“Stigma: Culture, Deviance, Identity”

Dept. of Communication & Culture

Indiana University, Fall 2007

Prof. Susan Seizer

Course meetings:

Class times: TR 11:15 a.m. -12:30 p.m. + Thursday 7 p.m. screenings

Location: TR a.m. classes in Rm 203, 800 E. 3^rd St. + Screenings in Rm. 100, 800 E. 3^rd.

Office Hours: Thursday 1:45-3:45 p.m.

Email: sseizer@indiana.edu

Office phone: 812-856-1986

Stigma theory speaks broadly to the nature of the social relationships that create marked categories of persons. In this course we look both at theory and at particular cases of stigmatized persons and groups, with an aim towards identifying historically effective strategies for combating stigmas of race, class, gender, sexuality, and physical ability. 

Course Description:

         Cultural value systems in every society rely on sets of mutually defining terms -- for example, normal/abnormal, able-bodied/disabled, heterosexual/homosexual, white/non-white -- that largely determine local attitudes of acceptance or ostracism regarding particular categories of persons. Focusing on social stigma allows us to understand how specific cultural value systems affect our most intimate senses of self, contribute to our very notions of personhood, and inform the way we communicate and engage with others in the world.

         Stigma theory speaks broadly to the nature of the social relationships that create marked categories of persons, regardless of which particular attributes are so devalued. In this class we look both at theory and at particular cases of stigmatized persons and groups, as attention to the particularities of a given stigma keys us in to the complex of cultural values that create and support it. Since stigmas do change over time, identifying the strategies that have been effective in encouraging such change is a primary focus of the course.

         The theoretical centerpiece of this course is Erving Goffman’s 1963 study Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. We will read this text closely to appreciate Goffman’s insights, and attempt throughout the semester to update the language he uses to convey his points by applying his model to more recent historical and ethnographic case studies of stigmatized persons and groups. Our primary focus will be on the range and efficacy of the various strategies available for managing and/or deflating stigma. The role of the expressive arts in the life trajectories of stigmatized persons and groups will be explored as one such strategy.

We focus in particular on artists and activists whose work addresses contemporary cases of stigma involving class, race, ethnicity, disability, gender and sexuality. Weekly screenings of landmark films in the fields of disability studies, black studies, queer studies, and gender studies supplement regular class meetings. Online posting on a class-by-class discussion site facilitates full student participation.

Primary texts: These nine paperback books are available for purchase at the campus bookstore, and on reserve at the library reserve desk.

· Goffman,Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Simon & Schuster.

· Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard U Press.

· Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The Meanig of Style. NY: Methuen.

· Bogdan, Robert. 1988. Freak Show. U of Chicago Press.

· Groce, Nora Ellen. 1985. Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language. Harvard U Press

· Ishiguro, Kazuo. 2006. Never Let Me Go. Vintage.

· Feinberg, Leslie. 1993. Stone Butch Blues. NY: Firebrand Books.

· Weschler, Lawrence. 1995. Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder. NY: Vintage.

· Lorde, Audre. 1980. The Cancer Journals. SF: Aunt Lute Books.

All other readings (articles, essays, & chapter excerpts) for this course are downloadable from the Oncourse site. Information on using and accessing electronic materials will be discussed at our first class meeting.

Course Requirements:

1. Reading: This course is organized as a small seminar for upper level undergraduates. The seminar format means that course meetings will include discussion every session. In order to fully participate in these discussions, it is mandatory that students do all the reading on the syllabus prior to each class meeting.

2. Mandatory reading responses posted on Oncourse: Use of the online Oncourse discussion forum facilitates productive discussion in class and keys me in to student responses to the course materials. Every student is responsible for posting for every class, due by 7 pm on the day before the class meeting. You are allowed to miss three posts without penalty over the course of the semester. Seven of your posts, randomly selected, will be graded over the course of the semester; my comments and grades will be available in the Oncourse gradebook when one of your posts is graded. Posts should be 1-paragraph-to-1-page responses to the assigned readings and films. They should include at least one question for discussion in class. You are encouraged to read, reply, and comment on each others posts. You may post at anytime during the week prior to class, but no later than 7 pm on the day prior to class. These deadlines give us all time to read each others’ posts and reflect on them before class, and refer to them in class discussion. The aim of the online discussion forum here is to enable us to collectively determine the approach to stigma that we want to develop over the semester.

