions will begin the week of February 5.
3. Pop Quizzes: Scheduled throughout the semester and unannounced in class; you will have as many or as few quizzes, depending on how regularly everyone in class keeps up with their reading assignments. The lowest quiz grade will be dropped.

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Assignments:

1. Creative Responses: Two exercises are geared towards developing your creative and critical thinking skills (10 points each – 20 points total):
   • Photo Essay: In preparation for the digital storytelling collaborative project, you will have an opportunity to visually reflect on course themes, reading, and video assignments by creating a photo essay, which is an essay based on pictures. Tell a story about POWER through 12 original photographs (a digital camera, disposable camera, or even cell-phone camera are acceptable), each photo serving as a frame. You may approach this subject in a number of ways: tell a story that shows someone (or something) gaining power, losing power, abusing power, or resisting power. If you include written captions, they should only be one word, phrase, or sentence. Your photographic subject may be a person, a group of people or community, a non-human living organism, nature, the urban environment, etc. You may include persons who give you permission to include their images in your photo-essay (such photographic subjects may agree to do real-life, documentary-style portraits, or they may serve as actors performing in a fictional photo narrative). This assignment is due Tuesday, February 12, in class and must be digitally posted in your Creative Response Blog the same day. You are expected to comment on at least 3 other students' photo essays.
   • Open Letter: This assignment is a creative response to the first chapter in James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. This chapter is a letter Baldwin wrote to his nephew about the harsh realities of racism and what he will need to survive it as a young black man growing up in America . In light of our course subject, "Classism, Racism, and Sexism," you will be expected to write an open letter (open, as in written for a specific person but shared with a general audience) to a young person who is important to you (like Baldwin, this could be a family member - niece, nephew, son, daughter, cousin, younger sister or brother, godchild, etc. - or perhaps a young student in high school or a lower grade or young person in your community or neighborhood, for whom you are serving as a mentor or guide), or you may address the letter to a political figure or any other public figure in the limelight, or you may address the letter to a historical figure. Like Baldwin , you are expected to address an issue - classism, racism, or sexism, or the intersection of two or all three – that will certainly impact that person or that causes the actions of that person to impact upon you. Suggest in your letter ways that the recipient can resist these ideologies and how s/he can find self-worth beyond such systems. This assignment is due in class on Tuesday, February 26 , and must be posted in your Creative Response Blog the same day. You are expected to post your responses to at least 3 other students' letters. Paper length: 2-4 pages typed and double-spaced.
   You will have an opportunity to earn 5 Bonus Points if I determine that either your photo essay or open letter is exceptional enough to be considered for publication in the Women's Studies undergraduate e-journal, transcending silence..., which is seeking submissions up to March 15, 2008. If your creative response assignment(s) receive an A- or higher (equivalent of 8 points each or higher), then it will be forwarded to the editorial board for consideration for the Spring 2008 issue. You will receive additional Bonus Points (extra 5 points for a total of 10 points added to this assignment) if one or both of your creative responses are published in this year's issue (which includes following the e-journal guidelines and revision and resubmission requests). In order to qualify for the first bonus points, you will need to officially submit your project, following the e-journal's submission guidelines: this bonus project will be due in class on Tuesday, March 11.
2. Digital Storytelling Collaborative Project: This assignment is a different kind of creative project, this time focusing on new digital media as tools that can be used to create and enhance a story. Whether incorporating such photo or filmmaking software programs, like Photo Story for windows, or imovie for Mac, to create a storytelling project in groups, you will be expected to create a story that combines visuals and audio with an original narrative (prose or poetry). Create a “then” and “now” parallel storyline between a historical social problem and a contemporary one; you will need to conduct research for both time periods.
   • Select Topic: You are limited to 5 students per group. These are the topic choices (sign up online by Feb. 14):
