Sociology 428: Readings

Books:

Susan J. Douglas, and Meredith W. Michaels, The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women. New York: Free Press. 2004. (a media scholar's analysis of changes that attacked mother's employment: the source of most of our specific hypotheeses about trends in the popular media.)

Articles and Papers:

Three articles on gender trends:

• Paula England, 2010. "The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled." Gender & Society 24(2): 149-166.
• David A. Cotter, Joan M. Hermsen, and Reeve Vanneman. Gender Inequality at Work. New York: Russell Sage Press. 2004.
  (an overview of gender inequality trends in the last 30 years with emphasis on the lack of change since the mid 1990s.)
• Cotter, David A., Joan M. Hermsen, and Reeve Vanneman. 2011. "The End of the Gender Revolution? Attitudes from 1974 to 2006." American Journal of Sociology, 117(1) 259-289. May 2011.

Three examples of systematic content analyses on other subjects:

• McAdam, Doug. 1983. "Tactical innovation and the pace of insurgency." American Sociological Review 48(6): 735-754.
• Pescosolido, Bernice A., Elizabeth Grauerholz, and Melissa A. Milkie. 1997. "Culture and Conflict: The Portrayal of Blacks in U.S. Children's Picture Books Through the Mid- and Late-Twentieth Century." American Sociological Review 62(3): 443-464.
• Melissa Milkie, Robin W. Simon, and Brian Powell. 1997. "Through the Eyes of Children: Youths' Perceptions and Evaluations of Maternal and Paternal Roles." Social Psychology Quarterly 60(3): 218-237.

Two examples of content analyses on gender:

• Arielle Kuperberg and Pamela Stone. 2008. "The media depiction of women who opt out." Gender & Society 22(4): 497-517.
• McCabe, Janice, Emily Fairchild, Liz Grauerholz, Bernice A. Pescosolido, and Daniel Tope. 2011. "Gender in Twentieth‐Century Childrenâs Books: Patterns of Disparity in Titles and Central Characters." Gender & Society 25(2): 197‐226.

For specific assignments from these readings, see the schedule