3. Short paper: 3 pages due Oct 25 (see explanation on syllabus below)

4. Midterm: 5 page take-home essay on the subject of different strategic responses to stigma, including such ideas as the deployment of “subcultural capital,” “everyday resistance,” assimilation and passing, or transformation and the creation of alternative world views. The midterm essay will be handed out in class on Oct. 30 and due in class on Nov. 6.

5. Final: 8-10 page final paper due BY NOON Monday, Dec. 10 on a subject of your choice. Students may work together if you so choose. Your topic should allow you to further study questions raised in class regarding relations of stigma, the specific strategic responses to stigma among a particular community or people, and your own negotiation of these relations in researching your topic. Please write this paper in the first person. *If you are short of ideas, find a list of possible subjects and reference materials on the last pages of your syllabus.

Grading (by percentage points)

Attendance & class participation = 20%

Weekly web postings = 35%

Short paper for Oct. 25 = 15%

Midterm essay due Nov. 6 = 15%

Final Paper due Dec. 10 = 15%

Syllabus

Class 1: Tuesday, August 28 – Introduction to syllabus and course objectives.

· Review Syllabus, Oncourse, ERes electronic reserves; fill student info sheet

· Handout #1: Study guide to reading Goffman: definitions and key concepts

· Handout #2: Film screening schedule

· Handout #3: “Flesh Trade: Weighing the Repugnance Factor,” NYT July 9, 2006

· In-class viewing: “If You Could See Her Like I Do” from Cabaret, 1972

Class 2: Th Aug. 30 Key texts and theories on stigma (1): Goffman

Read:

• Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Ch. 1, pp. 1-40

Thursday Aug 30, 7:00 p.m. screening:

“Paris Is Burning” (dir. Jennie Livingston, 1990; 71 min.)

Class 3: Tuesday Sept. 4 -- How stigma changes

Read:

• Langston Hughes, 1933, “Passing,” Ch. 4, and “Poor Little Black Fellow,” Ch. 6, both in The Ways of White Folks (Oncourse)

• In-class: introduce the concentric circles model of subject positions and “the charmed circle.” In-class handouts:
• on the abject (Judith Butler, via Julia Kristeva)
• on the charmed circle (from Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex” [Oncourse])

Class 4: Thursday Sept. 6, Goffman cont’d

Read:

· Goffman, Stigma, Ch.2 pp. 41-104.

Thursday Sept. 6, 7:00 p.m. screening:

“Tongues Untied” (dir. Marlon Riggs, 1990; 55 min.)

Class 5: Tuesday Sept. 11, Yoshino on Covering

Read:

· Yoshino, Kenji. 2006. Covering: the hidden assault on our civil rights. “Preface” pp. ix-xii, and “An Uncovered Self” pp. 3-27.

Class 6: Thursday Sept 13 Goffman cont’d

Read:

· Goffman, Stigma, Chs. 3-5, pp. 105-147 (finish the book)

Thursday Sept 13, 7:00 p.m. screening:

“Jesus is Magic” (Sarah Silverman, 2005; 87 min.)

Class 7: Tuesday Sept. 18 –– Key texts and theories on stigma (2): Bourdieu,“Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier” (p. 6)

Read:

• Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. “Introduction” (pp. 1-7) and “Conclusion” (pp. 466-484).

Class 8: Th Sept 20 – Bourdieu cont’d: “Tastes are perhaps first and foremost distates, disgust provoked by… the tastes of others” (p. 56).

Read:

• Bourdieu, Distinction, Ch. 1, “The Aristocracy of Culture” pp. 11-58 – read as much as you can of this chapter. Also read Appendix 1, pp. 503-518.

Recommended reading:

• Michael Silverstein, 2003. Talking Politics: The substance of style from Abe to “W”, p. 1-16. [ “We are always already socially arranged one with respect to another in an intuitive sociocultural categorization. All of us are identifiable as being of one or another kind, to one or another degree.”]

Thursday Sept. 20, screening 7 pm

“Earth” (dir. Deepa Mehta, 1999; 110 min)

Class 9: Tuesday Sept. 25 – Strategic Responses to stigma #1: ‘Hipness’ & Music Subcultures

Read:

• Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen, 1979. Part 1, pp. 1-70.

Class 10: Thursday Sept. 27 – Hipness & Music Subcultures

Read:

• Hebdige, Subculture, Part 2, pp. 73-140.

