Request for comments: Draft Syllabus

[rax]

For anyone who doesn't know, I'm teaching a class at MIT next semester on passing (especially race and gender) in (especially) American literature. I get to come up with my own syllabus, of which I am supposed to turn in a draft by November. After tons and tons of reading, and a whole lot of thinking and conversations, I've actually put together a draft syllabus; it doesn't have my notes for each class yet, but that's OK. I could wing it off of this but will write up some more in the next couple of weeks to give my supervisor a better idea of where I will be going with things, and to give myself something to fall back on if my brain is made of mush when I sit down to actually teach the course.

This is an undergraduate course open to all levels of experience, so I'm not expecting students to necessarily be literature or gender studies majors (especially since it's, well, MIT). I've put the draft syllabus up here and would love for you all to make comments on it. I'd also love comments on a couple of additional things: What should I call this class? My supervisor doesn't want me to put the word "pass" in the course title because she thinks people will think it's about death. I've come up with all sorts of ridiculous titles but nothing useful. "Re/Constructing Identities" ? Myegh. Also, do you have any recommendations of books, movies, &c. where people pass or try to pass and it's relevant? I want to offer students (and anyone else interested) a big annotated list, so anything's fair game; even if I've already heard of it, if you wanted to write up a description, I'd be happy to put that on the web and credit you. Or not credit you! Whatever you want!

And yes, blondestwolf , I did finally watch Some Like It Hot. :) It was research, you see!

Thanks for the help if you do get around to commenting, and I hope the syllabus/suggested readings are interesting. Expect me to keep posting about this until the course starts; if you want to point people who might be interested here, I'd be honored. If you're an MIT undergrad and this seems exciting, you should take my course. Please!

Comments

[otter3.livejournal.com]

If you're trying to think of some way of framing this class simply, I would possibly toss it on the "Other/Not Other" framework, which if memory serves (not even close to an expert here) is a social psychology frame - so I would think about talking about "acceptance" rather than "passing". Alternately, camouflage or disguise, although in this context both of those would be pejorative.

(Alternately: a play on the concept of "pigeonholing" - quick classification of a person's function in life.)

[rax.livejournal.com]

Oooh, good call on bringing Other into it! That might help actually, thanks. *ponders further*

The denotation of camouflage/disguise/deceit works (and is actually important to a lot of early passing narratives especially) but the connotation is really problematic when it comes to introducing the class in ten words or less.

[read-alicia.livejournal.com]

I've passed on your request to artfear and James Caroline (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=10730136), both excellent teachers and performers. If you want to contact them directly to ask (which I would advise, if only for the purposes of networking), let me know (readalicia to the gee-mail).

[rax.livejournal.com]

Awesome, thank you! I may drop you an email this week.

[zdenka]

I probably haven't read enough theory to say anything actually useful here, but I find the concepts fascinating. Do you have anything on the Chevalier d'Eon?

[zdenka]

For example, the Chevalier d'Eon's auto-biography, which I read a few years back -- written after the Chevalier "confessed" to being a woman, so from the point of view of a woman who had been passing as a man -- although actually being a man who was passing as a woman passing as a man. Fun stuff.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I had some stuff on the Chevalier, but I did not know that the Chevalier had an autobiography! *goes and finds it* Thanks!

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Things where people pass or don't pass: Victor/Victoria.

Names: "Identity and Expectation: being who others say you are...or not." Or something more elegant than that.

Syllabus: It looks reasonable, except I don't particularly like the chatty nature of the intro. It's colloquial in a way that I feel obscures the information being transmitted. I think this is something students should be able to refer to, and it's not necessarily important to set the tone of the class here. You'll do it verbally, by how you say these things, and in your class description. By the time they get to the syllabus, they're already listening to you and will understand that side of it elsewhere.

I think you should *say* the things you put there, like your little joke on passing on presenting the definition, but that shouldn't be in the syllabus because it makes it harder to find the important information, like the paragraph you want more comments on.

I like the _content_ you have there. Looking again at the syllabus, the only things I would change are:

* Replace the first 2 paragraphs with something shorter and to the point, like "Class meets at TIME and DATE". You may also want to put on here what the grading criteria is going to be. You may want to combine all the practical things (like where the texts are and the structure of the course) here, right at the beginning.