     • “Achola Obama for President”: When Senator Obama defeated Senator Clinton in the early January Democratic Iowa Caucus, iconic American feminist Gloria Steinem immediately proclaimed in a New York Times op-ed article that “race” trumps “gender” and that white women will always have a harder struggle for acceptance than black men. Moreover, using a fictitious example to make her point, she asks whether or not Obama, were he a black female candidate – whom she hypothetically names “Achola Obama” – would have the same success, in which she answers with a resounding no. However, Steinem conveniently ignores that Hillary Clinton is not the first woman to run for president. She is preceded by Victoria Woodhull, who ran in 1872 (with Frederick Douglass as her running mate), and Shirley Chisholm, the first African American of either sex, who ran in 1972. In this project, you will be expected to consider the potential for an Achola Obama (who has a real-life example in former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, vying for the Green Party ticket) to advance as a presidential candidate and to draw parallels with history by examining the campaigns of both Victoria Woodhull and Shirley Chisholm. (See Debate on Race and Gender Politics in Presidential Politics.)
     • Noose Hangings: The Legacy of Lynching: In the year 2007, a disturbing trend involving the hanging of nooses that targeted African Americans occurred throughout the country, perhaps starting with the famous case of the “Jena 6” in Jena, Louisiana. Interestingly, the perpetrators of this hate speech declared that these acts were simply “pranks.” But, how could that be when we consider its murderous history? In this project, you will be expected to examine the legacy of the “lynch rope” and its significance as both “hate speech” and “hate crime.” You will especially be expected to illuminate how these acts were related to the intersections of racism, sexism, and classism.
     • Rape as a Weapon of War: In recent memory, we have seen how rape and other acts of sexual violence have been strategic tools in warfare. From the recent rape epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo to the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, to the Rwanda and Bosnia genocides, to the rape, torture, killings and disappearances of young women and girls on the U.S./Mexico border, even to the use of sexual humiliation and pornographic photographs as acts of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in the Iraq war in 2004. In fact, the international community only began recognizing rape as a war crime in 1996. However, we need only glimpse at various events in history to know that this is a long-standing weapon of war. In this project, you will be expected to draw a parallel between one of these contemporary situations involving rape as warfare to a different historical period in which rape was a strategic tool for warfare, colonization, or enslavement.
     • Stereotypes, Hate Speech, and Propaganda: Stereotypes, hate speech, and propaganda are in a different realm of action when it comes to discrimination and violence. They form the “representational” sphere of discrimination and violence that targets and labels certain groups and communities as “different” (racially, sexually, ethnically, etc.), which usually find currency in symbols, language, art, popular culture, and various forms of media. While a stereotype is a conventional or oversimplified conception, opinion, or image that makes assumptions about a group of people, hate speech makes use of certain language or symbols to degrade, intimidate, or incite violence against that group. Propaganda is the most extreme act in which a concerted effort is made to influence a mass population to think and behave in certain ways against or for particular groups, nations, and ideologies. As such, stereotypes, hate speech, and propaganda often work in tandem. In this project, you will be expected to investigate the history and evolution of a stereotype, hate speech, or propaganda in circulation today. Specifically, you will be expected to make links between racism, sexism, and classism.
     • The Culture Wars: Where Race and Sexuality Meet: In contemporary times, there have been many arguments in circulation about the damaging effects of video games, pornography, hip-hop, reggaeton, and, as always, the nude female body. However, any historical investigation will show that these arguments have existed throughout time (e.g. the same attacks against BET's depictions of African Americans today were also leveled against Blaxploitation films in the 1970s or against mammies and sambos in the 1940s; the same attacks against video games were also leveled against Hollywood gangster films in the 1930s, except historically speaking, early Hollywood film attacks were tinged with anti-Semitism; 1920s jazz and 1950s rock-and-roll caused the same upset as today's hip-hop music, and an undercurrent of racism colors much of these attacks; attacks against the female body are often racialized and class-based since “good, decent” women remain covered and protected in middle-class or upper-class homes). In this project, you will be expected to draw a parallel between a current “morality” concern about culture's influence and a similar or different “morality” concern from another historical period. Pay attention to how race and sexuality issues surface in these debates.