• in class viewing: M.I.A., “Galang Galang” music video, to try our hand at some interpretive readings of the meanings of style here!

Thursday Sept 27, 7:00 pm screening:

“Velvet Goldmine” (dir. Todd Haynes 1998; 127 min.)

Class 11: Tuesday Oct 2 – Hipness & Music Subcultures

Read:

• Thornton, Sarah.“The Social Logic of Subcultural Capital” in The Subcultures Reader, ed. K. Gelder and S. Thornton, NY: Routledge, 1997, pp. 200-209 (Oncourse)
• Becker, Howard. 1963. “The Culture of a Deviant Group: the ‘jazz’ musician” in The Subcultures Reader, pp. 55-65 (Oncourse)
• Irwin, John. 1970. “Notes on the Status of the Concept ‘Subculture’,” in The Subcultures Reader, pp. 66-69 (Oncourse)

*No Class meeting Thursday Oct 4* -- Prof. Seizer will be speaking at U Texas – Austin – but start reading Bogdan, Freak Show

Thursday Oct 4 screening 7:00 pm

· “Freaks” (dir. Todd Browning, 1932; 62 min.) A horror classic!

· “Juggling Gender” (dir. Tami Gold, 29 minutes, 1990) a documentary about Jennifer Miller

Class 12: Tuesday Oct. 9 -- Freaks, human oddities, and issues in the ethnological display of persons;

Read:

• Bogdon, Robert. Freak Show. Read entire book if possible! (definitely read Part 1, pp. vii-116, and chs. 9 & 10, pp. 234-281).
• Joan Hawkins, 1996. “One of Us: Todd Browning’s Freaks,” in Freakery, ed. Rosemarie G. Thomson, NY: NYU Press, pp. 265-276. (Oncourse)

Class 13: Thursday, Oct. 11: – Strategic Response #5: Claiming, aiming, and turning stigma around through performance -- Guest Speaker Jennifer Miller (NYC artist & activist, director of Circus Amok and veteran of Coney Island Sideshows by the Seashore) will introduce us to her stigma-taming strategies in performance & everyday life!

Read:

• Fusco, Coco. 1995. “The Other History of Intercultural Performance.” In English is Broken Here. NYC: The New Press, pp. 37-64 (Oncourse)

Recommended reading:

• David Gerber, 1996. “The Careers of People Exhibited in Freak Shows: The Problem of Volition and Valorization” in Freakery, ed. Rosemarie G. Thomson, NY: NYU Press, pp. 38-54 (Oncourse)

• B. Kirschenblatt-Gimblett. 1991. “Objects of Ethnography,” in Exhibiting Cultures, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine. Wash: Smithsonian Institution Press 386-443 (Oncourse)
• Mannix, Daniel P. 1950. “Joining the Sideshow.” In Memoirs of a Sword Swallower. San Francisco: V/Search Publications reprint 1996, pp. 15-30 (Oncourse)

Thurs Oct. 11, 7 pm

“Twin Falls Idaho” (dir. Michael Polish, 1999; 110 min.)

Class 14: Tuesday Oct 16 – Strategic Responses to stigma 3: invisibility pros & cons

Read:

• Groce, Nora Ellen. 1985. Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007 -- Noon to 1 pm in HPER 125

“After the Settlement: Lessons Learned from Duke University”

talk by Mary Thomas, Director of the Disability Management System at Duke

In 2000, the US Department of Justice entered into a settlement agreement with Duke University to make the campus, classrooms and programs more accessible to people with disabilities. Thomas will discuss the “lessons learned including the terms of the settlement agreement and the actions that the university has taken to become more accessible for students, faculty, staff and visitors.” Thomas and a panel of the disability management team will discuss ADA compliance oversight, implementation and collaboration amongst various campus units. This session is most timely as the U.S. Department of Justice is currently negotiating ADA settlement agreements with 11 colleges and universities throughout the US.

Class 15: Thursday Oct 18 – strategic responses #3 cont’d: Staring Back

Read:

• Lucy Grealy, “Pony Party” (Oncourse)
• Leonard Kriegel, “Falling into life” (Oncourse)
• Lathrop, D.. 2003. “Tiny Tim” New Mobility, Dec p. 34-5 (Oncourse)
• “Nancy Chapman, The Duchess of Leeds” (2007 New Mobility)

Thursday Oct 18 film screening:

“Rolling” (dir. Gretchen Berland, 2003)

Short Paper assignment due in class on Oct. 25:

Follow a thread on www.wheelchairjunkie.com (in the “juke joint”) in which you recognize issues of stigma being discussed. Write a short (3 page, double-spaced) response paper about what you found interesting in the online discussion in relation to our class discussions and readings to date.

