Last Offered: Spring 1996

Required Reading
Pico Iyer, "Are Men Really So Bad?"
Jon Weiner, "Racial Hatred on Campus"
Richard Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics"
Elinor Lerner, "American Feminism and the Jewish Question"
Don Clark, "Homosexual Encounter in All-Male Groups"
David A. Gerber, "Cutting Out Shylock: Elite Anti-Semitism and the Quest for Moral Order in the Nineteenth-Century Marketplace"
The San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project, "She Even Chewed Tobacco': A Pictorial Narrative of Passing Women in America"
Ann E. Larabee, "The American Hero and His Mechanical Bride: Gender Myths of the Titanic Disaster"
Erwin E. Haeberle, "Swastika, Pink Triangle, and Yellow Star: The Destruction of Sexology and the Persecution of Homosexuals in Nazi Germany"

David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class
Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit
John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
Allan B. Berube, Coming Out Under Fire: Gay Men and Women in World War Two
Michael Kimmel, editor, Men Confront Pornography
Toni Morrison, editor, Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality

Course Description and Requirements
We will examine several manifestations of a pervasive phenomenon in human society: the unreasonably negative perception of entire groups of people. While prejudice of some sort is universally found, the nature and extent of intolerance is by no means uniform across cultures. Our focus, then, will be on the construction of prejudice in specific cultural settings. I do not intend this class to be a comprehensive history of bigotry in America. Rather, it will be an advanced analysis of how prejudice may be conceived and an intensive discussion of some of the more notable examples of bias in America's past and present.

As befits a seminar, there will be no lectures after our first meeting. We will devote our second and third sessions to discussion of the articles; they deal with several concepts and questions that will be important for us throughout the semester. After then, we will devote two weeks to each of the books. You should have read a book in its entirity at the first session devoted to it. The following week you must have prepared a response of no more than one page to the book under discussion. I will ask some of you to read these response papers to the class, and we will then discuss your papers. Please make one copy of your paper for me and one copy for each member of the seminar.

I will base your grade on two considerations equally weighted: a lengthy research project, discussed in detail on a handout, and your participation in our seminar discussions. I will take three things into account in assessing your participation: your attendance, your contributions to our discussions, and the response papers which you will prepare for each of the books that we read.

COURSE OUTLINE

INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE

"The Useful 'Other': Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Cultural Boundaries" (lecture)

ORIENTATION: CONCEPTS AND QUESTIONS FOR THE SEMINAR (nine articles discussed over two weeks)

PROJECTION: THE APPEAL OF "OTHERING"

David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making ofthe American Working Class

DEVIANCE ON DISPLAY: A TEST OF THE "VICTIM" DESIGNATION

Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit

DEATH TO THE "OTHER"! PREJUDICE IN WARTIME

John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War

UNIFORM SEXUALITY: GAYS IN THE MILITARY, ACT I

Allan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire: Gay Men and Women in World War Two

MISOGYNY AS SEXUAL GRATIFICATION? THE PORN WAR

Michael Kimmel, editor, Men Confront Pornography

CASE STUDY: THE ANITA HILL-CLARENCE THOMAS CONFRONTATION AS A CULTURAL DRAMA

Toni Morrison, editor, Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality