Marial's Final Paper
I chose to write on prompt one, which asks if we still need to study women? Gender? Politics? with regards to media making and analysis. I took a very supportive stance on this subject, because after this semester I realized the importantance of analyzing women in the media. My thesis covered the ideas of people being uneducated about women's studies and the slim number of educated people supporting women's issues. I took a look at women in the media today, even though they are more present than 50 years ago I looked at what is still needing and lacking attention. I used our class on reality televsion, which shows many of the problems that women are still facing in the media. I also brought up the combining and expansion of women's studies with other programs such as gender and sexuality studies. Even though, there is the possibility of this taking focus away from women's studies I showed that it will actually open many opportunities and aid the women's movement.
I used many readings from class like: the newspaper aritcle from the Women's Press "Is Women's Studies Still Relevant", Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", and Mollie Gregory's "Women Who Run the Show". I also used many websites like our very own Unversity of Minnesota Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies site and the National Organization for Women's site. From all these sources I found tons of information that backed up my thesis.