Search Term and Research Plan

Search Terms:

1.     “Desperate housewives” and gender

2.     “Desperate housewives” and feminism

3.     “Desperate housewives” and wives

4.     “Desperate housewives” and women

5.     television and women

6.     television and housewives

7.     television and wives

8.     gender and work

9.     gender and family

10.  woman and work

11.  woman and family and US

Research Plan

The purpose of this literary study will be to explore how Lynette in Desperate Housewives perceives women’s role in family and work and how does that contribute to a better understanding of this television show and the social changes in women’s role. In the paper, I will analyze Lynette’s role in family and work and its relationship with the actual social perceptions and changes of female roles in both family and workplace.

The contextual information I need is about how women’s role in family and work changed in the United States within the recent decades, what are other television programs that mentioned female role and how did they perceive, and how other academic articles say about my research topic. There are abundant literatures that have been written about the gender issues in the Desperate Housewives. In one of the articles, the author thinks that this television show is closely related to contemporary social conventions about female roles (Hill). In the main part of the paper, I will mainly focus on Lynette and analyze this role using the first four seasons, and I will answer the question that how the role of Lynette represents the whole TV program and how is this role similar and different from the mainstream opinions in this field. Then, I will support my arguments by examples from other scholarly articles and original episodes from the Desperate Housewives.

The methods I acquire to write this research paper are qualitative methods including referring to other scholarly sources and textual analysis of The Desperate Housewives. The databases I would like to use to collect information are MLA International Bibliography, Academic Search Premier in EBSCO, JSTOR and ProQuest: Literature and Language.

Purpose statement

The purpose of this literary study will be to explore how Desperate Housewives perceive female friendships comparing to Sex and The City.

Central Question:

·      What does Desperate Housewives say about friendship?

·      How is the female friendship in Desperate Housewives similar to and different from Sex and The City?

·      How will the analysis of female friendship lead to a better understanding of Desperate Housewives?

Sub-questions

·      What is the pattern of female friendship in Desperate Housewives?

·      What are the examples of female friendship in Desperate Housewives?

·      What are the examples of female friendship in Sex and The City? 

·      What happened to the female friendship over time?  

Analysis of Short Film Me and You-Group work

Group Members: Qian Yiwei, Xu Qiqi, Xu Mengyuan, Ye Deyi
Me and You:

Summary:

A man is tiding up his bedroom, waiting for his girlfriend’s arrival. He throws away empty beer can, and hides pornographic magazines. At first, the atmosphere in this room is happy. He and his girlfriend live a sweet life. They watch TV, play video games, and have fun in the room together, then make love. They take photos and decorate the room with these photos. However, with time going by, they notice each other’s shortcomings. The roof leaks, and the atmosphere in this room becomes cool. They do their own things in this room, paying no attention to each other. Conflict eventually comes up. They quarrel for the bills. Then the man’s girlfriend leaves the man. He lies in the bed alone day after day. Finally, the man gets up, cleans his room, takes down those photos, changes the sheet, and finds out the pornographic magazines again. A new life is waiting for him.

Elements in the film:

The mess of the bedroom：It a changing of the bedroom. The man cleans up the bedroom. When the man dates with the woman, the room is more and more messy.

Bed: At the beginning of the story, the man makes up the bed. The bed is never cleaned up during their courtship. After they break up, the man cleans his bed. 

A little blue doll: it shows up three times and the man reacts differently. First, it shows up when they are in sweet courtship. The man laughs happily when the blue doll makes a sound. Second, it shows up when the man quarrels with his girlfriend. The man throws the little doll out of the window. Third, the doll is thrown into the bedroom by someone. The man holds the little doll for a moment and puts it into sundries box.

Porno magazine: At the beginning of the story, the man hides the porno magazine. In contrast, the man takes out the porno magazine in his beside table.

Analyze one element:

The bed: it is the main subject in the film, which is always in the center of the frame. It symbolizes the relationship between the man and the woman.

·      In the very beginning, the man makes up his bed and makes it look clean and tidy, which indicates that the man is anticipating a relationship. Then, he and the woman watch movies and make love on the bed.

·      The man and the woman have great fun on bed. After they become lovers, the woman dances on the bed, they play video games on the bed, and they eat on the bed while watching movies. These activities on bed indicate that they are very much in love with each other.

·      After a period of time, their bed is becoming increasingly disordered and they do not clean the messy clothes and stuff on the bed. Later, they throw things on bed when they fight with each other. The above suggests that they begin to feel tired of the relationship and find conflicts between them.

·      When the woman left, the man just lied on the bed but did not cleaned it up. It seems that this man was looking forward to woman's coming back.

·      In the end, the bed is cleaned up again, like what the bed looked like at the beginning. It indicates the end of the relationship and this man did not dream that the woman could come back. The cycle starts anew. This man may wait for his next love, like what he did at the beginning.

Research question (text and element) and three examples of element

Research question: What does Desperate Housewives say about Generation X woman (women who born between the early 1960s and the late 1970s)? Text: Desperate Housewives  Element: Generation X woman

Three examples:
1. Sex lives of women in their thirties: sex lives of Bree, Susan, Gaby, Lynette and Edie
2. Women give birth to children in their thirties: Gaby is unwilling to have a children and experiences abortion; Susan is pregnant in Season 4.
3. Balance between career and family: Gaby leaves her profession as a model and gets married; Lynette struggles between family and her desire for work; Bree as a full-time housewife.

Call For Paper - 5 subjects

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Education / The Education Project 
Summary: This project literally seeks for any ideas concerning education.
Subject 1: English Level of Students in WKU
Elements: International education, technology, teaching methods
Subject 2: Role of Teacher
Elements: moral belief, major-concerned knowledge, individual life

English Language Conference
Summary: Literature, Rhetoric & Composition, TESL, Creative Writing and Education. This year's theme is “Bridging: Past & Present."
Subject 3: Foreign Language Teaching
Elements: simulation Project, teaching methods, learning process
Subject 4: English teaching in China
Elements: past and present teaching methods, social test system, teaching evaluation

International Conference on Language, Literature, and Culture
Summary: It seeks for theoretical and analytical writing that focuses on the aspects of English language and literature in any or all possible contexts, employing interdisciplinary approach to address / approach the research problems with methods of and insights borrowed from multiple disciplines.
Subject 5: Desperate Housewife
Elements: female roles in house and career, desperation, American family

Final Draft and first draft of Analysis paper - Analysis of Potato in Dearth

https://docs.google.com/a/kean.edu/document/d/1ws_zEeT--UolLNmaLC19LNQwtSwD6XAUmMNwRRq8oLQ/edit?usp=sharing