OVERVIEW:
According to contemporary scholars, gender should be considered a social problem worthy of sociological exploration and research (Connell 1983). Indeed, gender is regularly at the heart of many current social issues ranging from health, sports, and advertising, to politics, popular culture, and sex. Often these issues are presented in ways that make gender either highly visible or completely invisible, even though we know that gender structures almost every aspect of our behavior and institutions. In this easy, you will synthesize course content from two different weeks in order to conduct an analysis of a current social issue and explain its relation to gender.
DETAILS:
1. Select TWO different weeks from the second half of the course that you feel fit together well and that you would like to think about and analyze. Regardless of the weeks you choose, your analysis must be framed through the lens of gender. For example, if you are interested in beauty and sexuality, your analysis should then focus on “Gender, Beauty, and Sexuality.” If you are interested in sports and the body, then your analysis should concentrate on “Gender, Sports, and the Body.”
2. After deciding on two topics, locate a current event/news story that illustrates both aspects of what you will be analyzing. For example, if you are interested in “Gender, Sexuality, and Politics,” then a news story about a well-known political sex scandal would work well as a focus for your analysis.
Your essay must put forth an argument—something you assert in the essay and then illustrate using course concepts, readings, and your current event/news story. Your essay should aim to make connections between the readings and concepts from the two weeks (i.e., synthesis), and as always, you must provide a full and complete explanation of the concepts you introduce in the essay. Full and complete explanations utilize all of the resources at your disposal and illustrate a mastery of the course content, lectures, and readings. Once finished, your essay should have provided a sociological analysis of the current event/news story that helps readers make sense of the phenomenon more clearly. In other words, your task is to explain the event using the analytical tools gained in the course, while also showcasing your knowledge of relevant concepts and readings.
CITATIONS:
You must cite a minimum of three course readings in your paper, and one supplemental reading. I will post a variety of supplemental readings on the MyRipon portal that you may use. If you want to use a reading outside of course texts or those I post online, it must be approved by me ahead of time (that is, before I grade your paper and see a reading I did not approve). The supplemental readings I post will cover a range of topics and concepts introduced in lecture, and 2 will give you more resources for writing your papers. Better papers usually cite more than the four minimum sources, as they are typically synthesizing additional course information. You should cite lecture notes when a reading is not available for the concept you are trying to support/explain. However, lecture notes do not count toward your four citation minimum. The citation style should be ASA (American Sociological Association), and a link to the ASA Style.