iii
Contents
Introduction 1
Part I
Special Issues in Teaching Communication, Gender, and Culture 2
Opportunities and Tensions 2
Opportunities 2
Tensions 3
Managing the Unsympathetic Reader 4
Creating an Effective Classroom Climate 6
Openness 6
Personal Involvement 7
Creating a Sense of Community 9
Alternative Course Emphases and Content 10
Class Size 10
Pedagogical Approaches 10
Using Technology for the Classroom 16
Summary 18
Sample Schedules of Classes 19
Semester-long Syllabus 19
Summer Session Scheduling 26
Quarter-long Experiential Focus 28
Part II
Key Concepts, Activities, and Tests 48
Introduction: Opening the Conversation 49
Chapter 1: The Study of Communication, Gender, and Culture 61
Chapter 2: Theoretical Approaches to Gender Development 76
Chapter 3: The Rhetorical Shaping of Gender:
Competing Images of Women 93
Chapter 4: The Rhetorical Shaping of Gender:
Competing Images of Men 112
Chapter 5: Gendered Verbal Communication 136
Chapter 6: Gendered Nonverbal Communication 145
Chapter 7: Becoming Gendered 160
Chapter 8: Gendered Education: Communication in Schools 174
Chapter 9: Gendered Close Relationships 189
Chapter 10: Gendered Organizational Communication 209
Chapter 11: Gendered Media 231
Chapter 12: Gendered Power and Violence 248
Part III
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References 272
1
Introduction
The purpose of this updated resource book is to assist you in teaching a course for
which Gendered Lives is the primary textbook. Some instructors have taught courses in
gender, communication, and culture for many years, while others are doing it for the first
time. The amount of experience you have teaching in this area, however, may not
determine the value of this resource book to you. Even though we have taught courses in
communication, gender, and culture for a long time, we constantly gain insights from
listening to other teachers describe their goals, instructional strategies, activities, and
assignments. Regardless of whether you are a veteran or novice, we hope you’ll find
ideas presented here helpful in enriching and extending material in Gendered Lives.
This guide consists of three sections. First, to establish a foundation, Section I
explores issues that arise in teaching about communication, gender, and culture. Here,
we include sample syllabi to help illustrate the various ways this course might be taught.
In addition, three other resources address important issues: Managing the Unsympathetic
Reader, Judgment Calls, and Suggestions for Online Instruction. Section II provides
chapter-by-chapter suggestions for teaching Gendered Lives. For each chapter we offer a
summary of the textbook’s content and a sample of exercises and assignments we have
found useful in extending and applying conceptual material. Section III consists of
sample test items, many newly created for this edition. To make these convenient for
instructors with varying sequences of coverage and testing dates, we organize test items
by chapters.
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Part I: General Approach to Teaching Communication, Gender, and
Culture
Courses in communication, gender, and culture are unique. Inherent in the focus of these
courses are distinct opportunities and tensions. In addition, the effectiveness of classes
hinges on creating a climate that is collaborative, open, supportive, and encouraging of
risks in thought and discussion. Finally, courses in communication, gender, and culture
adopt diverse teaching emphases in pursuit of distinctive pedagogical goals. In this
section, we discuss what we have encountered regarding each of these topics and suggest
sample teaching schedules.
Opportunities and Tensions
A course in communication, gender, and culture offers particular rewards, and it typically
involves distinct dilemmas. More than other courses we teach, we find this one
especially exciting and challenging. Instructors with experience teaching in this area
have already encountered both the pleasures and perils of courses in communication,
gender and culture; new instructors will quickly discover them. To help you prepare for
teaching, particularly if you have limited experience in this area, we want to identify
issues that persistently punctuate our own classes.
Opportunities
We believe that communication is an extraordinarily rich and exciting area of study, and
this is especially true when classes probe how communication intersects with culture and
gender. For us, as for many teachers, it’s exhilarating to be part of a process in which
students learn about fundamental influences on their identities and self-concepts. The
more they understand about how social values shape gender and, thus, their lives, the
more they are empowered to choose who they will be and what they will do. One of the
greatest opportunities of teaching this course is helping students discover the ways in
which gender is constructed and sustained in cultural life. In a supportive learning
environment, this insight enables many students to assume agency in sculpting their own
identities and contributing to those legitimated in society as a whole.
Another exciting aspect of teaching in this area is the possibility of enlarging
students’ range of communication competencies. Because our culture is so deeply
gendered, most people are socialized primarily into a single gendered form of speech,
thought, and knowledge—either masculine or feminine. The bias of western society
cultivates respect for masculine modes of speech, thought, ambition, and so on and
accords less recognition to the merits of that which is feminine. Courses in
communication, gender, and culture help students realize how little grounding exists for
cultural preferences for masculine modes over feminine ones. In turn, this encourages
students to enlarge their own communication repertoires to incorporate styles historically
associated with both genders. Neither masculine nor feminine communication is better;
both have distinctive strengths, so students can grow by learning to understand,
appreciate, and employ diverse modes of communicating.
A third special opportunity in teaching this course is the potential to enhance
students’ abilities to participate critically in cultural life. Reading any daily newspaper or
3
popular magazine quickly reveals a wealth of contemporary issues germane to
communication, gender, and culture. The material in Gendered Lives and class
discussion help students understand how many topics entail issues usually not explicitly
named in publications. For instance, media discussion of the Medical and Family Leave
Act of 1993 has highlighted the need for workers to be given time to care for family
members. Yet, media have not called attention to the gendered nature and implications of
family care: Who is the caregiver in most families? Whose job prospects, opportunities,
benefits, and so forth are affected by leave policies? Does the current legislation protect
the professional lives of women, who are likely to be the greatest users of family leave?
There are many issues like this one, with hidden gender dimensions that influence how
we understand and respond to various positions and policies in public life. By increasing
students’ awareness of hidden gender issues, the course heightens students’ abilities to be
critical members of their society.
Gendered Lives and the courses it supports also encourage students to identify and
take stands on issues that may not have been salient to them in the past. For example,
when students realize that four women die daily from battering in the United States alone,
gendered violence is no longer an issue removed from general life; when they learn that
it’s estimated one in four women will be raped in her lifetime, rape ceases to be someone
else’s problem; when they discover that men’s ways of expressing affection have been
devalued, they have to rethink their own tendencies to judge partners in their personal
relationships; when they discover mainstream feminism has historically neglected issues
and experiences of women of color, they are compelled to reconsider whether feminism
is “the women’s movement,” as well as whether women are a homogeneous or a diverse
group. As students learn more about how gender pervades their social and personal lives,
they become more alert and more critical participants in public life and in private
relationships.
Tensions
We’ve also found that teaching in this area can be difficult, frustrating, and upsetting to
our students and us. Because gender is central to social organization and individual
identity, it’s not unusual for students to resist information that forces them to examine
and question their own gendered values, thoughts, and actions. Not infrequently, our
students tell us we are exaggerating gender inequities, their lives aren’t like those
reported in research, or gender discrimination and oppression are history—that’s all
behind us now. We’ve learned to expect initial resistance to and resentment of both us
and material we present. This is almost inevitable, since the material unsettles students
and erodes the comfort of not realizing the extent to which hierarchy and its cousin,
oppression, permeate everyday life in Western society.
A number of our students are seriously shaken by the realization of how devalued
women are in our society. Further, they are often disturbed and angry that they have not
seen this before—often they report feeling duped. Upsetting as these feelings are, they
may be productive in moving students toward more active postures regarding their
personal identities and cultural practices. We have found that students experiencing
anger and frustration appreciate hearing about the evolution of our own gender
consciousness. We let them know that we too underwent stages of denial, anger, and
disturbance on the path to change. In addition to this kind of conversation, we often
4
suggest readings to help students realize they are not alone in feeling troubled, and they
are likely to pass through the phase of overwhelming anger and upheaval and to arrive at
a less unsettling and more constructive point. The text mentions a number of articles and
books that may be recommended as further reading for interested students.
Study of communication, gender, and culture also demands attention to issues that
will be personally painful to many students. For instance, Gendered Lives discusses how
cultural prescriptions for gender foster grave problems such as anorexia, sexual
harassment, rape, and battering. It’s predictable that in any contemporary college class a
number of students will have suffered one or more of these problems, and some will be
enmeshed in traumas while taking the course. The text and class discussion are likely to
propel them to revisit and reflect on deeply disturbing experiences. Although the
introduction to Gendered Lives warns students that personally upsetting topics will be
covered and they may prefer not to deal with these, many students who remain enrolled
will encounter difficulty and may need your assistance and/or referral to a professional
counselor. In preparation for teaching this course, instructors should familiarize
themselves with counseling resources and should find out which counselors have
particular skills in dealing with issues surrounding sex and gender.
For us this tension does not diminish, but rather increases our commitment to
teaching about communication, gender, and culture, for it reminds us of how relentlessly
gendered values affect our lives. Teaching also allows us to offer students perspectives
that are more enabling than those they may currently hold on the oppressions they have
experienced in their own lives. Like many who teach in this area, we have found no
other curricular focus offers as great an opportunity to engage students in thinking about
their own identities and how those are formed by and formative of the culture in which
they live. In our teaching we strive to encourage students to embrace their capacities for
re-forming their own identities as women and men who may choose to resist some or all
of society’s prescriptions for gender.
Managing the Unsympathetic Reader
A number of faculty members have told us they are unsure how to deal with students who
are unsympathetic to the content of this course and book. We’d like to share our thinking
about those students and some of the ways we attempt to encourage them to be active,
constructive members of the class community.
Our experience has been that students who are unsympathetic to part or all of the
course materials resist for various reasons. Some students resist ideas that are “new”
simply because they may be unfamiliar to them. Other students resist because
mainstream society—including some parents/guardians, friends, media, and
institutions—has provided them with counter-information. Some students resist because
they are uncomfortable acknowledging their own privileges. For these students, it may
be particularly helpful to delve more deeply into standpoint theory (see Chapter 2 of
Wood’s text). Finally, there are some students who resist particular points because they
have had an experience (or more) leading them to believe in certain values.
Overall, though the reasons may vary, it is important to recognize that
unsympathetic readers and listeners tend to have reasons. Do not be surprised if they
bring in these alternative perspectives. In fact, we consider these students to be rising to
the challenge of the text. Wood’s book invites every student to bring her/his whole self
5
into the course. The main scenario you want to avoid is letting the student “shut down,”
or feel unwilling to engage the course. Hopefully, if you have created an effective
classroom climate (see next section), no one will shut down. Given the nature of a course
on gender, communication, and culture, you should expect resistant readings.
After recognizing a student is resisting an idea for a reason, consider stepping
back for a moment and allowing another student to respond. In our experience, this
approach often has proven effective because it helps reinforce the understanding that your
goal is not to silence a student with a resistant view. In addition, there is usually at least
one student willing to disagree; thus, this dialogue between peers may become an
opportunity for them to practice critical thinking and to express those ideas. As we stated
earlier, you should expect resistance. This is a sign that students find your course
involving. Students who question some or all of the course ideas are engaging the
material at some level. Consider these responses opportunities to clarify ideas and to
build community—a community that models respectful disagreement and discussion
about ideas. If you are uncomfortable with opening the classroom floor after a particular
comment, consider the following three approaches. First, if you choose to be more direct,
ask students how so much research can be wrong, what support they can find for their
claim, or what it would take to persuade them otherwise. You may even choose to assign
students a paper in which they summarize research that supports and does not support
their position.
A second approach is to attempt to locate the student’s reasoning through
questions. Simply ask: Why do you believe that? Helping a student locate what informs
her/his opinions can often be the first step in coming to a closer understanding between
differences. Because refutation, argument, and discrediting students’ views tend to
compel them to protect their positions, we find it more persuasive to rely on gentle, yet
persistent questioning. Questions such as these model reflectiveness and openness on the
teacher’s part and invite similar postures in students. This is not to suggest, however, that
unpressured questioning will render all students open or will dissolve all students’
resistance: It won’t. Nonetheless, for us this approach has been more effective than
others, and we are more comfortable with it than with methods that invoke the formal
power of our positions as teachers.
The third approach we have found successful in teaching this course is to take on
the most extreme interpretation of the student’s comment. For example, if a student
states that she/he believes sociobiologists appear to have a strong case for claiming male
rape of women is a biological imperative, ask that student: if someone raped a woman
that student knew (her/his mother/guardian, sister, friend, etc.) that very night in her own
bedroom, should that rapist be held responsible? By drawing an extreme, concrete
scenario, we have been able to illustrate what is at stake in resistant values, attitudes, and
behaviors. In addition, when the student addresses a scenario we have fabricated, she/he
often ends up “correcting” us instead of vice versa.
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Creating an Effective Classroom Climate
The climate, or psychological mood, of a classroom is a pivotal influence on students’
willingness to explore ideas. Because a course in communication, gender, and culture
deals with personal identity and deeply held social values, reflection and exploration are
risky. Creating a comfortable, safe climate makes it more possible for students to
question themselves and each other and to inspect critically assumptions which they have
taken for granted all of their lives. In our own teaching we have found openness,
personal involvement, and a sense of community contribute to an effective classroom
climate.
Openness
Openness creates room for students to take risks by letting them know their feelings,
values, and beliefs will not be ridiculed or dismissed. Respect for diversity and the equal
legitimacy of different identities and points of view is a key foundation of openness.
Instructors have considerable influence in establishing a respectful attitude in classes.
Your behaviors, especially communication, should model open attitudes by
demonstrating your own respect for differences. An obvious part of this is using
inclusive language: She and he instead of he; first-year students instead of freshmen;
partners instead of spouses; parent(s) or guardian(s) instead of parents; and so forth.
Language, however, is not the only way to model and foster an open climate in the
classroom.
We make creating an open climate the primary focus of the first few class
meetings, since those establish the tone for the rest of the term. Usually in introducing
our course, we tell students some personal stories in order to expose ourselves before we
invite them to reveal their private thoughts and feelings. We also make it a point to
confess quite genuinely that we are confused and uncertain about some gender issues and
that we find it unsettling to live in an era characterized by changing views of gender and
relationships between the sexes. By divulging that we are perplexed about some issues,
we communicate to students that uncertainty and confusion are normal and okay. In our
opening conversation with a class, we usually mention ways in which our views have
changed over time in order to indicate to students that change is also a natural part of the
ongoing process of personal growth. Finally, in our initial meeting with a class we say
explicitly that this course assumes that all opinions deserve respectful hearings, and we
caution students that demeaning or dismissive responses to others’ ideas will not be
tolerated. This “class rule” also appears on the printed syllabus.
As the class progresses, there are opportunities to build on the foundation for
openness established at the outset. The first few times students disclose personal
experiences or venture controversial opinions, we are especially careful both to recognize
the risk they have taken and to respond generously to what they have said. After several
instances in which students “test the waters” and find them safe, security and willingness
to take risks become more settled in a course.
Teachers may also encourage respect for diversity by modeling interest in views
different from their own. For instance, teachers may show curiosity and interest when
students offer ideas different from those expressed in the text and the teacher’s remarks.
In addition, the instructor may act as a foil by giving voice to perspectives not being
heard in the classroom. Sometimes this means making sure feminist viewpoints are
7
articulated competently. More often, however, students who take this course are already
somewhat liberal politically and inclined toward feminism, whether or not they use that
term. Thus, the teacher may have to make sure conservative outlooks are represented
fairly by identifying reservations and counterarguments to feminist views and proposals.
Because many teachers of this course are deeply committed to nontraditional gender
ideologies, it is sometimes difficult to give voice to traditional or even anti-feminist
positions. Yet doing so is important in teaching students to consider alternate views and
criticisms of their own views. One approach we have used in this course is sharing
stories of our past students or our families. Often, telling a story of a conservative
relative opens not only the possibility of discussing conservative views, but also the
difficulties that arise when we try to negotiate our own views with the people we love
who share these more conservative perspectives.
Finally, teachers should be alert to infractions of the “class rule” that insists on
respecting diversity. Deliberately or inadvertently, students invariably break the rule at
some point. It might be using allegedly generic male terms or commenting on race as if it
pertains to people of color but not to European Americans; it might be actively
disparaging another student’s ideas with verbal or nonverbal communication. If this
happens, it’s important for the instructor to firmly and quickly remind the whole class of
the need to respect differences and to struggle against deeply held racist, heterosexist, and
androcentric biases that have been inculcated in all of us. By setting an inviting tone in
early classes, modeling openness personally, and ensuring respectful processes in the
classroom, an open climate can be created and sustained.
Personal Involvement
Involvement is a second quality of an effective classroom climate. Here the goal is to
encourage students to interact directly with course material in order to discover how
thoroughly intersections among communication, gender, and culture permeate their
personal lives and the society in which they live. The content of the class as well as
students’ experience invite personal involvement, so encouragement is usually all a
teacher needs to provide. We recommend four specific pedagogical strategies for
sparking students’ engagement.
First, we suggest it is important to kindle personal involvement at the beginning
of the class. On the first day you might enlist individual students in conversation by
asking them what they think about particular issues relevant to the course. For instance,
after introducing the class, you might identify several topics and then call on a number of
students for responses: If you marry, will you/your partner keep your/her name or take
yours/your partners’? Should women’s and men’s salaries be regulated by comparable
worth legislation? Should laws be revised to allow marriage between gay men and
between lesbians? Students are likely to feel awkward and on the spot since they don’t
anticipate being asked to speak up at the first meeting of a class. Yet, they get beyond
initial reticence with a bit of good-humored prompting. After one student responds to a
question, the teacher may comment on the response. Then it’s a good idea to ask another
student to respond to the first student in order to encourage interaction among students,
not just between them and you. Pose additional questions and call on different students,
always taking time to acknowledge and work with their ideas. Doing this in the opening
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class introduces the process as well as the content of the course by inviting participation
and personal involvement from the beginning.
We’ve developed a second way to stimulate involvement that has become a
favorite of ours and our students. “Class Business” is a period of 5 to 15 minutes set
aside at the beginning of each class meeting. During that time members of the class share
ideas about gender, communication, and culture based on observations, news items,
films, television shows, and so forth. This discussion period serves three goals: (1) it
encourages students to notice issues of communication, gender, and culture all around
them; (2) it allows us to extend the course beyond topics in the textbook and formal
syllabus; and (3) it energizes the classroom by relating theory and research to real-life
happenings. For these reasons, we include questions related to class business on our
exams.
Although our students invariably become highly committed to class business,
getting this process rolling takes some groundwork. Few students have ever had a class
in which time was set aside specifically for discussing how goings-on in everyday life
pertain to what they are studying, so they are unsure of how to participate. Therefore, the
teacher has to act as a model and fuel interest initially. To do this, at the start of each
class we announce that it’s time for class business and ask if students have any items to
contribute. Usually they don’t for the first few sessions, so we present articles on gender
issues that we’ve clipped from current newspapers and magazines. For each, we call on
students for responses and then suggest we should watch for further developments.
Typically by the third or fourth class meeting, students are bringing their own clippings,
as well as observations of the media and of everyday interaction. In fact, student interest
tends to be so great and gender issues so pervasive that we’ve found it necessary to
impose a time limit on class business so that it doesn’t consume the entire class each day
we meet!
We also recommend two other ways to encourage students to personally engage
material in the course. First, instruments and exercises allow students to test conceptual
material in their own lives. Within this manual we describe a number of exercises and
activities that we’ve developed for our classes, and we explain how to process each one.
There are also many available instruments that students may find useful in measuring
their own attitudes and communication styles. Second, we recommend a Gender Journal
(or another writing exercise outside of the classroom) as a major assignment that allows
students to reflect in an ongoing way on issues in the course and to explore how these fit
into their own lives. Typically, during each class meeting we specify at least one journal
assignment that pertains to the readings and class discussion for the day. In Section II of
this manual we suggest items chapter by chapter for the Gender Journal, and you will
doubtlessly generate others that you want your students to address. We usually have
students turn in their Gender Journals at midterm so that we may respond to their entries
and give them feedback on the quality of their work. Final journals are turned in toward
the end of the course. One of the challenges of teaching this course is responding to
students’ journals both as academic work and personal thinking. We recommend that
instructors offer feedback that is both pedagogical (for example, praising good insights,
calling for more analysis of an observation) and personal (for example, empathizing with
anger or hurt, applauding constructive changes, sharing your own experiences). An
alternative to a Gender Journal is choosing 4-6 shorter assignments, such as Reaction
9
Papers on specific questions or Oral Position statements on the course readings, in order
to have more focused writing/thinking.
Personal involvement with the course is promoted by engaging students in the
first class meeting, reserving time for class business, and assigning activities and journal
entries that encourage reflection. These teaching strategies, along with an instructor who
embodies involvement, tend to generate personal excitement and participation in
students.
Creating a Sense of Community
A third important dimension of an effective classroom climate is a sense of community.
