Males & Females: Insights from Literature, Biology, and Film
The focus of this class was to look into how males and females differ biologically and socially, utilizing different frameworks to look at their characteristics and roles. There was less of a focus on simply obtaining facts from readings, movies and lectures and a greater emphasis on personal inferences and reflections on our own perceptions of reality based on the new information we were learning. We addressed the various gender stereotypes that are common within our own society and others around the world. This led to discussions about whether many characteristics that we tend to associate with one gender or the other are based in biological realities or are socially ingrained. We also focused a lot on how regardless of why men and women have these various characteristics, the greatly affect communication, and interactions between the sexes. I found these discussions and readings to be the most interesting part of the course as I saw a lot of basis in reality in the readings we were assigned. This class provided interesting and valuable insight and it supported or explained many of my own personal experiences.
Final Reflection Paper: We were asked as our final project to reflect on and discuss what we learned while taking this course. I chose to focus on how the course helped shed light on some personal experiences. I have attached a copy of my final paper below.
Sex on Television Presentation: As a component of the class we were asked to choose partners and a topic from a provided list that focused on gender stereotypes and interactions. We then completed a research project and gave a presentation to the class teaching a lecture about our individual chosen topics. The topic my partner and I researched was the history of the portrayal of sex on television and I have attached our presentation below.