Assignment 1.3 In the previous assignments, you were asked to reflect on your personal experience with gender and the experience of a character in a novel. For this assignment, I’d like you to turn the critical lens on contemporary popular culture: use our essays on music, Kristen Stewart, Beyonce, Caitlynn Jenner, and rape culture as models. I would like you to focus on some aspect of popular culture (be it a TV show, a celebrity, a song, a book or series of books, a movie, or a political struggle/debate) and analyze the problematic concerns of gender that it raises. You should be identifying questions about gender roles that the topic raises and answering those questions with thoughtful analysis as to the effects this has upon men and women. Your analysis of this aspect of popular culture should allow you to enter into a broader conversation about the topic of gender. The final draft of this essay must be