Teaching and learning are enhanced when members of a class feel collectively engaged
with each other and issues. Creating a sense of community also supports openness and
involvement, because a feeling of camaraderie encourages members of a class to take
risks in their thinking and communication and to be respectful of each other.
One simple yet effective strategy for building a sense of community is taking time
for people in a class to learn each other’s names. Many communication instructors
routinely personalize their classes by devoting time in the first few periods to learning
names. You can ask students to give straightforward introductions and then ask them to
name each other, or you can rely on various activities or games to make getting
acquainted more interesting. Whatever means you use, we believe the time spent in
learning names is a sound investment in course climate. We’ve found that we and
students learn everyone’s name more easily if students write their names on index cards
and place those on their desks for the first week or two of classes. Relatedly, it’s valuable
to encourage students to interact directly with each other instead of limiting exchanges to
student-teacher dialogue. To promote direct student interaction, teachers may invite
students to comment on each other’s ideas and identify connections among remarks
offered by different students. Members of a class feel more personally involved and
committed when their teacher and peers recognize them as individuals.
Another way to encourage a sense of community and commitment in students is
to invite them to take a more active role in sculpting their course than is usual at colleges
and universities. To do this, you might reserve one or several class period(s) for topics
that students wish to discuss or on which they wish to have you present information. By
inviting students to specify part of the course’s content, you share the power of defining
and directing learning. We also sometimes invite students to propose items for their tests.
This is a clear and material demonstration that we take them and their ideas seriously.
However, if you invite students to submit questions, then you should be willing to include
a reasonable number of their items on your examinations.
Feelings of good will and collective interest also are nourished by common
interests. Class business promotes this sense of common interests, as do shared readings
and discussion topics. We have also found students appreciate announcements regarding
campus events pertinent to communication, gender, and culture so that they may
collectively or individually attend. In addition, you may choose to define some specific
topic or topics as ones a particular class will track throughout the term. Invariably there
are issues pertinent to communication, gender, and culture that are under the media
10
spotlight during any given academic term. These spotlighted issues offer an opportunity
for classes to focus collectively and in some depth on a specific topic while still covering
the broad range of topics in the text. When a particular issue involving communication,
gender, and culture interests our students, we specify it as a class focus. Then after class
business, which launches each meeting, we devote a few minutes to the focus topic,
relying on articles, reports on television and radio, and students’ own evolving opinions.
To concretize this teaching strategy, we’ll offer a few examples of topics our
students have chosen for a class focus. During the war in Iraq and America’s war against
terrorism, our classes followed coverage of women’s roles in the military. Hillary
Rodham Clinton was selected as the focus in another class, and throughout the term we
traced how the media represented her and her role and, by implication, women’s roles in
public life. During the fall of 1991, our students designated the Anita Hill-Clarence
Thomas hearings as their collective focus, and we analyzed news stories and television
coverage to discover how gender, race, and sexual harassment were portrayed in media
coverage.
Since there is never a shortage of issues involving communication, gender, and
culture, designating a class focus is always an option for your classes. It allows students
to probe one topic in greater depth than is possible with the gamut of issues covered in
Gendered Lives. As stated earlier, because we see class business and class focus topics
as integral to the content of our course, we include questions about them on our tests.
This practice fortifies the point that engagement with issues on the current scene is an
important facet of the course.
Alternative Course Emphases and Content
Class Size
Gendered Lives was written to accommodate diverse teaching situations, goals, and
styles. Although perhaps most courses in this area are limited to enrollments of 20 to 35
students, substantially larger classes are possible and exciting. At the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, we have experimented with teaching communication, gender,
and culture as a large-enrollment course with as many as 125 students. Even with this
many students, we have been able to generate ample open discussion in our classes, and
students have evaluated the course favorably. In addition to serving more students,
which is important to many departments’ well-being, there are three special advantages to
large-enrollment courses. First, more students are able to learn about communication,
gender, and culture. At UNC-CH we found there was far greater interest from students
than we could accommodate with small class sizes; this was the initial reason we decided
to try teaching the course with a larger enrollment.
A second benefit of large classes is that increased perspectives are available.
Expanded viewpoints are likely in larger classes for two reasons. First, more students
generally yield a greater range of viewpoints, backgrounds, and so forth. Second, the
very close community that sometimes develops in small sections often deters students
from expressing ideas that diverge from those endorsed by the class as a whole. Larger
classes, then, may facilitate the goal of respecting diversity in who we are and what we
believe, because they avoid the problems of limited viewpoints and subtle conformity
pressures that may be more present in small classes.
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A third advantage of a large enrollment is that graduate students have
opportunities to gain supervised experience in effectively handling the course content and
classroom dynamics. The course may be organized so that some days are reserved for
large group meetings with the senior faculty member lecturing or leading discussion, and
other days are reserved for smaller recitation sections taught by graduate students. This
format provides students with the opportunity both for small-group interaction and for
exposure to senior faculty with experience and a broad command of research and theory
in the area. We do, however, recommend the senior faculty member sit in on these
sections periodically to not only legitimize and enhance these spaces, but also to learn
more about the students.
Pedagogical Approaches
Gendered Lives may be used to support courses that emphasize any of three pedagogical
approaches, or a combination of these: mastery of theory and information about
communication, gender, and culture; application of conceptual ideas through experiential
activities and reflection; and/or extension and augmentation of textbook material
(“Springboard focus”). While some instructors tend to adopt one of these three
orientations, many instructors combine teaching goals and strategies. We will discuss
each of these approaches.
Focus on Mastery of Theory and Information. Some instructors think that the
primary goal of higher education is to learn about theories, concepts, and research. This
pedagogical focus emphasizes course content more than students’ feelings about content
or their application of it. A persuasive rationale for this teaching focus is that students
become more informed. Consequently, they have more sound bases for making choices
about their own activities and for evaluating social practices.
A course that emphasizes theory and information from research maximizes the
instructor’s control over what happens in a classroom. Because the instructor defines the
class agenda and steers away from the uncertainties of students’ feelings, this teaching
focus tends to yield relatively predictable, orderly classes. Instructors who prefer this
approach also tend to think it allows greater objectivity in evaluating students’ work.
Since students are tested in a straightforward manner on comprehension of information
and theory, it’s not difficult to judge the rightness of answers. Further, focusing on
theory and research lends itself to lectures and structured class discussions, so it’s
feasible to enroll a greater number of students than can be accommodated in courses that
rely on interaction, activities, and the like.
For instructors who wish to emphasize theory and research, Gendered Lives is an
effective textbook. The extensive and current research surveyed in the book provides a
wealth of information both on theoretical viewpoints and on specific research about
communication and gender as these are produced and enacted in various spheres of
cultural life. Using Gendered Lives as a foundation, instructors may reinforce coverage
by supplementing the textbook with additional studies and updates from research
published since 2011, when the book went to press. Instructors may also reinforce and
elaborate on the chapter material to highlight what they consider most important for
students to learn. Through lectures and discussion, instructors should be able to facilitate
students’ understanding of information and themes presented in the textbook.
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To promote students’ attention to readings, instructors may wish to assign focus
questions for some or all chapters. We have found these effective in encouraging
students to be more active and critical readers. The assignment requires each student to
generate a question based on designated readings. The student may pose a question about
how a particular study was conducted, the implications of findings reported in the text, or
issues beyond the text’s discussion that she or he considers pertinent. At the beginning of
each class period for which focus questions were assigned, students may be invited to
state their questions to the class, and then the class may discuss the questions.
Alternatively, students may simply turn in their focus questions, and the teacher may
respond by writing individual notes to students or by discussing the questions with the
whole class.
For this pedagogical approach, we also recommend emphasizing the ability to
develop and articulate informed positions. Therefore, essay questions on exams, short
paper assignments, or brief oral statements might highlight how to construct thesis
statements and supporting points to illustrate the theories and research taught regarding
communication, gender, and culture.
Experiential Approach. A pedagogical focus on experiential learning and
personal application is probably most widely employed by teachers of communication,
gender, and culture. Perhaps this approach owes its popularity to the personal character
and implications of course content. Because every student is gendered and lives in a
gendered society, many teachers’ primary objective is providing a context and activities
that allow students to explore how they embody or resist cultural prescriptions for gender
and how cultural dicta influence both personal and public life.
Gendered Lives may be used to support instruction that emphasizes experiential
learning. Because the text provides extensive information, less class time need be
devoted to lecture and discussion of theory and research; the majority of class time may
be dedicated to activities that encourage students to apply readings to their own lives and
their thinking about cultural practices. Of course, this approach works only if students
actually read the text in preparation for classes. Therefore, instructors who wish to
devote substantial class time to discussion and experiential ventures need to stress the
importance of doing the reading.
When personal engagement with issues surrounding communication, gender, and
culture is the primary goal of a course, the majority of class time is usually devoted to
activities that illuminate personal, pragmatic implications of material in the textbook.
Instructors who adopt this focus generally talk with students during the opening days of
the course to explain that an experiential focus is not “fun and games” and is not
something removed from serious learning. Further, to underline this point and to help
students appreciate the connections between class activities and theory and research
covered in the textbook, it’s important to reserve ample time for discussing the students’
experiences. Discussing the questions at the end of each chapter in Gendered Lives is
one activity that leads students to explore their own feelings about issues and to consider
how gender surfaces in their personal lives. Other activities, such as role-playing, case
studies, and structured experiences, should be processed in ways that highlight their
relationship to readings. Similarly, films and movies should be analyzed to disclose how
they illustrate themes in the text, and scores on instruments should be interpreted in light
of theoretical and research findings.
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Conceptually grounded activities are another valuable means of facilitating
students’ discovery of how gender permeates the culture and how it affects them
personally. Section II of this manual provides a number of exercises and activities that
allow students to apply material covered in each chapter of Gendered Lives. Instructors
who have experience teaching courses in communication, gender, and culture will also
have a fund of activities they have developed or selected from other sources. If you are
new at teaching this course and want additional activities or ones different from those we
suggest, then we recommend networking with other instructors to share ideas and
activities and to develop original ones that advance the particular themes of your course.
In addition to exercises, instruments, and class activities, educational and
commercial films enhance an experiential approach to teaching. Among the more
effective educational films we have discovered are these:
The Pinks and the Blues (also titled Secret of the Sexes) illustrates
differences in parents’ and teachers’ expectations of and responses to girls and
boys. (Although somewhat dated now, the film’s basic content remains valid.).
Dreamworlds 2, narrated by Sut Jhally, dramatically depicts relationships
between popular music videos and actual rapes. This film is disturbing to many
students, particularly ones who have been victims of sexual violence, and we
recommend that students be given the option of leaving class if they find the film
too disturbing. Dreamworlds 3 © 2007 is now available.
Killing Us Softly 3 is Jean Kilbourne’s videotaped presentation on ways in
which commercial advertising portrays women as inadequate and victimizable
and legitimizes violence against women. This is an updated version of her
original presentation, Killing Us Softly, and its successor, Still Killing Us Softly,
both of which still exist on videotape.
Tough Guise is an excellent video for helping students recognize how
masculinity, in general, and violent masculinity, in particular, are constructed by
popular media. Tough Guise includes extensive illustrations from popular culture,
including films, the tragic school shootings, and hip-hop. NOTE: This video is
available in two versions. The abridged version is 57 minutes long and it
does not include spoken obscenities and visible nudity.
You Don’t Know Dick: Courageous Hearts of Transsexual Men presents
interviews with six female-to-male transsexuals. Topics covered include the
process of transitioning; coming out to parents, friends, and co-workers;
relationships and sexuality; testosterone therapy and surgery. Also included are
comments from the men’s friends, lovers, and children.
A number of commercial films also have strong potential for teaching about
gender and communication. Following are descriptions of a few of our favorites, and
new films directly germane to this course are constantly premiering.
Tootsie stars Dustin Hoffman in the role of a man who assumes the
identity of a woman and learns a good deal about how women are treated in
Western culture. Particularly relevant to communication courses is the
transformation Hoffman effects in his verbal and nonverbal communication as he
takes on the identity of a woman.
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A more recent and troubling example of how individuals perform gender
is found in Hilary Swank’s Oscar winning performance of Teena Brandon in Boys
Don’t Cry. This film that is based upon a true story examines how societal
expectations and cultural prescriptions for identity, gender, and sexuality often
result in serious consequences when individuals do not conform to normative
gender roles.
In and Out stars Kevin Kline and is inspired by the hypothetical question:
If Tom Hank’s high school drama teacher wasn’t “out” when Hanks thanked him
at the Oscar’s for inspiring his performance in Philadelphia, what would have
happened to that teacher? This comedy is a wonderful way to bring levity into
important issues regarding gender and sexual orientation.
Dead Poets’ Society is a story of a group of young European American
men in a private boarding school. The film offers insights into men’s friendships,
illustrating masculine modes of expressing closeness and need. This movie
dramatically portrays the constraints on emotional expression dictated by cultural
prescriptions for masculinity.
Good Will Hunting is a similar, more recent film that focuses more upon
how being working class influences the standards and expectations of male
friendships.
Smoke Signals is another more recent example of male friendship that
highlights indigenous culture and relationships between fathers and sons.
Waiting to Exhale and Fried Green Tomatoes offer well-detailed studies
of friendships between women and show how women support one another and
create a sense of interdependence.
The Joy Luck Club provides multiple examples of interaction between
genders (how women and men negotiate their own ego boundaries within
romantic relationships), generations (the expectations between mothers and
daughters), and culture (China and the United States).
Get On the Bus narrates the meaning and importance of the Million Man
March from several different African American male standpoints (e.g.,
straight/gay; teenager/elder). The film lends well to focused clips of exchanges
between men as to why they want to go to the March and what they feel it means
to be an African American male in the United States.
Itty Bitty Titty Committee is a fictional story of a radical third-wave
feminist activist group called the c(I)a (Clits in Action). It tells the story of 19–
year-old lesbian Ana as she becomes aware of feminist issues and committed to
feminist action. It is a great example of radical activist groups.
For the Bible Tells Me So is a documentary of several Christian families
struggling and working to accept and understand their gay children. It is
generally well-received by a broad audience and promotes challenging and good
discussion.
Transgeneration is a miniseries documentary of four transgendered
college students as they struggle with and live as trans people. The series covers
important issues related to being transgendered and is particularly useful for
talking about gendered educational settings.
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Finally, the Gender Journal is a valuable vehicle for furthering experiential
learning. By assigning topics that encourage reflection on personal implications of issues
covered in Gendered Lives, instructors promote increased self-awareness in students. In
Section II we suggest topics that we and our students have found useful in prompting
personal reflection and learning related to each chapter in the textbook.
Springboard Focus. The springboard approach to teaching aims to extend
coverage in the textbook by devoting substantial class time to topics that go beyond those
considered in readings. The text works as a starting point, or a foundation on which the
class builds. Typically, instructors using this approach set aside some time during each
class meeting or use the first portion of a term to cover readings and make sure students
understand relevant theory and research presented in Gendered Lives. The rest of the
class time is then used to explore issues either underdeveloped or not addressed in the
textbook. The instructor may assign topics for class extension and/or invite students to
suggest ideas. One resource to brainstorm for topics and for up-to-date information is
Infotrac-College Edition (see “Using Technology for the Classroom” for more
information). Then students and the instructor may schedule panels of guest speakers,
projects, observations, and so forth to supplement coverage in the textbook.
In our classes we and our students have learned a great deal from panel
discussions that either we or they have arranged. Here are some sample topics and
panelists:
A panel discussion of violence against women might include the sexual
harassment officer if your campus has one, a rape counselor from a local women’s
center, a volunteer from a battered women’s shelter in your community, and a
staff person from a men’s resource center.
Different kinds of feminism may be represented by a panel of women and
men who align themselves with different branches of feminism: a womanist, a
feminist minister, a lesbian feminist, a liberal feminist, and a separatist.
A panel we often schedule that especially engages students, features
partners in dual-career relationships. We invite partners in two to three couples to
talk openly with the class about the pleasures and pitfalls of being a two-worker
family and about ways they have recognized and dealt with gendered assumptions
in their relationship.
Single guests are more effective than panels in addressing certain topics. For
instance, we had the district attorney of our county visit the class to discuss current rape
laws and trial procedures to inform the class of how gendered assumptions permeate legal
proceedings. Another topic which a single guest might address is sexual harassment on
your campus. If there is an institutional officer for sexual harassment, invite her or him
to meet with the class to inform students of the incidence of sexual harassment, as well as
procedures for redress. Also valuable is asking a counselor to talk with the class about
different sources of stress and reactions to stress that are typical of men and women.
Another way to extend course coverage beyond content presented in Gendered
Lives is to assign group and/or individual projects. Whether to make these assignments
on an individual or group basis depends on preferences of instructors and students.
Group work tends to be more frustrating for students, and there are often problems such
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as conflicting schedules and uneven contributions by group members. Yet group tasks
also emphasize collaborative work and cooperation, interaction styles many instructors
wish to highlight. Another difference between group and individual projects is that
results of the former can usually be presented to the entire class, whereas there is seldom
enough class time to allow presentation of every student’s individual project. Since
group work is often challenging to coordinate, we recommend the use of peer
evaluations. Therefore, each person in the group is asked to assign the percentage earned
by every group member (including her/himself), with an explanation of why. This
process raises a sense of accountability.
Although there are many valuable ways to focus projects, we favor ones that
combine research and observation focused on a topic that received little or no coverage in
the textbook. For instance, we have had projects on changes in images of and advice to
women in bridal magazines from 1960 to 2000, gender images in commercial versus
educational children’s television, coverage of women’s and men’s sports in national,
state, and campus newspapers, and so on. Other topics that extend the coverage of
Gendered Lives are global rape, differences in how men and women are treated by
medical professionals, and comparing agendas of male and female legislators.
Observation projects allow individuals or groups to study “real life” versions of
what they are learning about through readings and class discussion. For example,
students concentrating on gender stereotyping in preschools might visit kindergarten and
elementary classes and report on differences, if any, in how teachers treat boys and girls.
One student replicated the research by Tavris and Baumgartner (Chapter 3, GL) and
found the results of the 1982 study still held true more than a decade later with respect to
how boys and girls think about the other sex. Other investigations that are reported in
Gendered Lives could also be replicated by individuals or groups. During terms when we
assign individual or group projects, we usually offer students a list of 10 to 15 suitable
subjects for study and observation and also invite them to suggest additional topics.
Using Technology for the Classroom
You will notice that Wood’s textbook highlights websites for every chapter. Technology
is not a substitute for teachers, but it can assist us as a resource for learning about gender,
communication, and culture. We encourage you to use the Web yourselves (to prepare
for classes, to update information, etc.) and to get your students involved in online work.
Another increasing practice at many colleges and universities is the use a class list
serves to facilitate dialogue outside the classroom walls. One approach to structure this
interaction is to assign weekly response questions for the readings. Then, ask everyone to
post those reactions to the list, leaving enough time for all of the students to read the
messages prior to the class meeting. In the classroom, ask a group of students or one
student to summarize the reactions posted to the list. An exercise such as this provides
students with more time to prepare for discussion and keeps them engaged with the
course throughout the week. In addition, students sometimes feel more comfortable
sharing their ideas when they have more time to respond and do not need to confront
anyone face-to-face.
A third use of technology for the classroom is to assign “Judgment Calls,” a
classroom resource we developed for Gendered Lives. Each Judgment Call describes a
current controversy, issue, or dilemma related to gender and communication in society.
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Following each description are several prompts that may guide thought and discussion
and that direct students to additional resources on the Internet or Web. Instructors may
assign Judgment Calls to individual students as journal entries or reaction papers; they
may be used to structure class or small group discussions; or they may be topics for
research papers. Key references are provided for each Judgment Call.
There are no right or wrong answers to the Judgment Calls. Rather, they are
designed to highlight the pervasiveness of gender issues in society and to stimulate
thought, discussion, and research on gender, communication, and culture. They aim not
only to engage students in controversial issues, but also to guide students to recognize
assumptions that lie behind positions and implications of adopting various stances.
Summary
In this first section on teaching about communication, gender, and culture, we
have discussed opportunities, tensions, and resistant readers. Following that discussion
we offered suggestions for ways to create a climate that is open, personally involving,
and communal so that optimally effective teaching and learning may occur. Finally, we
identified three distinct pedagogical approaches to teaching a course on communication,
gender, and culture, and we suggested classroom emphases and assignments suitable for
each.
The final portion of Section I presents examples of scheduling used to structure
courses for which Gendered Lives is the primary text. The first syllabus, included in
complete form, covers a semester-long course. Additionally, two schedules of classes
offer examples for alternate ways a course can be crafted. One plan is for a course during
summer session, and the other plan is for a course that meets for one ten-week quarter,
using an experiential focus.