Here is your first writing, documenting, composing, analyzing assignment:
MEDST 320W: Gender, Sexuality, and Media
Dr. Joy Fuqua
Spring 2014
Analytical Essay Assignment: Artifact, Photo, Story, & Theory
DUE: Tuesday March 4 via email (not an attachment).
This five-page paper asks that you document and compose your experience
of gender and sexuality in your everyday life. You'll be using photography, music, collage, words, etc. to make an analytical composition. Identify two artifacts (media,
news, advertisement, product, person, door, object, building, experience,
clothes, space, location, blog, song and music video, novel, poem, etc.) that
illuminate the ways that gender/sexuality is
enacted/embodied/constrained/constructed/performed/challenged in everyday life.
If each could tell a story of gender and
sexuality in your everyday life, what would that story be? You must take
two photographs (pairs of screen or frame grabs in the case of digital media)
of the object/artifact and explain its connection to at least two key,
theoretical course concepts from any of the required readings. Ideally, the
artifacts would represent different approaches or ideas to the topic. You must
answer these questions:
1. how do the artifacts illuminate those key concepts?
2. what are the implications of their ways of illuminating
these concepts?
3. do you think that these artifacts limit dominant ways of
thinking about gender and sexuality or do you think something else is going on?
Explain either mode.
We will discuss at least two papers in class and talk about
how you identified these artifacts and analyzed them in relation to the course.
If you have a doubt about whether or not material is appropriate for class,
please contact me beforehand. Also, as you document your chosen artifacts be
mindful of public space, personal privacy, and any situations that might place
you or your subject at risk. You may not present sexually inappropriate or
explicit material (i.e., pornography) in the paper. If you choose a song that
does have explicit lyrics, then that is acceptable but tell me beforehand.