[A useful companion site on wheelchairs: http://members.tripod.com/lenmac/]

Class 16: Tuesday, Oct 23 –Strategic Responses to stigma 4: disability activism

Read:

• Thomson, Rosemarie Garland. 1997. Extraordinary Bodies. Chs. 1-2, pp 1-51. NY: Columbia U Press (Oncourse)
• Rothschild, Joan. 2005. Introduction, pp. 1-10, The Dream of the Perfect Child. (Oncourse)

*SHORT PAPER DUE IN CLASS

Class 17: Thursday, Oct 25 -- disability activism cont’d

Read four news articles:

· King, Martha. “Unlimited by Design” Inside MS, Vol 16, No. 3, Fall 1998 pp. 10-13 (Oncourse)

· Stone, Karen, “Practical, Beautiful, Humane” Inside MS, Vol 16, No. 3, Fall 1998 pp. 14-17 (Oncourse)

• Ervin, Mike. “Visitability.” New Mobility, Vol 8 No. 47, pp 40-43 (Oncourse)

• Nussbaum, Debra. 1998. “Bringing the Visual World of the Web to the Blind.” NY Times, March 26, 1998 (Oncourse)

Thursday Oct. 25 Screening, 7 p.m.:

“My Left Foot” (dir. Jim Sheridan, 1989; 98 min.)

Class 18: Tues Oct 30 -- Internalizing ideology, day 1

• Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go, chs. 1-12, pp. 3-146 (first half of novel)

*Midterm exam handed out in class, due Nov. 6: take-home essay, 5 pages

Class 19: Th Nov. 1-- Internalizing ideology, day 2

• Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go, chs 13- 23, pp. 146-288 (finish the novel)

Thursday Nov. 1 Screening 7 pm

“Water” (dir. Deepa Mehta, 2006; 114 min.)

*MIDTERM DUE IN CLASS

Class 20: Tuesday, Nov. 6 –Strategic Responses to stigma #6: biological manipulations and transgender warriors

•    Feinberg, Leslie. 1995. Stone Butch Blues. Read the first half

of the novel.

Class 21: Thursday, Nov. 8 –transgender cont’d

• Stone Butch Blues, finish the novel.

Recommended reading:

• Dreger, Alice 1998. Hermaphrdites and the Medical Invention of Sex. Harvard U Press.

Thursday, Nov. 8 Screening, 7 p.m.:

“Southern Comfort” (dir. Kate Davis, 2003; 90 min.)

Class 22: Tuesday, Nov 13 Strategic responses to stigma #7: putting the terms of display on display.

• Weschler, Lawrence. 1995. Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder. Part One.

*Sign up in class for an appointment with Prof. Seizer to discuss your final project

Class 23: Thursday Nov. 15 –display cont’d

Read: Finish Weschler.

· Fieldtrip to “Wonderlab”

Thursday Nov. 15 film screening:

“The Station Agent” (dir. Thomas McCarthy, 89 min.)

Class 24: Tuesday Nov. 20 ––Strategic responses to stigma #8: Everyday resistance

• Scott, James. 1985. Weapons of the Weak, Chs. 1, “Small Arms Fire in the Class War,” and Ch. 2, “Normal Exploitation, Normal Resistance,” pp. 1-47 (Oncourse)

Tuesday, Nov. 20 Screening 7 p.m. “Eyes on the Prize”

Part One: the Montgomery bus boycott and civil rights in the U.S. ca. early 1960s

*No class/screening on Thursday Nov. 22^nd -- Happy Thanksgiving!

Class 25: Tuesday Nov. 27 –Everyday resistance, cont’d.

• Seizer, Susan. 2000. “Roadwork: Offstage with Special Drama Actresses in South India.” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 217-259 (Oncourse)
• George Orwell, 1936. “Shooting an Elephant,” The Orwell Reader pp. 3-9 (Oncourse)

*No Class Thursday, Nov. 29 – Prof. Seizer attending the American Anthropological Association meetings in Washington, DC Nov. 28-Dec. 2

Thursday Nov. 29 Screening 7 p.m.