     • Immigration Wars: Then and Now: Considering that the United States of America was founded by immigrants (while the native population has been decimated or removed to isolated reservations), the battle for supremacy is predicated on racial and ethnic formations, with sexual politics used to control current and future populations. Although groups like Mexicans and other Spanish-speaking groups from Latin America are presently targeted in negative ways in discussions about immigration rights and policies, other groups, such as Eastern Europeans, are rarely discussed, while non-white groups, such as Asian immigrants, are discussed in different ways. Yet, any historical investigation into immigration history will highlight how certain groups were treated favorably while others were castigated, based on the intersections of classism, racism, and sexism. In this project, you will be expected to draw a parallel between present-day immigration with an immigration debate from this nation's past.
     • Post-Hurricane Katrina: The New Trail of Tears?: In 2005, we witnessed the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina devastating the Gulf Coast . In its wake, we witnessed more devastation, this time man-made, as mostly poor, mostly people of color were dispossessed, displaced, and forcibly removed from New Orleans and relocated elsewhere. Is it fair to call this tragedy a new 21 st -century “trail of tears”? In this project, you will be expected to draw parallels between the post-Hurricane Katrina displaced community of New Orleans with the Cherokee “Trail of Tears” in the 1830s. What policies and actions were in place? What “opportunities” arose to perpetuate oppressions?
     • “White Flight” Then, Gentrification Now: “White flight” refers to a trend in which working-class and middle-class white people move away from people-of-color neighborhoods located in urban environments and into suburbs (most notably during the 1950s and 1960s); gentrification is a reversal of that trend. In this project, you will examine a specific neighborhood that is feeling the effects of contemporary “gentrification” while having suffered in its history from “white flight.” In what ways does white privilege shape both trends? Also, how do classism, racism, and sexism combine to influence these trends?
     • Fighting Oppression, Fighting Racism: Although various marginalized groups and privileged groups have been able to come together to fight oppressions, oftentimes, they tend to be divided whenever racism rears its ugly head. Some of these examples include the abolitionist movement, the women's suffrage movement, the socialist movement, the antiwar movement, and the LGBTQ movement. Yet, sometimes, interracial or multiracial groups have been able to challenge racism while fighting oppression. Dig into history and locate an antiracist, multiracial movement that was able to come together to fight oppression. In this project, you will be expected to showcase this historical example as inspiration for today's groups looking to forge multiracial coalitions in the fight against oppression.
   • Designate Roles in the Collaborative Project: Your five-person team should take on the following roles: Primary researchers – two individuals should emerge as the ones who will guide the rest of the group into two research teams – one focusing on primary research materials while the second team focuses on locating secondary research materials. The primary researchers are responsible for assembling and interpreting the project proposal and annotated bibliography; Writer - the main person who will compose the script for this project; Editor - the main person who will compose, collect, assemble, and edit the visuals for this project (be they original shots based in primary sources, such as artwork, photographs, or moving images, or "found footage" images - still or motion pictures from a movie, TV program, or art work, created in a montage), as well as editing the visual to correspond with the script; and Sound Mixer - the main person who will compose the sound effects and sound-mixing of this project (including music, sound effects, and voice-over narratives). In the event of fewer persons in a group, the collaborative team will equally divide the work of researcher, writer, editor, and sound mixer. The group is expected to collaborate on a 2-4 page introduction (typed and double-spaced) describing the storytelling project, to be submitted with the final version of the project.
   • Complete the Project in Phrases: The first phase is the proposal, to be completed by the primary researchers, which includes a 250-word overview of the project, a 500-word explanation of the topic that is addressed in the project, and a 300-word outline of how the storytelling project will come together. Include with this proposal a list of each group member and her/his role, and an annotated bibliography that includes 2 primary sources and 3 secondary sources. The proposal and annotated bibliography are due before Spring Break, in class on Tuesday, March 18. The second phase of this project is a script, to be composed by the writer, and storyboard, to be composed by the editor. Once your concept, or script, is written for your project, next is the storyboard, which is a graphic outline that visualizes your storytelling project, frame by frame. The script and storyboard are due on Tuesday, April 8. The next phase is a rough cut of the project, produced by the editor and sound mixer who will work together in combining visuals with sound. This rough cut will be presented in class from April 29 to May 6. Your digital storytelling project should be at least 5 minutes long, but it should not exceed 15 minutes. This is the schedule for the week's presentations:
   • April 29 - Projects: Achola Obama; Noose Hangings; Rape and War.
   • May 1 - Projects: Stereotypes; Culture Wars; Immigration Wars.
   • May 6 - Projects: Katrina; White Flight; Fighting Racism.

