Final Term Paper

Due: 12/8/2011

20% of final grade, 15% Paper and 5% Discussion Leading

Your final term paper is to write about what Twilight means within the context of girls’ leadership. Your analysis should take a cultural critic lens, or in some ways new historical approach, to thinking about girls’ leadership. That is, you project is to determine how the discourses concerning girls leadership in the twenty-first century make their way into Twilight franchise. Think back to the  early girls’ studies articles we read and see how they are able to create a theory for girls studies out of girl culture artifacts and representations (see Kearney, Pomerantz, Driscoll, Gonick) and then, using this method draw out the connections between popular culture and girls’ leadership.

What is popular culture analysis anyways?

         Popular Culture analysis can take several forms (audience analysis, textual analysis, content analysis) and deals with many types of media (films, music, advertisements, art, television shows, comic books).

         Despite working with different popular culture media and using differing methodology, the purpose of popular culture analysis is to explore the ways that well-known and recognizable trends reflect and/or resist the cultural ideologies present at any given historical moment.

         Popular culture analysis may look at how gender or class operates within advertising, how queer identity is constructed within a tv series, or how certain musicians deals with issues of politics. However, if you want some additional resources check out: http://culturalpolitics.net/popular_culture/ and explore some of the articles and reviews found in their database.

Assignment Description:

         You are to choose an aspect of the Twilight series (the text we read in class, books in the film series, fan fiction/sites/blogs, the graphic novels, Twilight films, Etc.) and analyze (content-analysis, textual analysis, or audience analysis) the ways that this particular cultural artifact ties to the discourses of girls’ leadership and what this representation implies about how girl’s leadership is defined within culture, including what this might mean for how we work with girls, study girls, and do “girls’ leadership.”

         Make sure to frame your analysis within the context of leadership theory and girl’s studies as we have discussed it. Beyond leadership theory, make sure to also include at least two other critical sources (this can include newspaper/magazine/blog articles, scholarly journals, books, and interviews but BE CAREFUL).

         The final product should include a) a five-page paper (double-spaced and typed in 12-point font, MLA) that argues a claim about girls leadership and Twilight.