Spring 2012 Courses

Detailed Course Outline

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Home Economics • See also Hateship ... >>

During the Spring 2012 semester, students in my Monday Night class should have read/viewed/listened to all the instructional materials listed under Week 6 by M 3/5

1

In 1938, at the University of Indiana, zoologist Alfred C. Kinsey taught the first Sociology of Marriage and Family course to approach and present sex and sexuality in a socio-biologistic way. At first only open to seniors and married students, this course troubled the university administration, as well as some of Kinsey's fellow scientists, and thrilled students, who lobbied and fought for a seat in the course. This week in class, I present the social aspect of modern marriage and family that I think would today be as important (and explosive and popular) to study in an academic context, as sex and sexuality was in 1938, namely, the highly publicized and marketed notion that all an individual needs to find social, economic and political stability and happiness in their life is to find their perfect partner (i.e., match) and, ideally, start and raise a family. Video clips from both the narrative film and PBS documentary Kinsey (2004 & 2005, respectively) will be screened alongside scenes from the narrative film My Best Friend's Wedding (1997) and documentary Family Album (1986). In preparation for next week students should read and view the following, as well as to be sure to bring a February edition of Good Housekeeping or Family Circle magazine to class.


2

We dig a little deeper into Alfred C. Kinsey's sex research this week, paying specific attention to his methodology and how it both captured and distorted the ways North Americans practiced and thought about sex.  Specific attention will be paid to the ways Kinsey represented lesbians and we will follow through on this example to start thinking about the ways marriage and family is not just about people's sexual behavior, but also their deepest sense of social stability, (not to mention hopes, nostalgia and dreams).  We we also explore the curriculum of a high school marriage & family course, as well as John Gottman's most recent research, to appreciate Kinsey's reach, then turn our attention to the ideas of Stephanie Coontz and Good Housekeeping magazine.


3

We turn our attention to a single family this week, the (Irish-American, Catholic and Midwestern) Ryans, as they are depicted in the cinematic version of Terry Ryan's memoir about her mother, The Prizewinner of Defiance Ohio, How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less (2005).  Emphasis will be placed upon trying to figure out how popular and sociological (i.e., academic) depictions of the socially healthy American family hold up against a real life account of American family life.


4

In continuing our discussion of the Ryan family (see above) we discuss the sociological phenomena of the Baby Boom (and smaller Echo Boom); who and what were and are the typical American Irish-Catholic Family, the structural functionalist theories of sociologist Talcott Parsons, Talcott's daughter, psychoanalytic anthropologist Anne Parsons, and activist Betty Friedan (and her famous sociological configuration, the problem that has no name); as well as discuss how memoirs are an effective narrative form to document family life.  We also look at what I call the accidental and deliberate documentaries people create to document their lives -- things like home movies, photo albums and audio tape. Students will try their own hand at creating one of these forms, a home movie, to fully understand the dominant tropes Americans have used for the past hundred years. Instructions will be sent via email.


5

This week we study the difference between practical sociologies about the family, which are embedded in accidental or deliberate documentaries like memoirs or home movies, versus narrative sociologies, like reality television or situation comedies, making note of the analytic overlap between the two. We will also closely read one Reality TV family, The Kardashians (circa 2007) and one Cinema Verité TV family, The Louds (circa 1971). Students will also be assigned their Reality TV Pitch Assignment, which is to be based on the Make A Quick Home Movie project assigned last week. Instructions will be explained in class and sent via email.


6

Four themes are introduced, which will sum up all of the ideas in the course we have covered so far and will carry over to Week 7: First, how adults remember (or choose to forget) the family (and neighborhood) they were born into and grew up with. Second, how Reality TV and Narrative TV (with all the variations within these genres) represents families in America with an emphasis on families in early the 1970s. Third, the dominant practical and scientific sociological theories about American families in the early 1970s, excluding the topic of divorce and divorce law, which will be covered in Weeks 8, 9 & 10. *Students should take note that there will be an Open-Note, In-Class Quiz on these themes on Monday, March 5 worth 12 points towards their Final Grade and that they also need to start and finish Judy Blume's Young Adult novel It's Not The End of the World by Week 8, our last class meeting before Spring Break.


7

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8

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