Objectives: Students will be able to:
- Define the concept of racial projects.
- Apply the concept of racial projects to discussions of gender identity.
- Recognize the gender and racial projects into which they have been socialized.
- Identify the intersections of racial and gender projects in STEM fields.
- Locate themselves as a computer or applied scientist in the American racial and gender projects.
- Formulate strategies to engage these projects in ways that reflect their values.
Pre-class work
- What Are Racial Projects? A Sociological Approach to Race
- Kandaswamy, P., 2012. Gendering racial formation. Racial formation in the twenty-first century, pp.23-43.
- Recommended: Omi, M. and Winant, H., 2014. Racial formation in the United States. Routledge.
In class [slides]
In the first half of the session, we will define racial and gender projects, and begin a conversation with the faculty panelists using the below questions. In the second half of the session, students will engage in an exercise that allows them to think about how they navigate these projects in ways that reflect their values.
Question Bank
- Can you tell the story of how and when you first became aware of your race in the American Context?
- What, if any, emotions did that experience carry?
- Was it a context in which this identity was affirmed or disaffirmed?
- Can you tell the story of how you first became aware of your gender identity?
- What, if any, emotions did that experience carry?
- Was it a context in which this identity was affirmed or disaffirmed?
- Can you tell the story of how you first became interested in STEM?
- If you don’t remember the first moment, choose a pivotal one that helped positively define your interest instead. What were you doing?
- Put yourself back in that moment and consider how it was embodied.
- How would you describe your racial and gender identity at that moment?
- If other people were present, what was their racial and gender identity?
- What, if any, interaction did they have with you?
- As you think across your career, in what ways have you seen your race and gender intersect with your identity as a scholar/researcher?