Hi All – I was very pleased with your writing and how open you all were. It was a pleasure to read. You may have noticed there are some unlinked items in the course schedule. I like to get a feel for who is in the course before I decide on all the readings. I will be making updates, but not for the next due date.
Most of your stories made me really want to share my own stories. That’s a sign of a good story! But this is about you finding your stories, not me. I wanted to make a couple of notes about things that have come up.
JOURNALS: most of you did the discussion post, but some of you did not to the journal. Please do both. They are similar but not the same and I addressed that in the discussion forum this morning. If you are confused, please read that response. Also, a number of you referenced the readings as “Dan P. McAdams, Ruthellen, Josselson, & Amia Lieblich, Identity and Story.” I don’t know where you got that. The reading is from Gender Stories: Negotiating Identity in a Binary World by Karen Foss and Mary E. Domenico. All of the readings have full citations at the bottom of the course schedule.
MASCULINE/FEMININE: We all use these words a lot. Sometimes we say girly, “like a man,” “acted like a girl/boy,” etc. This is because we have a whole host of behaviors that we associate with men and another we associate with women. In reality, we could simply substitute a description of the before; in other words, use words that are more accurate. So instead of saying that someone fixes things and likes sports is a more accurate description than saying something like “they like guy things.” I often ask “what are guy things” as a way to show that other words might be better. I want to challenge you to think about how your gendered descriptions might be more accurate if you described the actual behavior. Just think about it.
FUTURE-POSTING: I would like you to start future-posting your Discussion Posts. You do NOT need to do this for journals. Future-posting means that you will set the date on your post in advance. This way all of your posts will be published at the same time and, more like a class discussion, you can read the posts as a group, or conversation, and comment. I put details on future-posting in the prompt for Discussion 2. However, my colleague Syelle Graves wrote up a much nicer and neater set of instructions here.
CATEGORIES: Please do NOT use the “Category Sticky” on the right side when composing a post. Ignore that box completely. ONLY select yours from the actual “Categories” option. Here is a diagram for you:
For our next due date on June 1, 2020, at 11:59 pm, these are the tasks to complete:
- Comment on a minimum of three posts in Discussion 1.
- Read UNIT I: AN INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN, GENDER, SEXUALITY STUDIES: GROUNDING THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS AND CONCEPTS. Please note that this reading is an online book and you must click through on the bottom right-hand corner to the next section. You should read ALL of Unit 1, clear up through “References: Unit 1.”
- Write Journal 2 reflecting on the reading.
- Review the information associated with and complete Discussion Post 2.
Also, I didn’t make another video announcement. I am happy to do them if you like them and find them helpful. Feel free to comment on this post to let me know what you think about that.
