Borderlands - Comm 175

Prof. Leigh Star - Spring, 2002
Office hours by appointment, email welcome anytime.
Office MCC 105 lstar@ucsd.edu 534-6327

"A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants. Los atraversados live here: the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulatto, the half-breed, the half dead; in short, those who cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the 'normal.'" -- Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987, p. 3.

In the history of social science, borderlands have been understood in many different ways: as difference, as multiple membership (such as being multi-racial), as deviance, as "outsiderness," as freaks. Strangers are the ones who inhabit such borderlands -- those who "come and stay a while" in the parlance of the sociologist Georg Simmel. There is as well an old, rich literature on temporary borderlands, or rites of passage: moving from childhood to adulthood, from life to death, from single to married, etc.

Borderlands are full of motion and emotion. Often the world demands that a person be "pure" -- not of mixed race, or nonconforming, or different in some way. People have responded to these pressures in a number of ways: passing as a member of the dominant group; forming social movements and resisting the pressures to be one thing or another; or hiding one world from another.

This class will look at several things: the implications of multiple memberships, including interracial and transgender issues; the classical views of borderlands, including some of the communicative issues involved; and the processes associated with moving from one world to another, or living in between.

Class process and grading:
The class will require a lot of reading and participation. There will be homework assignments in the form of fieldwork and other empirical engagements.

Grades will be as follows:3 homework assignments: 45%
Take-home midterm: 30%
In-class writing assignments: 25%

There will be several in-class writing assignments, which will be very difficult to complete if you have not done the reading for the week.

You will need:
A camera (a disposable one is fine).
If you don't speak Spanish, a Spanish-English dictionary (available at the library too).Class textbook: Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera. Available at University Bookstore.
Class packet from University Readers, (800) 200-3908.

Syllabus
April 2 Introduction to class.
1. Lecture on borderlands, sociology, history, and importance for communication. Defining communities, memberships, multiple memberships. Insider/outsider issues.
April 4
2. In-class exercise.
3. Discussion of exercise. Sign-up for focused discussions next week.
April 9 Borderlands/La Frontera, Part One. Pp. 1-98.
1. Discussion of chapters and issues.
2. In-class writing exercise/questions.
April 11 Wrap-up of part One
3. Discussion of questions, sign ups for next week’s readings.
4. Homework: Exercise One. Observation.
April 16. Borderlands/La Frontera, Part Two. Rest of book.
1. Discussion of exercise.
2. Discussion of book and relationship to exercise. Sign up for next week's readings.
3. Beginning of film, "Lone Star."
April 18. Conclusion of film.
April 23 Guest lecture, Dr. Katie Vann
April 25, Guest lecture, Prof. Olga Vasquez
April 30, Classics of the literature, Part One.
Readings: Becker; Van Gennep; Strauss; Hughes; Simmel; Schütz.
1. Discussion of readings.
May 2, Classics discussion wrap-up.
2. In-class writing exercise/questions.
May 7. Intersexuality, transgender issues, and gay/lesbian/bisexual people as borderland dwellers.
Readings: Kessler, Stone.
May 9: Film: “A Boy Named Sue,” by UCSD’s Julie Wyman
Homework: Exercise 2. Photographs.
May 14. Interracial Issues.
Issues for today: Naming.
Passing.
Census and categories.
Apartheid.
Readings: Bowker and Star; Rodriguez; Robbin.
Take-home mid-term distributed and discussed. Due May 21th.
May 16: Discussion of Exercise 2. Bring your photos!
May 21. Identity tourism and virtual borderlands.
Readings: Ignacio; Nakamura
In class writing: Internet and lab exploration.
May 23. Borderlands of Physical Ability.
Readings: Padden, Moser..
Homework: Exercise 3. Exploring physical abilities.
May 28. Newer Literatures, Two.
Discussion of Exercise 3. Begin discussion of: Lin; Star; Bauchspies; hooks.

May 30. Wrap-up of discussion; in-class writing exercise.
June 4. Physical vs. Social/Psychological Borders (lecture)
June 6 Wrap up and concluding thoughts

Table of Contents of Packet
Bauchspies, Wenda. 1998. “Science as Stranger and the Worship of the Word,” Pp. 189-211 in Knowledge and Society 11, ed. Shirley Gorenstein.

Becker, Howard S. Excerpts from Outsiders. 1963. Chicago: Aldine. Pp. 1-18.
hooks, bell. 1990. “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness,” Pp. 145-153 in her Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics. Boston, MA: South End Press.

Hughes, Everett C. 1970. “Dilemmas and Contradictions of Status,” Pp. 141-150 from his The Sociological Eye. Chicago: Aldine.

Ignacio, Emily Noelle. 2000. “Ain’t I a Filipino (Woman)?: An Analysis of Authorship/Authority through the Construction of ‘Filipina’ on the Net,” The Sociological Quarterly 41: 551-572.

Kessler, Suzanne. 1990. “The Medical Construction of Gender: Case Management of Intersexed Infants,” Signs 16: 3-26.

Lin, Maya. 2000. Boundaries. NY: Simon and Schuster. Excerpt.

Moser, Ingunn. 2001. “Normalizing Disability.”

Nakamura, Lisa. 2000. “’Where Do You Want to Go Today?’: Cybernetic Tourism, the Internet, and Transnationality,” Pp. 15-26 in Kolko, Beth; Lisa Nakamura and Gilbert Rodman, Eds. Race in Cyberspace. NY: Routledge.

Padden, Carol. 1990. “Folk Explanation in Language Survival,” Pp. 190-192 in D. Middleton and D. Edwards, Eds. Collective Remembering. London: SAGE.

Robbin, Alice. 1999. “The Problematic Status of U.S. Statistics on Race and Ethnicity: An ‘Imperfect Representation of Reality,” Journal of Government Information 25: 467-483.

Rodriguez, Richard. 1990. “Complexion,” Pp. 265-278 in Out There. Ferguson, Russell, et al., Eds. NY: MIT.

Schütz, Alfred. 1944. "The Stranger," American Journal of Sociology, 49: 499-507.

Simmel, Georg. 1950. "The Stranger." Pp. 402-408 in Kurt Wolff, Ed. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Star, Susan Leigh. 1991. ‘Power, Technologies and the Phenomenology of Standards: On Being Allergic to Onions.’ In John Law (ed.). A Sociology of Monsters? Power, Technology and the Modern World: Sociological Review Monograph 38. Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 27-57.

Stone, Sandy. 1991. “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttransexual Manifesto,” Pp. 280-304 in Julia Epstein and Kristina

Straub, Eds. Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity. NY: Routledge.

Strauss, Anselm. Mirrors and Masks: The Search for Identity. San Francisco: The Sociology Press, 1969. Chapter 4:

Transformations of Identity. Pp. 91-133.

Van Gennep, Arnold. 1908. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press. Pp. 1-25.