Journal Review

1. “Auctus.” Virginia Commonwealth University.

2. Auctus is an undergraduate research journal published by the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. First published in 2008, Auctus is “... dedicated to publishing exemplary undergraduate research in natural sciences, engineering, humanities and creative scholarship ...” (Auctus 2009). The journal’s stated mission is to recognize and disseminate the original research of undergraduate students at VCU and other universities, while also promoting engagement in research in scholarship and fostering a community of emerging researchers.

3. Auctus publishes once per year in the spring. As Auctus is only 2 years old, the journal has only printed 2 issues (2008 Spring and 2009 Spring), with only the 2009 Spring issue being available online. However, to support the journal’s core principle of accessibility and engagement, the editorial staff is working to make every issue of the journal available online. The journal publishes research findings, technical papers, expository articles, essays, fiction, poetry, creative writing, photography, videos, and other creative works from all disciplines. Auctus is edited by a board of undergraduates with faculty assistance, and is published in Richmond, Virginia. Auctus receives foundational support from the VCU Honors College, the Center for the Study of Biological Complexity, and VCU Libraries (Auctus 2009).  The supporters of Auctus also sponsor an annual conference called the “Poster Symposium For Undergraduate Research & Creativity”, first held on April 22, 2009 (Auctus 2009).

4. Auctus is designed primarily for an audience of undergraduate researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University, but also wishes to showcase the work of undergraduate students to other universities and graduate schools (Auctus 2009). The journal is reviewed by a board of undergraduate students who are assisted by faculty members.

5. Auctus publishes undergraduate work from disciplines in the natural sciences, engineering, and the humanities (Auctus 2009). The journal limits it submissions to those written by an undergraduate author and cosigned by a faculty member who is knowledgeable in the field of the submission. Authors may continue to submit up to one year after their graduation. Under no circumstances will the journal reprint, in part or in whole, and work that has been previously published in any other source. Undergraduates from institutions other than VCU may submit to the journal, so long as their submission is cosigned by a faculty member at their institution.

Submissions are selected for publication by a blind review process at the end of every spring semester. Resubmissions of revised manuscripts are not accepted, although authors are allowed to withdraw their submission and re-submit it the following year. Although authors may submit up to three works to Auctus in a given selection period, only one submission per author will be published in a given issue. Auctus also permits authors to submit their work to Auctus and another publication simultaneously.

Auctus requires that all submissions be typed in 12-point Times New Roman font. All submissions must be double-spaced with 1-inch margins. Along with each full submission, the author is required to include an abstract of no more than 250 words and a short biography and picture of the submitting author. As well, the submission itself cannot be longer than 25 pages unless it is the work for multiple student authors. The submission itself is to be electronically submitted to Auctus via their VCU email address.

References

Auctus. 2009. “Auctus: Research and Creative Scholarship Journal at VCU.” Retrieved September 16, 2010 (http://www.auctus.vcu.edu/index.html).

Research Question(s)

As a result of the nature of the proposed methodology of my proposed study, I will be addressing two research questions simultaneously.

Q1:

Are parts of the “Natural Attitude” towards “normally sexed persons” still the same today as it was when it was described by Harold Garfinkel, namely that society is populated by two and only two sexes (1967: 122)?

Q2:

What facial cues might members of a society use to create the social fact of an interactional partner’s gender?

References

Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Service Learning Proposal

Contact Information

Service Learning Proposal for Men Against Rape @ UCF

By: Joshua S.

September 16, 2010

Meredith Tweed

WST 3015-0001

Community Partner Profile:

Community Partner: Men Against Rape @ UCF

Contact: Schuyler Kerby, slkerby@gmail.com

Community Partner Mission Statement: “We are a group that seeks to end sexual violence. We as men recognize that men are the main perpetrators of sexual violence, especially rape, and that we have a social responsibility in working towards ending it” (Men Against Rape @ UCF 2010).

Political and/or Social Basis for Organization: Men Against Rape @ UCF, or just Men Against Rape, was created to address the issues surrounding men’s interactions with patriarchal systems, sexism, sexual violence, and rape. Men Against Rape focuses on rape and sexual violence as its focus as a vast majority of the perpetrators of rape and sexual violence are men.

Community Partner Needs: Since Men Against Rape is only just over a year old, the organization needs help attracting new members, planning and hosting events, and raising funds.

The Proposal

Memorandum

TO: Meredith L. Tweed

FROM: Joshua S.

DATE: September 17, 2010

RE: Proposal to Write a Feasibility Report for a Service Learning Project

Below is a proposal that outlines the needs of the Men Against Rape @ UCF organization, my plan to address those needs, how that plan relates back to Women’s and/or Gender Studies, action steps needed to enact my plan, and a timeline that sets out a rough schedule for the completion of those action steps. This proposal as it now stands may need to be revised to better meet the changing needs of Men Against Rape @ UCF and the Service Learning project.

