gender

Between Journalism and Sociology

/ Michelle Janning / Leave a comment

I spend more time than the average bear pondering the relationship between stories and data. Between the reporting of timely events and the time-taking required to report research findings that capture large patterns and trends. Between protecting the integrity of a news story by sharing identities of those involved and protecting the confidentiality of those who offer their voices to sociological research with no names attached. I’m so enthralled with this issue that I’ve edited a book (coming out this winter) on what news stories about parenting seem to captivate audiences and what new research we ought to be reading to make sure we know how parenting is actually happening in our society.

I am teaching a course this fall that I haven’t taught in awhile — Gender and Society. It’s a course that examines how men’s and women’s experiences may differ in society, along with explanations why these differences come about and how these differences may translate to inequality. This semester my 33 students and I are also investigating how there are a lot of differences within gender categories based on race, class, bodily ability, sexuality, age, and geography. And, as is fitting, we actually succeed at accurately throwing around the term “intersectionality.”

As I prepared this summer for the course by finding readings to share with students, I kept a running list of news stories about anything related to gender and society, with a particular eye toward global stories. The list grew to dozens and dozens of stories. I was overwhelmed with the prospect of choosing news stories to include in my syllabus because the news was always changing, because there were too many stories, and, well, because I wasn’t sure the stories offered enough sociological sophistication to ensure student understanding of the larger patterns that scaffold the individual stories.

To remedy the feeling of being overwhelmed, I determined that a curated and representative list of news stories along with a writing assignment for students to digest them and connect them to course readings that were squarely situated in academic sociological research and theory would be the best path. But I wasn’t satisfied with just that. I also decided to include the essay by sociologist Herbert Gans on the comparisons between sociology and journalism as part of the assignment. The students, then, chose an article, summarized it, researched the background of the article’s writer, noted whether any academic research was cited or applied in the article, connected the stories to course concepts, and summarized key points by Gans about how journalism and sociology differ (different urgency, different use of stories, different amount of time taken, different likelihood to point out individual stories versus patterns, different funding, different networks of social actors, and different audiences). But the best part was that the students were asked to analyze how the journalistic story may already be doing good sociology (and how they knew this), and/or how sociology may be more useful in terms of adding to stories introduced by journalists. In order to do this, the students had to understand how both disciplines operate, which by itself is an important sociological undertaking.

I’ve taught a lot of students and a lot of classes with a myriad of different writing assignments. While I’ve incorporated plenty of assignments that include news stories in past courses, I’ve never assigned this particular paper assignment before. As I read these student papers, I found myself wanting to keep reading them and digesting how they see the utility of better collaboration between journalists and sociologists. I can identify (the very few) places where students still have trouble figuring out that difference, and figuring out that evidence for claims may look different in different types of writing. And that different types of writing stem from different networks, funding sources, values, and goals of different occupational sectors. This is, in no uncertain terms, the most intriguing set of student papers I’ve read.

As I continue to think about the role that journalists and sociologists play in the communication of information in our world (including information communicated by them collaboratively), I recognize that this is not a new topic of inquiry. A recent conversation with my father-in-law, who was getting his PhD in sociology in the mid-1970s, revealed that sociologists were talking about connections between academics and journalists then, too, especially as these connections pertained to the notion of truth-telling in a highly volatile political climate. Sounds familiar.

I think there’s something new going on with the blurring of lines between what counts as “news” and what counts as “research” (and what counts as both, evidenced by social media posts that contain the phrase “According to science…”). It seems especially wise to help students learn where these lines come from, what impact the lines have, and how seemingly disparate groups may be well served to work together to cross the important line of reality versus fiction. The relationship between sociology and journalism is not a new relationship to think about; the pedagogical goal of ensuring students understand why this relationship matters is more important than ever.

Between Monty Python and Hello Kitty

/ Michelle Janning / Leave a comment

This and dozens of other essays are compiled in the book Between: Living Live in Neither Extreme. Check it out!

I have always looked up to my older brothers, and not just because they are taller than I am. But I do believe that as a little sister, my interests have taken turns either because I wanted to be just like them, or because I wanted to be exactly opposite of them. Or somewhere between. Baby of the family and only girl? Fun times.

There was a time, for instance, when I thought that I ought to take up stamp or coin collecting, because that’s what my brothers were doing. So, in an effort to follow in their footsteps but spin it to match my interests, I collected stickers instead. And I did this despite, and perhaps because of, the fact that they told me collecting stickers was not an economically sensible hobby since none of my collection would ever increase in value (like stamps or coins). Plus, I figured, I didn’t need special tweezers or velvet pouches to handle my collection. Just good decision-making and aesthetic skills about whether and where to actually stick the stickers.

Now, any of you who still have your books of Scotty dogs and teddy bears and Lisa Frank rainbows and Hello Kitty characters stuck forever onto cherished pages of pastel sticker albums from 1981 will attest to the fact that value is in the eye of the beholder. In fact, if it were the case that someone existed out there who’d pay top dollar for my Hello Kitty sticker album, I would worry a bit about whether I should give them my contact information for an eBay exchange. I wasn’t in it for the money.

Given the title of this post, you may wonder now what stamp or sticker collecting has to do with Monty Python. I say it has everything to do with it because the identity of a girl with lots of boys in her family who dictate the definition of “cool” or “valuable” is often most vividly enacted in scenarios with lots of popular culture references. And at any dinner table that I sat at in the late seventies and early eighties, what was cool was Monty Python.

In between Roger Whitaker songs while spooning down our Spam noodle hotdish, we five Jannings would converse often about what made us laugh. This inevitably would lead my brothers into a seventeen-minute collection of monologues and dialogues from any number of Monty Python sketches. They were teenagers. I was a preteen. My parents rolled on the floor laughing. I did my best to mimic their renditions of “Dr. Johann Von Gumbelputty” and “nudge nudge wink wink” and “number four, the larch” and any number of silly walks. This was hard because a) one of my brothers looks like John Cleese, and b) I’m a girl.

But wait, you say, what does being a girl have to do with it?

Monty Python is funny. But humor is socially constructed. Where were the funny girls in Monty Python? Only in the cross-dressing boys. Was it that it wasn’t funny to me? Absolutely not. I rolled on the floor laughing, too. Neal and I still laugh hysterically when we read aloud from his boyhood collection of the full scripts of every episode of Monty Python, ever (yes, these exist. Yes, he has them. Yes, he will try this weekend to get Eric Idle’s autograph since he is our college’s Commencement speaker). I’m particularly good at the sketches that require a German accent.

But I lament the fact that, during all of my childhood, I was an outsider to the cool boy world of British sketch comedy. I tried. But my voice was too high, even though I do a pretty good British accent. And, of course, it was easier for the boys to be funny. Much has happened since then, most of which I attribute to Absolutely Fabulous in the UK, and Carol Burnett and Tina Fey here. And much continues to render the visibility of funny girls more and more pronounced.

But still.

It’s fun to watch silly walks. But it’s hard to do a silly walk in high heels.