   The final version of this project should be completed and ready to turn in any time between May 6, the last day of class, and Friday, May 16, 4 pm (to be submitted in the drop box on my office door). Bonus two (2) points will be added to this project grade for each workshop that you attend at the Interactive Media Center, which offers free tutorials on various digital media programs that you can use to complete this project, including workshops on imovie, flash, Photoshop, etc. In the event that your own schedule cannot accommodate the dates listed, please contact the IMC directors, Regina Convoy and Roger Lipera, who can schedule you in for a tutorial at alternative times. The IMC is located in the basement of the main library. The final project should be submitted on a CD or DVD and properly labeled with the title of your film/digital storytelling and the names of your group members. An additional bonus one (1) point will be added to this project if you make it available on a video site (like You Tube); please provide the video link on the CD/DVD label.

   3. Assignment Checklist/Self-Evaluation – designed to help you keep track of your performance in this course, due last day of class, on Tuesday, May 6; see last page of print syllabus. You stand to lose 5 points from your class participation grade if you fail to turn this in.

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HOW GRADES ARE DETERMINED

Grading Scale:
A = 100-93
A- = 92-90
B+ = 89-87
B = 86-83
B- = 82-80
C+ = 79-77
C = 76-73
C- = 72-70
D = 69-65
E = Below 65

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EXPECTATIONS
As previously mentioned, you are allowed up to 3 unexcused absences. Excused absences and make-up assignments are only granted in cases of emergency and grave illnesses. If you miss more than your allotted three unexcused absences, you stand to lose 5 points for each additional absence. If you accumulate more than 7 unexcused absences, you will fail this course.

Late assignments will result in a 5-point reduction for each day late. After two days late, you will receive a “0” for that assignment.

Plagiarism is a university offense and will result in failing grades. First time offense will result in a “0” for your assignment. Second offense will result in a failing grade for the course.

TO AVOID PLAGIARISM:
Understand what it means: plagiarism results when someone uses the ideas or writings of another and presents these ideas or writings as her or his own. Examples include:

1. Buying a paper from a research service or term paper mill.
2. Turning in a paper from a “free term paper” website.
3. Turning in a paper someone else has written for you.
4. Copying materials from a source without proper citation.
5. Using proper citation but leaving out quotation marks.
6. Paraphrasing materials from a source without appropriate citation.

When citing sources, it is best to present ideas using your own original words. If you fully understand a source, you will be able to completely describe its themes and ideas in your own words and from your own perspective. However, if you copy a passage that someone else wrote and only change a few words around, it becomes plagiarism.

When quoting directly from sources, it is best to use direct quotes only if the phrasing is apt and powerfully stated; be sure to include proper citation. If the quote is not revelatory or eloquent but simply provides some useful information, then it is best to explain the information completely in your own words while providing proper citation.

TO AVOID COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT:
Since you will be engaged in digital media production and will possibly work with various media sources, you will need to familiarize yourself with copyright policies on “fair use” of others' creative works. Copyright “fair use” laws allow you to reproduce copyrighted work only if your use of such work is “transformative” of the original or if it contains a small portion of it. It is often difficult to determine the nature of such transformations and portions, so when in doubt, it is safest to seek permission from the copyright owner for free use (if your work is for educational rather than commercial purposes, as is the case for your digital storytelling projects) or to pay a licensing fee. For more information, please visit Stanford University's website on copyright fair use laws: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/

To access royalty free music in the public domain, please visit: http://www.freeplaymusic.com.

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