2015年4月27日星期一

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.

1 条评论:

  1. Why Lynett'es point of view?
    I would suggest focus on Lynette's role, using your own POV as a researcher. How does Lynette challenge/reinforce traditional gender roles? And how does this effect her friendships with other women? Which relationships are strengthened? Which ones are weakened?

    Looks like there is not a lot of incorporation of "Sex and the City" here. Which is fine. I think it is a good choice to remove foci that are distracting or not useful. A good choice.

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