“Fire” (dir. Deepa Mehta, 2000)

Class 26: Tuesday Dec. 4 – The intersecting stigmas of sex, race, class, and nationality

· Audre Lorde. 1980. The Cancer Journals. Read the whole book, pp. 9-77. SF: Anut Lute Books.

Recommended reading:

· Susan Sontag, 1990. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors, the combined edition publ. Anchor Books NY: Doubleday.

Class 27: Thursday Dec. 6 – Shifting contextual fields of stigma

• Susan Seizer, “Paradoxes of Visibility in the Field”
• last class = evaluations & wrap-up

***Final Papers are due Monday Dec. 10 NO LATER THAN NOON in Prof. Seizer’s office***

Ideas and possible topics for final projects

(with preliminary suggestions for references and readings)

“Camp” as a strategy for resisting stigma

• On camping around and flaunting it, Read: Esther Newton, excerpts from Mother Camp (1972), reprinted in Margaret Mead Made Me Gay, Duke U Press 2000, pp. 11-33 (Oncourse), and “Introduction” to Margaret Mead Made Me Gay, Duke U Press 2000, pp. 1-8 (Oncourse).
• On the question of camp on whose terms? Read:

• Sontag, Susan. 1966. “Notes on Camp,” in Against Interpretation. Dell, pp. 275-292 (Oncourse)
• Short news article, “On Sontag” from NYTimes August 2006”
• Dyer, Richard. 1992. “It’s being so camp as keeps us going,” in Only Entertainment. Routledge, pp. 135-147 (Oncourse)
• View: “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” (dir. Stephan Elliott 1994; 104 min.)

Prison: the other inside

· Performance artist and prison activist Rhodessa Jones, creator of The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women http://www.culturalodyssey.org/v2/aboutus/rhodessa_bio.html.

· Medical testing on prison inmates NYT.pdf (ask Prof. Seizer for pdf)

· Daniel Burton-Rose (Editor), Dan Pens (Editor), Paul Wright (Editor), 1998. The Celling of America: An Inside Look at the U.S. Prison Industry

• Jeffrey Reiman The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice, Seventh Edition Allyn & Bacon; 7 edition (July 18, 2003)

Same-Sex Marriage

• Chauncey, George. 2004. Why Marriage?: The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality. NY: Basic Books.
• Video: “Tying the Knot,” dir: Jim de Seve. 2004. 81min
• Warner, Michael. 1999. The Trouble with Normal, Ch. 1&2, pp. 1-80 (Oncourse)
• Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1993, “Axiomatic” in Tendencies, Duke U Press (Oncourse)
• Gayle Rubin. 1993. “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, , pp. 3-44 (Oncourse)
• Dan Savage, 2005. The Commitment.

Maids: doing the dirty work (working through race & class categories)

· Romero, Mary. 1992. Maid in the USA. Ch. 1 & 7 (Oncourse)

· Kamani, Ginu. 1995. “Maria,” in Junglee Girl. SF: Aunt Lute, pp. 125-138.

· Joyce, James. 1926. “Clay,” in Dubliners. NY: Modern Library, pp. 99-106.

· Dickey, Sara. 2000. “Permeable Homes: domestic service, household space, and the vulnerability of class boundaries in urban India.” American Ethnologist, V27 No2: 462-489.

Sex-work: in the life

· McClintock, Anne.1993.“Sex Workers and Sex Work: Introduction.” Social Text 37, Winter 1993:1-10.

· Walkowitz, Judith.“Going Public” in Representations 62, Spring 1998, pp. 1-30

· Nine short news articles on Viagra, on ERES: NY Times 4/29/98; NY Times 4/25/98; LA Times 5/9/98; NY Times 5/3/98; LA Times 5/11/98; NY Times 6/6/98; NYTimes 6/21/98; LA Times 7/3/98; The New Yorker 7/6/98.

· sexworker videos by Annie Sprinkle and Carol Leigh

Strategic Response #8: Ex-Patriotism (Paris, France in the imaginary of African-American, queer, and other marginal artists including James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, and Gertrude Stein)

· Langston Hughes, “Poor Little Black Fellow” (1933), from The Ways of White Folks

· Baldwin, James. 1960. Another Country, NY: Vintage Books, pp. 183-227 [excerpt from Book Two].