Statement of Need or Problem

The Men Against Rape organization is only a little over a year old and has many of the same problems that any fledgling social justice organization has. Men Against Rape lacks the recognition, history and funding of other groups such as NOW or VOX, making recruiting new members difficult. As well, since the organization lacks RSO status with the UCF SGA, it becomes difficult for Men Against Rape to host meeting and events on campus. Due to the organization’s base of membership being the student population of UCF, membership is often transitory and maintaining enthusiasm and steady membership become difficult.

Plan to Address Need or Problem

To address the three major issues of Men Against Rape outlined above, I plan to work with the organization on a three part plan. First, I plan to help Men Against Rape organize and hold fundraising and consciousness raising events, such as movie nights, off campus or in on campus locations where RSO status is not a requirement for use. Second, I plan to facilitate Men Against Rape working with other on-campus organizations, such as EQUAL and Victim Services, to host official on campus events. Finally, I plan to table with Men Against Rape during the week and during official on campus events to bring in new members.

Rationale for Women’s and/or Gender Studies

Violence against women, sexual violence and rape are all issues feminism and the Women’s Studies movement seek to address and end. Men Against Rape seeks to do vital work in stopping this violence before it starts by addressing men, who are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of sexual violence and rape (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 2010). In doing so, Men Against Rape follows in the footsteps of many other national organizations, such as Men Against Pornography and Men Acting for Change (Stoltenberg 1998).

Actions for the Project

Beginning over the summer, I have already worked with Men Against Rape to develop new fliers, informational brochures, and signs. In the future, I will be working with Men Against Rape to attract new members by tabling and raise funding for the organization by organizing and hosting at least one movie night. As well, I will be working with members of the organization throughout the semester to print and publish brochures and pamphlets to inform students on the UCF campus about issues of sexual violence and rape, as well as about Men Against Rape.

Tentative Timeline

-Monday, Sep 20 - Tabling for Men Against Rape at Light Up The Night

-Early Oct - Participate in upcoming Masculinities Panel to be hosted at UCF

-Late Oct - Host a movie night fundraiser to raise awareness about issues of sexual violence and rape on campus, as well as raising funding for Men Against Rape

References

Kirk, Gwen and Margo Okazawa-Rey, eds. 2010. Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Men Against Rape @ UCF. 2010. “Info.” Orlando, FL: Men Against Rape @ UCF Facebook Group. Retrieved September 17, 2010 (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=44400589867&ref=ts#!/group.php?gid=44400589867&v=info&ref=ts).

Stoltenberg, John. 1998. “’I Am Not a Rapist!’: Why College Guys Are Confronting Sexual Violence.” Pp. 285-90 in Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives, edited by G. Kirk and M. Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw Hill.

Word Count: 785

The Library Workshop: Loosening the Belt, Undisciplined Research

2. Compare the results of searching the same precise topic in a database suggested for your subject area, two scholarly databases from/for differing fields, WorldCat, and a database geared toward Women/Gender Studies. Discuss how the different disciplines approach the topic.

Over the course of my studies so far, I have used to search term “Gender Attribution” in many different databases, including:

-Social Sciences Full Text (Sociology & Psychology)

-GenderWatch (Gender Studies)

-JSTOR (Humanities)

-WorldCat

-Contemporary Women’s Issues (Women’s Studies)

Here is a brief summary of how the different fields approach the subject of gender attribution:

Sociology of Gender:

            Sociology approaches gender attribution as a part of social interaction, usually as part of the framing of the social space (Garfinkel 1967; Kessler and McKenna 1978; Goffman 1987). On the ‘pure sociology’ side of the spectrum, gender attribution is treated as a socially situated phenomenon enacted by members within the natural attitude, and negotiated throughout a social interaction (Garfinkel 1967; Kessler and McKenna 1978; Crawford 2000; Speer 2005; Stokoe 2006). On the ‘applied sociology’ side of the spectrum, gender attribution - along with racial attribution, class attribution, etc. - is seen as playing a role in the interactional side of sexism, racism, classism, etc (West and Zimmerman 1987; West and Fenstermaker 1995; Ridgeway and Correll 2004).

Psychology:

            Psychologists approach gender attribution as part of a cognitive schema for organizing interactional partners into categories for typification purposes (Stangor et al . 1992; Irmen 2006).

Biology/Sociology of Medicine:

            Biologists, especially feminist biologists, approach gender attribution as the process by which biological researchers apply social precepts to ‘objective’ observations (Kessler 1990, 1998; Fausto-Sterling 1992, 2000).

