Playing with Categories

Day 4

I. Jen first re: Thorne/Lesnick

II. so interesting to co-teach w/ a different woman/generation/discipine
what I flagged in Thorne:
p. 187: "gender-based asymmetries in access to education in the 'STEM' fields"

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!

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):

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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