Gender 2000 Paper: Cultural Critique
For this paper you must find a work of mass media--whether it is art, literature,
journalism, advertising, or music--and critique it based on what you've learned in
class for the purpose of determining whether the work is feminist or not.
This paper should help you explore how society affects what you see (or how and why you interpret what you see) in a given work and how that work affects what society sees or understands about the subject and about gender. You might choose a movie, a poem or a series of poems, a short story, a novel, a television show or shows, television commercials, magazine articles, or print advertisements. To make this assignment more meaningful to you, you should choose the subject from part of your normal out-of-school-life; that way you can understand how the work affects you and/or your beliefs.
You should relate at least one theory or class concept to the work(s) and show whether the work is a good model for feminism. You will need to define feminism and probably should define and use bias, perspective, stereotyping, roles, etc. in this paper. You may focus on the portrayal of women, men, or men and women.
Your finished paper should be eight to ten pages long with one-inch margins using MLA documentation style. The Works Cited page is not inclusive of these pages. You should have at least three sources, at least one of which should relate directly to your primary source (the work you're critiquing). The textbook can be counted as one of these sources, and a scholarly source would be good, too.
The paper may be longer, of course, and/or include more sources. Time permitting, expect to make a brief presentation to class, during the last week of class, about what topic you chose for your paper as well as about whether you found it to be an example of feminism and why. This is due before the final exam.
Special option for Spring 2008: If you read and write on C. L. Wilson's Lord of the Fading Lands or Lady of Light and Shadows, you may work in a small group.