· Tyler Stovall, excerpts from Paris-Noir, 1996 [ERES]

· Benigno Sanchez-Eppler and Cindy Patton, “Introduction: With a Passport Out of Eden” in Queer Diasporas, 2000, pp.1-14

· Monique Truong, 2002, The Book of Salt (a fictive account, written from the perspective of the Vietnamese cook hired by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas)

· Viewing: documentary on James Baldwin, the early sections on his youth and time in France

Body Modification: modern primitives

· view Ron Athey video, “Hallelujah!”

· Daniel Rosenblatt, 1996. “The Antisocial Skin” Cultural Anthropology

· Susan Phillips, 2000 “Gallo’s Body: decoration and damnation in the life of a Chicano gang member”

Body Size, Fat, Anorexia

• Fat Girl. Judith Moore, 2005
• Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Susan Bordo, 1993
• Feeding Anorexia, Helen Gremillion 2003
• Girl, Interrupted, Sussanna Kaysen, 1994
• “Girl, Interrupted” (dir. James Mangold, 2000; 127 min)

Changes in Ethnic Identity: Jews

· Jonathan Safran Foer, 2002. Everything is Illuminated (a novel)

· Brodkin, Karen. 1998. How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America.

· Seidman, Naomi. 1998. “Fag-Hags and Bu-Jews: Toward a (Jewish) Politics of Vicarious Identity.” In Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism, ed. Biale, Galchinsky, and Heschel. Berkeley: U of California Press, pp. 254-268.

· Gilman, Sander.1996. Smart Jews.

Homosexualities & Homophobias: the difference culture makes

· Donham, Donald. 1997. “Freeing South Africa: The ‘Modernization’ of Male-Male Sexuality in Soweto,” in Cultural Anthropology, Vol 13 No 1, Feb 1998:3-21.

· Homophobias. Introduction by Don Kulick. Ed. David Murray. Forthcoming, Duke U Press.

· Mercer, Kobena. 1991. “Skin Head Sex Thing: Racial Difference and the Homoerotic Imaginary.” In How Do I Look? Queer Film and Video.” Seattle: Bay Press, pp. 169-222.

Urban Myths of Race and Class

· Elizabeth Chin, Purchasing Power: Consumerism… (2000)

· Ashamalla, Rosemarie.1997.“Why Would You Go Down There? Purity and Defilement in the City of the Angels,” unpublished ms., pp. 1-21 [ERES].

· Wray, Matt and Annalee Newitz, eds. 1997. White Trash Race and Class in America. NY: Routledge. Constance Penley, “Crackers and Whackers,” pp. 89-112; “White Trash Girl,” pp.113-130.

· Berreman, Gerald D. 1972. “Race, Caste, and Other Invidious Distinctions in Social Stratification.” In Anthropology for the Nineties, ed. Johnetta B. Cole, pp. 485-521.

Divorce

Adoption

• Herman, Ellen. 2006. “Can kinship be designed and still be normal? The curious case of child adoption.” In Histories of the Normal and the Abnormal, ed. Waltraud Ernst. London: Routledge.
• Savage, Dan. 1999. The Kid.

Infertitlity

Gay Parenting

• Savage, Dan. 1999. The Kid.
• “daddy & papa,” film by Johnny Symons
• 2005 legal decisions of the California Supreme Court…
• NYTimes articles (ask Prof. Seizer)

Immigrants: different generational responses

Refugees: coping strategies for the impossible and unforeseen

· Film: “Hotel Rwanda”

General Stigma Theory Supplementary Readings (optional): these essays repesent some of the best of queer theory on the power of being outside the norm:

· Ortner, Sherry. 1998. “Identities: The Hidden Life of Class” Journal of Anthropological Research, V 54, No. 1, pp. 1-17 (Oncourse)

· Warner, Michael. 1999. The Trouble with Normal, Ch. 1&2, pp. 1-80 (Oncourse)

· Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1993, “Queer and Now” in Tendencies, pp. 1-20, Duke U Press (Oncourse)

· Gayle Rubin. 1993. “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, , pp. 3-44 (Oncourse)

General Stigma Theory Supplementary readings on whiteness in the U.S.:

• Wray, Matt and Annalee Newitz, eds. 1997.White Trash: Race and Class in America. NY: Routledge. “Introduction,” pp. 1-12.
• Dyer, Richard. 1995. “Introduction.” White.

General Stigma Theory Supplementary Readings from an anthropological perspective:

• Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger