Day 4

I. Jen first re: Thorne/Lesnick

• interactionist/individualist approaches as defined by Lesnick (echoes Thorne).
• Connecting up with the discussion we started last time on roles (you asked: rigid/fluid? imposed/voluntary?):
  Lesnick's discussion of "natural" female roles and the issue of satisfaction vs. oppression.
• Query simple mapping of home/work onto female/male roles?
  (E.g., Lesnick's discussion of "emotional labor").
• Intersection of gender roles with class ones: Lesnick's review of 2 studies of working- and middle-class mothers ­
  divergent interpretations of "raw data" from complex, multilayered situations.

• What's New In Gender and Science (Brown Bag Discussion, April 29, 2005)
• Building Two-Way Bridges: A Conversation about Gender and Science (Faculty Seminar, February 21, 2002)

of particular interest to me:
lack of women's participation in "new field" of computer science/boys' culture
(socialization of game-playing? of Huck Finn-like exploration?)

Did you try out Serendip's Playground?
Did you play any of the games? What was the experience like?
What would science be like for you, if it were a process of open-ended exploration,
instead of a (faulty!) replication of what-is-known-for-sure?

Let's play:

blindspot! BUT!

• Free Will on Serendip
• Ambiguous Figures
• Puns (especially male put-downs? logic of the joke?)

What ARE the limits on our free will (re: gender category/performance)?

What are the investments which prevent us from altering our performance(s)?

Speaking of that "metaphor of performance" (p. 188):

• p. 197: "children negotiating roles on the highly public stage of the school day"
  
• our classroom metaphors of stage, audition...

• how 'bout, instead of performance, exploration (Anna's science project...)?

and what about " emotional labor" (p. 188)
(as applied to classroom/ my life!)

cf. also pp. 194-195: "middle-class girls socialized to imagine that they have autonomy and freedom of choice. Their mothers create choice...submerge the power relation...obscure the distinction between work and play..." (vs. direct, regulative dialogue of working class mothers/daughters, for whom work is "not so amenable to flexibility, desire or creativity"

cf. Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

and p. 298: "Many women teachers...were extremely contradictory about the girls in their charge...it was always ambivalent..."

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