Women’s and Gender Studies:

            Women’s and Gender Studies approach gender attribution in much the same way as applied sociologists do, although they tend to spend less time focusing on how gender attribution plays into oppression and more time on the structures of that oppression (Devor 1989; Hawkesworth 1997; Ridgeway and Correll 2004; Crawley, Foley, and Shehan 2008).

5. Research your specific topic in the literature of the 70s and 80s. Research the same topic in the literature of the 90s and 00s. Discuss the evolution of the field based on this exercise.

Despite the progress made in the field of gender studies since Kessler and McKenna (1978) coined the term “gender attribution”, not much progress has been made in the study of the actual mechanisms of gender attribution. Kessler and McKenna mention two previous writers who touched on the subject on the topic - Garfinkel’s (1967) discussion of Agnes and Birdwhistell’s (1970) writing on the subject - but other than those and Kessler and McKenna’s own work, not much research has been done on the topic. Much of the research in gender studies has glossed the gender attribution process or only touched on it briefly in the pursuit of discussing how gender is ‘done’ or how structural gender inequalities are constructed (West and Zimmerman 1987; Rogers 1992; West and Fenstermaker 1995, 2002; Ridgeway 2009).

There have been two important exceptions to this, however. First, in the field of social psychology, studies on the automatic activation of social categories and cognitive schema have produced results that support Kessler and McKenna’s theories about the primacy of gender attribution (Stangor et al . 1992; Irmen 2006). Second, through the use of conversation analysis, a few other researchers have examined the linguistic components of the gender attribution process (Speer 2005; Stokoe 2006).

6. Research a seminal scholar or text through reviews, citation index, biographical information, etc and discuss the effect of scholar/work on the discipline.

The seminal text in the theorization of gender attribution, and in the ethnomethodological study of gender as a whole, is Kessler and McKenna’s (1978) Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach, wherein the term “gender attribution” was coined. Kessler and McKenna’s work can be seen as having an influence on three different areas of study. First, the authors’ discussion of the social construction of the biological basis of sex differentiation influenced Kessler’s later work in the management of intersexed children, as well as other authors in the field of the medical construction of gender (Kessler 1990, 1998; Fausto-Sterling 1992, 2000). Second, the authors’ theorizing about the construction of gender influenced ethnomethodological theories of gender, such as the more widely-cited work of West and others (West and Zimmerman 1987; West and Fenstermaker 1995). Finally, their research with transsexuals influenced theorizing in the field of transgender studies (Devor 1989; Hausman 2001; Dozier 2005).

References

Crawford, Mary. 2000. “A Reappraisal of Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach : Editor’s Introduction How to Make Sex and Do Gender.” Feminism & Psychology. 10(7):7-10. (Retrieved from Sage Publications on July 29, 2010.)

Crawley, Sara L., Lara J. Foley, and Constance L. Shehan. 2008. Gendering Bodies. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Devor, Holly. 1989. Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.

Dozier, Raine. 2005. “Beards, Breasts, and Bodies: Doing Sex in a Gendered World.” Gender and Society. 19(3):297-316. (Retrieved from JSTOR on March 19, 2010.)

Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 1992. Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men. New York: Basic Books.

------. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books.

Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Goffman, Erving. 1987. Gender Advertisements. Harper Torchbooks ed. New York: Harper & Row.

Hausman, Bernice L. 2001. “Recent Transgender Theory.” Feminist Studies. 27(2):465-90.

Heritage, John. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.

Irmen, Lisa. 2006. “Automatic Activation and Use of Gender Subgroups.” Sex Roles. 55:435-44. (Retrieved from Wilson Web on July 14, 2010.)

Kessler, Suzanne J. 1990. “The Medical Construction of Gender: Case Management of Intersexed Infants.” Signs. 16(1):3-26.

------. 1998. Lessons from the Intersexed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Kessler, Suzanne J. and Wendy McKenna. 1978. Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Ridgeway, Cecilia L. 2009. “Framed Before We Know It: How Gender Shapes Social Relations.” Gender and Society. 23(2):145-60. (Retrieved from SAGE Journals Online on September 8, 2010.)

Ridgeway, Cecilia L. and Shelley J. Correll. 2004. “Unpacking the Gender System: A Theoretical Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations.” Gender and Society. 18(4):510-31. (Retrieved from JSTOR on March 19, 2010.)

Rogers, Mary F. 1992. “They All Were Passing: Agnes, Garfinkel, and Company.” Gender and Society. 6(2):169-91. (Retrieved from JSTOR on September 8, 2010.)

Speer, Susan A. 2005. “The Interactional Organization of the Gender Attribution Process.” Sociology. 39(1):67-87. (Retrieved from SAGE Journals Online on July 29, 2010.)

Stangor, Charles, Laure Lynch, Changming Duan, and Beth Glass. 1992. “Categorization of Individuals on the Basis of Multiple Social Features.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 62(2):207-18.

Stokoe, Elizabeth. 2006. “On Ethnomethodology, Feminism, and the Analysis of Categorial Reference to Gender in Talk-In-Interaction.” The Sociological Review. 54(3):467-94.

West, Candace and Don H. Zimmerman. 1987. “Doing Gender.” Gender and Society. 1(2):125-51. (Retrieved from JSTOR on May 18, 2010.)

West, Candace and Sarah Fenstermaker. 1995. “Doing Difference.” Gender and Society. 9(1):8-37. (Retrieved from JSTOR on May 18, 2010.)

-----. 2002. “Accountability in Action: The Accomplishment of Gender, Race and Class in a Meeting of the University of California Board of Regents.” Discourse and Society. 13(4):537-63. (Retrieved from SAGE Journals Online on September 8, 2010.)

Research Topic and Journals to Submit To

My research idea for Researching Women and Gender will be the same topic I am using for my Honors Undergraduate Thesis. My thesis topic will be to explore how members within United States society utilize facial cues and features to make a decision as to the gender of an interactional partner.

When my thesis is complete, I intend to submit it to one or more of the following journals. To that end, I have collected information about these journals, such as:

-Impact Factor

-Submission Deadline

-Frequency

-Length Requirements

-Source for More Information

Here is a sampling of journals who I believe would be interested in my work:

American Sociological Review (IF: 3.762)

            -Submission Deadline: None

            -Frequency: Bi-monthly

            -Length Restrictions: max. 15,000 words, inclusive

            Source

-Gender & Society (IF: 1.387)

            -Submission Deadline: None

            -Frequency: Bi-monthly

            -Length Restrictions: max. 8,500 words, inclusive

            Source

American Journal of Sociology (IF: 2.808)

            -Submission Deadline: None

            -Frequency: Bi-monthly

            -Length Restrictions: max. 10,000 words, inclusive

            Source

Studies in Gender and Sexuality (IF: 0.200)

            -Submission Deadline: None

            -Frequency: Quarterly

            -Length Restrictions: 20-40 pages, apx. 1500 characters/page

            Source

Feminism & Psychology (IF: 0.514)

            -Submission Deadline: None

            -Frequency: Quarterly

            -Length Restrictions: max. 8,000 words, inclusive

            Source 1 - Source 2

Signs (IF: 0.920)

            -Submission Deadline: None

            -Frequency: Quarterly

            -Length Restrictions: max. 10,000, inclusive

            Source

UCF Undergraduate Research Journal (IF: n/a)

            -Submission Deadline: None

            -Frequency: Annually

            -Length Restrictions: 3,500 - 5,000 words

            Source

Letter of Introduction

Dear fellow Scholars,

Hello! My name is Joshua Simpkins, although I answer to Josh, Joshua, Scholar Simpkins, or any obscenity shouted in my direction. I am a Sociology major with a Women’s Studies minor. This is my forth year at UCF, my third year enrolled full time, and my second year in the Sociology program. I started out enrolled in a program called Interdisciplinary Studies: Nanotech and Nanoscience, then changed to Mechanical Engineering when that program was cut. Now, I’m probably the only Sociology major with credits in “Rocket Propulsion Dynamics”.

When I was shopping around for a field to leave engineering for, I became intensely curious about how gender and other stratifying categories (such as race and class) work to organize social life. Gender seemed to be the most relevant of all these categorization, because it informs social interaction and conceptualization of self at all levels of analysis in a way that other categorizations do not. I decided on sociology as my chosen field of study because the sociological research process is similar to the process I had become familiar with in the hard sciences and also because, if my plans to stay in research don’t work out, job prospects are ever-so-slightly higher for someone with a degree in sociology than someone with a degree in, say, English or philosophy.

Currently, I’m in the process of writing a literature review and research design for my Honors in the Major thesis, tentatively titled “The Role of Facial Appearance in Gender Attribution”. My primary goal with this research is to investigate member’s use of facial features and different areas of the face in the process of attributing gender to an interactional partner. Reviewing the literature for this paper has piqued my interest in Ethnomethodological theories of social interaction, specifically those about gender. Since I’ve been soaking my head in nothing but Ethnomethodological theory for the past 4 months, I’ll probably end up talking about it endlessly in classroom discussions and in these blog posts. So, get ready to get tired of that.

Up until very recently, I’ve been active with Feminist Agenda Radio and the group Men Against Rape @ UCF on campus, as well as with the local community of polyamory activists. However, at the request of my doctor, I have been scaling back my involvement in activism (and other high-stress environments). Although activism is important to me, the continued lack of holes in my stomach and esophagus is slightly more important.

Thank you for reading my introductory post! I look forward to the rest of the semester in this class.

Sincerely,

Joshua Simpkins

P.S. – I have read, understand, and agree to the terms of the course syllabus and the blogging protocols.