* Then go right into your first class. "What does 'passing' mean? Webster 1913: Etc." You might want to indent your list of definitions to set it out as an example, not as your main point.

I like your next two paragraphs. I think the sentence structure in the 2nd paragraph is a bit convoluted which is why you might not like it. You might also dislike how it just summarizes the big ideas, without providing support for them. That's okay though. If I were to edit it, I would change it to:

In U.S. history there are two major uses of the term passing that we will be focusing on: “passing as white” to avoid and/or subvert racist oppression, and “passing as male/female” as part of taking on a transsexual or transgender identity. Race passing is generally a means to greater social power or mobility, though we will also see examples where that is not clearly the case. In contrast, the modern transgender movement is largely motivated by ???, though there are ways in which it can lead to greater safety or mobility as well.


Hm. I don't know if I preserved the intent of your paragraph. Well, I gave it a shot, maybe it'll spark some ideas on your end.

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Also, Bone Doll's Twin, by Lynn Flewelling, has a girl who is disguised as her brother (through magic) and isn't told she's a girl, until puberty when it's revealed to her.

[kilroi.livejournal.com]

I've got to agree on the first parts. In my mind (and what I want from classes) a syllabus is a reference, not a discussion. Having all that course *conent* within the syllabus is just a tad overwhelming to me. The Week 1: Week 2: , etc, would be much more what I expect. Perhaps with a one sentence recap, but not the first person discussion. As above, you have the class to do this in - you don't need to do it all on a piece of paper from the first day of class.

Also, I'd put in more of the technical info - the list, obviously, as you say, but, you know, contact info, etc.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Oh, contact info! Seriously, this is why I need other people to look at things because otherwise I will miss something obvious. Thank you!

It's interesting that you find the content in the syllabus overwhelming. I've gotten acclimated to graduate English classes, where this is more or less what the syllabi look like: a page or two of discussion on the general thrust of the class, and then a paragraph or two about each expected class thereafter, with some addenda for additional reading and suggested paper topics. However, I'm teaching an optional seminar for MIT students, not a graduate lit class. :) Maybe I should take that information and make it a separate handout and link to it from the syllabus? That way people who want to read it before the class can, but the syllabus itself isn't as intimidating?

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Having 2 handouts was what I was about to suggest after reading kilroi's comments. This provides a clear separation between the meta information "what the class is about" and actual in-class information that you want them to absorb and think about.

[kilroi.livejournal.com]

I think having a second piece of paper would be great. If you're making it available on the web, why not just have a course website with that info residing there, say, for the other people who may not be taking the class you're talking about?

And yeah, when I'm thinking "syllabus" I'm thinking like 8.01 style, not grad lit so much, since I've never taken a grad lit class :)

[kilroi.livejournal.com]

Er, stupid markup. I meant Week 1: [ book 1], Week 2: [ book 2 ] etc

[rax.livejournal.com]

Wow, thank you for the detailed suggestions! (See also my comments to kilroi below.) I may make the tone a little more formal; I don't think I need to set the tone of the class in the syllabus for students who have decided to take the class, but I do want to make prospective students and people who might just stumble upon the class get some idea of where I'm coming from. Perhaps I came on a bit too hard. :)

You definitely sparked some ideas, thank you a lot!

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Names (based on something in a later comment): "Managing Identity"? (In a hostile environment? or not?

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

Damnit you're cool. Damnit. Having your card in my wallet makes my wallet cooler by association.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

I disagree with your supervisor about the naming issue — I say tackle it head on, and call the class Passing for 'Normal'.

Admittedly, that title reflects my thinking about passing, which may not be yours. I think passing is something nearly everyone who is not inherently boring has tried to do. I, straight Anglo male though I am, have often used the phrase "passing for normal" to describe my own efforts to avoid social ostracism. And what is a Black or Asian or Native American trying to pass as White, or a gay person trying to pass as straight, really doing if not trying to blend into the anonymous crowd?

