Communication Studies The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Search

36:041 Gender roles and communication

Prerequisite: 36:001

Description

This course falls in to the Context category in the course lists in the Department and teaches students to understand the intersection between gender, communication and culture, particularly the ways in which cultural norms and interpersonal practices function as rhetorical forces to shape and influence (and are also shaped and influences by) human communication conveying the socially constructed meaning of gender. The course should also look at gender as an influence on everyday discourse and experience.

Course goals

At the end of the semester the student should be able to:

    1. Be systematic and critical in analyzing the role of gender roles in everyday life communication;
    2. Recognize and critique the ways in which gender roles are produced and reproduced in everyday life through discourse and other communicative means;
    3. Understand theories of gender, recognize their differences and be able to discuss them intelligently;
    4. Apply theories of gender to everyday life in a way that enhances ability to understand how socially determined gender roles are enacted or altered.

Possible texts

There are few that are better than Wood, J. T. Gendered Lives: Communication, gender, and culture [Wadsworth], in whatever edition happens to be current at the time

Supplementary possibilities are provided by Backlund & Williams: Readings in gender communication [Wadsworth]

Assignments

Exams to test for vocabulary, concepts, and procedures

Exercises to work through specific gender-related problems and scenarios

Popular cultural analysis (for example discussion of some piece of popular culture such as film or magazines to bring out the construction of gender there);

Journal work reflecting students' thoughts and experiences of gender related issues during the semester as well as extended examples from oneีs own life stimulated by the text book reading;

Group projects and presentations on an issue about gender or a situation related to gender or an analysis of a TV show where gender and communication issues are especially salient.

Other resources

Magazines, films, TV shows, books of literature, advertisements.

Language and Gender Resource Archive - syllabi, assignments, readings, etc. - created by Barbara LeMaster and Amy Sheldon for and from a workshop they gave at the Fourth International Gender and Language Association Conference in València, Spain