Through investigating cross-cultural case studies, this course introduces students to the anthropological study of the social institutions and symbolic meanings of family, gender, and sexuality. We will explores the myriad forms that families and households take and considers their social, emotional, and economic dynamics.

How and why do we participate in public life? How do we get drawn into community and political affairs? In this course we examine the associations and networks that connect us to one another and structure our social and political interactions. Readings are drawn from a growing body of research suggesting that the social networks, community norms, and associational activities represented by the concepts of civil society and social capital can have important effects on the functioning of democracy, stability and change in political regimes, the capacity of states to carry out their objectives, and international politics.

Social Construction of Everyday Life

Short Description:
One part of a two-part introduction to the discipline of sociology, the study of society. It examines how we come to understand and experience ourselves and the world around us and how we create culture. Students will be introduced to the study of culture, socialization, social interaction, identity formation and self-fashioning, the social construction of class, gender and race, age, deviance, and other social phenomena.

Word Count: 336938

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

This book introduces key terminology and research to help you define, discuss, diagnose, and deal with this the issue of addiction.

This resource will be updated as needed. For the most recent version, visit: https://cod.pressbooks.pub/addiction/

Short Description:
This textbook was created to provide an introduction to research methods for BSW and MSW students, with particular emphasis on research and practice relevant to students at the University of Texas at Arlington. It provides an introduction to social work students to help evaluate research for evidence-based practice and design social work research projects. It can be used with its companion, A Guidebook for Social Work Literature Reviews and Research Questions by Rebecca L. Mauldin and Matthew DeCarlo, or as a stand-alone textbook.

Word Count: 108842

ISBN: 978-1-64816-991-5

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

Short Description:
This textbook was created to provide an introduction to research methods for BSW and MSW students, with particular emphasis on research and practice relevant to students at the University of Texas at Arlington. It provides an introduction to social work students to help evaluate research for evidence-based practice and design social work research projects. It can be used with its companion, A Guidebook for Social Work Literature Reviews and Research Questions by Rebecca L. Mauldin and Matthew DeCarlo, or as a stand-alone textbook.

Word Count: 111030

ISBN: 978-1-64816-991-5

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

The focus of this textbook is preparing students for a college education with the study and life skills they need to become successful students.

For years I’ve wanted to write a book about racism. But after visiting Barnes and Nobles, both online and our actual bookstore here in Boise, Idaho; I realized there were already volumes of books and articles written on the subject of racism. I asked myself, could I write a book on racism that would be different than the books already available? So, I started to think about my twenty years of personal experiences, conducting courses, giving seminars, lectures, and writing articles about racism. In those seminars, lectures and articles, I always wanted to make sure my students, the attendees , and readers learned something specific; something they could take home and use immediately. After realizing what I’d been doing for all those years, I decided that teaching something very specific about racism would make my book different. In all my lectures, seminars, courses and articles, I always had a primary goal; teach people how to move from being a non-racist, to becoming an antiracist. Everything I spoke, taught and wrote was about helping people to see where they really stood regarding racism and how to take the necessary action to becoming a positive change agent.

This subject examines interactions across the Eurasian continent between Russians, Chinese, Mongolian nomads, and Turkic oasis dwellers during the last millennium and a half. As empires rose and fell, religions, trade, and war flowed back and forth continuously across this vast space. Today, the fall of the Soviet Union and China’s reforms have opened up new opportunities for cultural interaction.

This course examines the definition of gender in scientific, societal, and historical contexts. It explores how gender influences state formation and the work of the state, what role gender plays in imperialism and in the welfare state, the ever-present relationship between gender and war, and different states’ regulation of the body in gendered ways at different times. It investigates new directions in the study of gender as historians, anthropologists and others have taken on this fascinating set of problems.

In the course we will use a feminist interdisciplinary lens and invite students to look critically at how practices like privatization, shrinking public “safety nets”, de-regulation, and the commodification of health services intersect inevitably with gender, race and class, for both men and women. We will draw on a blend of empirical studies, policy materials, films and guest speakers to examine specific health issues like menstrual health, corporate obstetrics, abortion, obesity, intersex, harassment and other forms of gendered violence, mental health and stress, parent-child attachment, as well as ethics and pharmaceuticals.
The Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies (GCWS)
This course is part of the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies. The GCWS at MIT brings together scholars and teachers at nine degree-granting institutions in the Boston area who are devoted to graduate teaching and research in Women’s Studies and to advancing interdisciplinary Women’s Studies scholarship. Learn more about the GCWS.

This course examines the definition of gender in scientific, societal, and historical contexts. It explores how gender influences state formation and the work of the state, what role gender plays in imperialism and in the welfare state, the ever-present relationship between gender and war, and different states’ regulation of the body in gendered ways at different times. It also investigates new directions in the study of gender as historians, anthropologists and others have taken on this fascinating set of problems. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments.

Does it matter in education whether or not you’ve got a Y chromosome? You bet it does. In this discussion-based seminar, we will explore why males vastly outrank females in math and science and career advancements (particularly in academia), and why girls get better grades and go to college more often than boys. Do the sexes have different learning styles? Are women denied advanced opportunities in academia and the workforce? How do family life and family decisions affect careers for both men and women?

This course examines representations of race, class, gender, and sexual identity in the media, with a particular focus on new media and how digital technologies are transforming popular culture. We will be considering issues of authorship, spectatorship, (audience) and the ways in which various media content (film, television, print journalism, blogs, video, advertising) enables, facilitates, and challenges these social constructions in society.

The course will focus primarily on contemporary discourses concerning gender inequality. Most of the readings assigned will be recent articles published in U.S. and British media capturing the latest thinking and research on gender inequality in the workplace. The class will be highly interactive combining case studies, videos, debates, guest speakers, and in-class simulations.

This course will provide students with an analytic framework to understand the roles that gender, race, and class play in defining and determining access to leadership and power in the U.S., especially in the context of the workplace. We will explore women and men in leadership positions within the corporate, political and non-profit sectors, with attention to the roles of women of color and immigrant women within this context. We will also look at specific policies such as affirmative action, parental leave, child-care policy, and working-time policies and the role they play–or could play–in achieving parity. We will further investigate ways in which these policies address gender, racial, and class inequities, and think critically about mechanisms for change. The course will be highly interactive, and will combine texts, theater, videos and visual arts.

After decades of efforts to promote development, why is there so much poverty in the world? What are some of the root causes of inequality world-wide and why do poverty, economic transformations and development policies often have different consequences for women and men? This course explores these issues while also examining the history of development itself, its underlying assumptions, and its range of supporters and critics. It considers the various meanings given to development by women and men, primarily as residents of particular regions, but also as aid workers, policy makers and government officials. In considering how development projects and policies are experienced in daily life in urban and rural areas in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Melanesia, this course asks what are the underlying political, economic, social, and gender dynamics that make “development” an ongoing problem world-wide.

What can we learn about science and technology–and what can we do with that knowledge? Who are “we” in these questions?–whose knowledge and expertise gets made into public policy, new medicines, topics of cultural and political discourse, science education, and so on? How can expertise and lay knowledge about science and technology be reconciled in a democratic society? How can we make sense of the interactions of living and non-living, humans and non-humans, individual and collectivities in the production of scientific knowledge and technologies?
The course takes these questions as entry points into an ever-growing body of work to which feminist, anti-racist, and other critical analysts and activists have made significant contributions. The course also takes these questions as an invitation to practice challenging the barriers of expertise, gender, race, class, and place that restrict wider access to and understanding of the production of scientific knowledge and technologies. In that spirit, students participate in an innovative, problem-based learning (PBL) approach that allows them to shape their own directions of inquiry and develop their skills as investigators and prospective teachers. At the same time the PBL cases engage students’ critical faculties as they learn about existing analyses of gender, race, and the complexities of science and technology, guided by individualized bibliographies co-constructed with the instructors and by the projects of the other students. Students from all fields and levels of preparation are encouraged to join the course.

This course explores how gender shaped the historical experiences and cultural productions in the North American West during the time it was being explored, settled, and imagined. The North American West of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provides a fascinating case study of the shifting meanings of gender, race, citizenship, and power in border societies. As the site of migration, settlement, and displacement, it spawned contests over land, labor disputes, inter-ethnic conflicts and peaceful relations, and many kinds of cultural productions.
The Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies (GCWS)
This course is part of the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies. The GCWS at MIT brings together scholars and teachers at nine degree-granting institutions in the Boston area who are devoted to graduate teaching and research in Women’s Studies and to advancing interdisciplinary Women’s Studies scholarship. Learn more about the GCWS.

This course seeks to examine how people experience gender - what it means to be a man or a woman - and sexuality in a variety of historical and cultural contexts. We will explore how gender and sexuality relate to other categories of social identity and difference, such as race and ethnicity, economic and social standing, urban or rural life, etc. One goal of the class is to learn how to critically assess media and other popular representations of gender roles and stereotypes. Another is to gain a greater sense of the diversity of human social practices and beliefs in the United States and around the world.