Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Paper topic

For my paper topic, I too was thinking about writing on "As Women Fight" I was going to approach it differently than Katy however. I was planning on discussing how the author takes traditional gender roles and uses them in her alternative world to make women an equally strong and important sex. Since most societies are historically patriarchal, I thought this story took a very interesting approach to womens roles. I was planning on using one or two pages from the book to emphasize this argument. I might also discuss how the choice of gender might impact this society, but I'm not sure where to go with that idea. Any suggestions are welcomed!

4 comments:

Bailey Carpenter said...

This actually sounds like it's going to be really cool! When I read the story, it really interested me the way the author made the female gender seem dominant and more desirable. I feel like with many "classic" (aka older, more traditional) works, the male is seen as dominant and, as a result, the preferred gender. I thought it was interesting how the author described women as having better senses, etc and how the main character was "male" but had an intense desire to be a woman and be his children's mother. Good luck!

Andy Duncan said...

Courtney, since you note that only "most societies" are traditionally patriarchal, maybe you should look into a society or two that's traditionally matriarchal -- to see whether Genge's imagined societies shares any traits with those.

Jordan said...

Like the Amazons!

Anonymous said...

In addition to the Amazons, I think the Dahomey warriors might be an interesting group to look at; they're a group of all women warriors in Africa who are much more modern and better documented than the Amazons.