In this section of the course, we have focused on the social and cultural aspects of modernity, specifically how they intersect with gender and migration. In this 5-7 page essay, you are asked to explore how modernity or modernities are gendered. There are several questions that you could consider:

(1) How are the societal changes in work and residence (or the cultural changes in subjectivity) associated with modernity experienced differently by men and women?

(2) How do the societal changes in work and residence (or the cultural changes in subjectivity) associated with modernity shape conceptions and experiences of gender?

(3) How does modernity shape gendered desires, and vice-versa?

(4) What are alternative modernities, and how does the analytical lens of gender allow us to understand them?

(5) What are the connections between modernity and mobility/migration? How are these affected by or transforming of gender relations and conceptions?

As with the first 5-7 page essay, you should explore one of these questions by critically examining how two authors whom we have read (choose from Gaonkar, Brenner, Nguyen Huy Thiep, Rofel, Mills, Ong, and Constable) address (or would address) it. If the authors whom you select offer opposing arguments, explore the nature of the disagreement to explain which argument you find convincing and why. If their arguments seem similar, do you agree? Is there an aspect of the issue which they have neglected? Pay particular attention to such issues as definitions, analytical frameworks, underlying assumptions, and evidence -- these will help you to critique each author's approach, enable comparison between the two, and help you to develop a thesis statement which explains how your critical analysis of the two authors points to a better way of answering the question.

Since this is a short essay, you should choose two authors who can easily be placed in dialogue with each other. Use this dialogue to formulate your own argument in answer to the question and be sure to include a clear, interesting thesis statement in your opening paragraph. While your essay should focus primarily on two authors, feel free to refer to other relevant readings. In particular, you may find it helpful to draw on the theoretical works that we read during Week 2 (Hannerz, Appadurai, Freeman, Said, Bhabha, and Chakrabarty) or to use one of the shorter pieces from the past few weeks to provide additional theoretical context.

TEXT REFERENCES
These (including references to personal communications) are placed in the body of the text, not as notes. For each quotation or statement specific enough to need a reference, place the citation in parentheses (author's name, year of publication of work quoted or referred to, page(s) cited), thus: (Doe 1968) or (Rowe 1893:115-119).

NOTES
All notes follow the text as endnotes, beginning on a new page, and are restricted to material that cannot be included in the text. Notes are numbered consecutively throughout the text by superscript numerals.

REFERENCES CITED
Do not include any publication not cited in the text. References Cited must begin on a new page, and all entries must be double-spaced, listed alphabetically by last name of senior author, and chronologically for two or more titles by the same author(s). The typed layout should conform to the printed layout as follows:

Driver, Harold E.

1956 An Integration of Functional, Evolutionary, and Historical Theory by Means of Correlations. Bloomington: Indiana University Publication in Anthropology and Linguistics, Memoir 12.

1966 Geographical-Historical versus Psycho-Functional Explanations of Kin Avoidances. Current Anthropology 7:131-182.

Miller, George A.

1954 Psycholinguistics. In Handbook of Social Psychology II. Gardner Lindey, ed. Pp. 693-708. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Thibault, John W., and Harold H. Kelley

1959 The Social Psychology of Groups. New York: John Wiley.

 

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