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

Since it probably doesn't go without saying, I should add that I do not mean by this to diminish the issues of someone from a discriminated-against minority the level of the anxieties of an ill-socialized geek. There's clearly a couple of orders of magnitude difference there. I merely suggest that they are experiences of the same genus, and that the one can provide insight into the other.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I'm totally with you on the "there are ordered of magnitude in the difference between these experiences, but they can provide insight into each other." That's the thing that got me started on this whole line of thought to begin with. :)

I disagree with my supervisor as well, but she's got veto power. I do like the idea of working "normal" into the title though. I'll work with that. Thank you!

[zdenka]

Ooh, I found another one, suitably obscure: a while ago, I picked up on remainder a little book entitled "Louisa May Alcott on Race, Sex, and Slavery," edited by Sarah Elbert. It contains four short stories, which the editor calls "abolitionist interracial romances". They're not actually good or as exciting as the title makes them sound, but they're interesting as a historical phenomenon. The first in the collection, "M.L.," deals with a former slave who can pass for white and becomes engaged to a white woman; she finds out before the wedding, but nobly marries him anyway. It's hard to believe now that it was shocking at the time, but I guess it was.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Oooooh! Must find this. I have like a thousand (OK, like twenty) stories where the passing woman becomes engaged to a white man and then dies; I've seen that pattern maybe once or twice and could really use some more examples. Thanks!

(Also, I friended you. Not like you're missing more than two entries without it. :) Yay!)

[zdenka]

Yay! I'm glad I was helpful.

[jessiehl.livejournal.com]

You may want to organize the page with subheadings and such, just to make it easier for the students to read.

This class looks interesting. If auditing a class at MIT didn't cost $6K+ (the same as taking a class for credit), I would consider taking it.

I know that you state that the course is open to all levels of experience, but from what I remember of the beginning of 9.75 (Psychology of Gender and Race), you may really have to start at the beginning, with concepts like the difference between sex and gender or the difference between race and ethnicity, because you may find that a large portion of the class is completely clueless about these things. You probably know this already, but I figured that spending so much time among grad students in related fields who know about these things, and your friends being more informed on them than even the average smart person, you might have become unused to dealing with people at that level of inexperience. :)

I understand your supervisor's concern about using the word "pass", even though it is inconvenient for you. Maybe you could frame it in terms of projecting an image of oneself.

I haven't read enough in this area to make actual suggestions, but maybe you could bring in something on Jewish (in either the ethnic or religious sense, or both) passing for non-Jewish? I figure there must be something on this, as it has been common enough in the US over the decades (hell, I, who am ethnically half-Jewish, did it a week ago, while canvassing for Obama in New Hampshire, when an undecided voter that I was talking to (and eventually convinced) went on an anti-Semitic rant). And it's sort of tied into racial passing.

[kilroi.livejournal.com]

I suspect you might have an "in" with the instructor if you wanted to sit in .

[kilroi.livejournal.com]

as fiction, old school, by tobias wolff, touches on that a bit.

[sethg]

Dang, I need to read the books on that syllabus.

There's a novel called Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man which I was supposed to read (in high school?), but I can't really remember any of it so I can't say if it's any good.

I wonder if parts of Goffman's Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity would be helpful in providing a framework for discussing passing. Certainly Goffman is more readable than Foucault....

Does Witness count as a movie about passing? And am I remembering correctly that the IRA fugitive in The Crying Game, when in London, tries to pass himself off as Scottish?

Passing-for-mainstream is a big theme in Jewish culture. For example, a large number of Iberian Jews who converted to Catholicism in order to escape the Inquisition continued to practice Judaism and pass on some Jewish customs, and sometimes the faith itself, to their descendants. But even the Spanish converts who were sincerely Catholic were looked on with suspicion by the majority. On a lighter note, there's a whole subcategory of American Jewish humor regarding Jews who try to pass for Christian and screw it up.

[sethg]

Regarding racial passing:

See When She Was White, the (true) story of a South African girl who was born to white parents but had significantly darker skin. The government first let her go to a "White" school, then reclassified her as "Colored" (which meant that officially, she couldn't live with her own parents except as a domestic servant), then was pressured to re-reclassify her as "White", and then when she grew up she successfully petitioned to be re-re-reclassified as "Colored".

More briefly, the book Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White has a chapter in which the author describes the convoluted rules by which the government determined who belonged to which race, and described a hearing at which a "Colored" woman--who looked white to the reporter's eyes--tried (and failed) to get herself reclassified as "White".