• Introduction

• Content of the Learning Community

• Structure of the Learning Community

• Rationale for the Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Model

• Compatibility of Teaching and Learning Needs

• Recruitment and Selection of the Teaching Assistants

• Preparation of the Teaching Assistants

• Roles and Conflicts

• The Teaching Team

• Evaluating the Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Model

• The Experiences of the Teaching Assistants

• The Pedagogic Value of the Model

• Printable Text of Article

© Copyright 2000 by Kimberly Eby (keby1@gmu.edu) and Paula Gilbert (pgilbert@gmu.edu). The right to make additional exact copies, including this notice, for personal and classroom use, is hereby granted. All other forms of distribution and copying require permission of the author.

Violence and Gender is a 300-level learning community currently taught by a humanist (French/Francophone literature, cultural studies, the arts) and a community psychologist. It carries eight academic credits (with two in service learning, requiring ninety service hours), with equivalencies given in Women's Studies, English Literature, Communication, the Institute of the Arts, Study of the Americas, and New Century College (for service learning).

Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the learning community, we present students with a variety of texts to facilitate learning. We use many primary texts and have put together a lengthy reader, consisting of essays and articles from psychology, sociology, criminology, biology, history, and political science. In addition, we use representation (fiction, poetry, film, and the visual arts) because we have found that it is a particularly effective means of stimulating discussion and analysis. The controversial and sensitive nature of a learning community on violence and gender raises difficult choices about the inclusion or exclusion of specific areas of study. We have included the following broad themes, with numerous sub-topics within each: conceptualizing violence (theories of violence); social construction of gender; youth culture (gangs and school violence); the control of women's bodies (female genital mutilation, abortion, and forced sterilization); family violence and sexual assault (domestic and child abuse, date rape, and male on male rape); violence and sports; media representations of violence (media representation of serial killers, the Montreal Massacre, and images in MTV); censorship issues; and reconstruction, activism, and solutions for the future. 

Other structured assignments provide students with the opportunity to learn about related topics, such as violence against self; institutional violence; pornography and First Amendment rights; offender punishment and rehabilitation; adult popular culture; extremist groups; politics, war, and nationalism; and cultural, ethnic, and racial violence.

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