Assignment task:
Course Descriptions:
Should sex work be legalized? Is pornography sexist? How is gender and sexuality portrayed in popular culture? If you are interested in the ways we live as gendered beings in society, you have come to the right place!
In this course, we will take an interdisciplinary perspective to examine the social and cultural construction of gender. We will think about how ideas about masculinity and femininity shape current issues, knowledge, popular culture, and social policy. We will consider the intersections of gender with race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality, and debate the history and future of feminist activism.
Educational Goals:
- To develop an understanding of and be able to evaluate some of the major intellectual theories and scholarship relevant to the field of gender and sexuality;
- To engage in critical debates from a range of theoretical perspectives;
- To be able to identify and evaluate culturally and historically specific constructions of genders and sexualities;
- To be able to effectively communicate in written and oral formats;
- To engage in and develop research skills at an appropriate level;
- To learn to evaluate how gender intersects with categories of race, ethnicity, class, gender identity, sexuality, and/or dis/ability;
- To gather evidence to support a research question
- To formulate a supported position based on assessment of scholarly research.
Based on the course description and goals above please answer the following 2 questions below
In the second part of this term, we have been thinking about how popular culture reinforces patriarchal and heteronormative ideas. Yet, there is also the argument that we are not passively accepting these ideas (e.g. Barbie's re-appropriation by drag queens, the young female readers who love but also criticise Twilight, the fans who are critical of celebrity feminism, women who do enjoy porn, and so on).
1. Do we passively accept patriarchal and heteronormative ideas from popular culture, or do we actively resist them? In other words, how much agency do we have in our relationship with media representations? (Write 300 words)
2. What personal experiences can you draw on to illustrate your position to the question above?
To give you an example, I teach an upper division course called Queer Fandoms where many of my students write queer fan fiction as a way to reject the assumption that fictional characters must be heterosexual by default. What are some of your own experiences that you can use to discuss our active/passiveness as media consumers? (Write 300 words)