This is an archived course. A more recent version may be available at ocw.mit.edu.

Calendar

SES # TOPICS KEY DATES
1 Introduction to the study of family, sexuality and gender  
Part I: Concepts and Themes
2 Is sex to gender as nature is to culture? Reader response 1 due
3 Cultural acquisition of gender as learned behavior  
Part II: Family, Sex, and Gender as Social Institutions
4 Ascribed status, arranged marriage, inheritance and gendered divisions of labor in pastoral and agrarian societies  
5 Achieved status, wage labor, and gendered divisions of labor in capitalist societies Paper 1 topics handed out
6

Gender, agency, and virtue

Film: Beauty Academy of Kabul

 
7 Social reproduction: Reproducing formal and informal class relations Reader response 2 due
8 The racial economy of social reproduction  
9 Household dependencies  
10 Doing, undoing, redoing the gendered division of labor Paper 1 due
11 The invention of sexuality-based identities  
Part III: Family and Kinship as Cultural Systems
12 Kinship  
13 De-essentializing the family Reader response 3 due
14 Do Western sexual identities travel?  
15 Violence and agency  
16 De-essentializing motherhood Paper 2 topics handed out
17 Circulation of children  
18 Implications of gender and kinship for conception and birth  
19 Implications of gender and kinship for conception and birth and for family planning Paper 2 due
20 Viewing of the film The Pill  
21 Nationalism and gendered citizenship

Reader response 4 due

Paper proposal for final paper due

22 Reproductive technologies  
23 Rethinking relatedness  
24 Student presentations  
25 Student presentations (cont.) Final paper due