From ASIAN International student’s persepective 

Topic How Media Affects, Constructs, Deconstructs My Identity

 

 

Questions/Ideas your paper might explore:

 

What does my favorite television show potentially teach me about race, class and gender? How do these teachings affect my own identity? How do I find the representation on this show empowering to my identity in some way?

Or conversely, how does a show produce what Stuart Hall considers a gap between my lived reality and the representation of a dominant stereotype in normalized culture? How does this gap affect my own sense of identity?

How does Instagram affect the way I perceive myself in terms of a specific aspect of my identity?

What were the messages I received in my favorite childhood book and/or movie? How might they have affected my identity as I grew up?

What is the role of violence in the films I watch or in the video games I play? How might this be affecting me?

How would I define the type of power exhibited and sought after in the video games I play? How does this sense of power represent power in the culture/s I navigate on a daily basis? How do I see myself affected by this sense of power?

What is the impact of the sexualization of women in the Marvel movies on my own gender identity?

How does my love of science-fiction books affect my view of reality?

How did a certain tv show or movies trope of the queer best friend that marginalizes queer identity rather than centring it affect me growing up?

What has watching Shonda Rhimes shows taught me about race, class and/or gender?

The topics are as endless as your media interests and identities are. 

If in doubt, please email me your topic.

 

Further guidelines for this assignment

The point of this assignment is to gain critical, i.e. objective, insight into your subjective experience. It is not an opportunity to write an opinion piece or to provide cathartic outpour, but an exercise in using your own experience as the topic of research for critical and creative inquiry.  It is closer to the genre of autoethnograpy, a field of research and writing popular in the social sciences, that we will read an example of. Please note- you are not expected to write about anything too personal or too sensitive in this assignment. Choose a topic that feels safe, interesting and important to you as it relates to the topics and readings discussed in class. We will discuss the guidelines of the essay in more detail in class.

You are being evaluated on your ability to critically engage your topic and develop your thesis- as you are evaluated in all critical writing assignments. The only difference is you will be writing in the first person and bringing your own experiences into the essays argument, something that might be new to many of you.

Include at least 7 outside-of-class Scholarly Sources. Please, when possible, cite an actual text rather than citing my lectures. Most often when students cite their professors, they cite their professors discussing texts, in which case, you should cite the text itself or your research of the text/article/video/concept itself.