Language and Gender Syllabi

The Council on the Status of Women in Linguistics (COSWL)
Linguistic Society of America


New! Update: 26 new syllabi collected since 1993 by Scott Kiesling

The following collection consists of a wide variety of course syllabi for courses on language and gender taught in an array of departments (linguistics, anthropology, folklore, English, education, French, German). Special features of the collection include:

This collection is intended to provide a resource for anyone interested in the teaching of language and gender courses. This, of course, includes instructors who may be organizing a course on language and gender for the first time, as well as instructors looking to update and modify their own syllabi.

The syllabi here display a number of imaginative approaches to the teaching of a single topic. They also display a considerable commitment to thoughtful pedagogy, to designing syllabi and exercises to stimulate students, and to assembling materials that will allow students to undertake a wide range of relevant projects. It is unfortunately the practice in much of the academy to borrow pedagogical ideas such as these without acknowledgement, though they require thought as intensive as any research project. We hope you will consider citing the sources of your pedagogical ideas on your own adaptations of these syllabi as one way to accord teaching and thought about teaching the attention and rewards it does not always receive.

This project was coordinated and edited by Elizabeth Hume (Ohio State University, Department of Linguistics) and Bonnie McElhinny (Stanford University, Department of Linguistics). We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of a number of people without whose help this project could not have been realized. In particular, we'd like to thank Christina McDougall for her help in compiling the syllabi. In addition, we thank Chris Barker, Helen Dry, Bob Kasper, and John Lawler for technical advice and assistance. We are also grateful to COSWL members, Dawn Bates, Vicky Bergvall, Janet Bing, Alice Freed, Sally McConnell-Ginet, Lynne Murphy, and Craige Roberts, for invaluable comments and suggestions. We also acknowledge the Departments of Linguistics at the Ohio State University and Stanford University, and, in particular, Brian Joseph, for support given to this project. Finally, we thank all those who contributed syllabi to this project.

Hardcopies of this collection can be obtained by sending a check for $20.00 (includes postage and handling) made out to "Linguistic Society of America" to:

COSWL Language and Gender Syllabus Project
Linguistic Society of America
1325 18th Street, NW Suite 211
Washington, DC 20036

  -- Elizabeth Hume and Bonnie McElhinny, 1993

Submissions appear in alphabetical order according to the contributor's name, as follows.
  1. Niko Besnier, Yale University (12,227 bytes)
  2. Janet Bing, Old Dominion University (15,482 bytes)
  3. Sue Blackwell, The University of Birmingham (14,078 bytes)
  4. Rebecca Burns-Hoffman, University of Miami(6676 bytes)
  5. Penny Eckert, Institute for Research on Learning, and
    Sally McConnell-Ginet, Cornell University (13,979 bytes)
  6. Susanne Fleischman, UC Berkeley (52,286 bytes)
  7. Alice Freed, Montclair State College (3835 bytes)
  8. Rebecca D. Freeman, University of Pennsylvania (4785 bytes)
  9. Barbara Fox, University of Colorado (20,941 bytes)
  10. Randy Allen Harris, University of Waterloo (1891 bytes)
  11. Shirley Brice Heath, Bonnie McElhinny, Stanford University (55,699 bytes)
  12. Elizabeth Hume, The Ohio State University (7,457 bytes)
  13. Mary Jane Hurst, Texas Tech University (22,260 bytes)
  14. Mimi Klaiman, University of Indiana (8035 bytes)
  15. Kerstin Lange, Binghamton University (29,664 bytes)
  16. Joseph L. Malone, Columbia University (1425 bytes)
  17. Sally McConnell-Ginet, Cornell University (29,132 bytes)
  18. Bonnie McElhinny, Stanford University (28,747 bytes)
  19. Rae Moses, Northwestern University (10,510 bytes)
  20. Mary Parlee and Ana Celia Zentella (9060 bytes)
  21. Craige Roberts, The Ohio State University (9851 bytes)
  22. Bambi Schieffelin, New York University (7990 bytes)
  23. Ron Southerland, The University of Calgary (7860 bytes)
  24. Deborah Tannen, Georgetown University (9361 bytes)
  25. Lenora A. Timm, UC Davis (135,848 bytes)
  26. Ruth Wodak, Vienna University (11,843 bytes)

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