Literary Analysis
Write a literary analysis with researched information that thoroughly investigates and responds to the following prompt:
Conduct a feminist analysis of "A Jury of Her Peers." In your analysis, you should discuss significant symbols from the short story that support your claims. You should also explain why the short story is still relevant to modern-day readers.
For help with using a feminist critical perspective to analyze literature, check out the Purdue OWL website: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/literary_theory_and_schools_of_criticism/feminist_criticism.html.
Some key questions you can ask yourself generate ideas on this topic:
How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles)?
How are male and female roles defined?
What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
How do characters embody these traits?
Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change others’ reactions to them?
What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy?
What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
What does the work say about women's creativity?
What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operation of patriarchy?
What role does the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary tradition?
Sample Solution
The relationship between men and women is often portrayed as one of inequality. Men are typically seen as being in a position of power while women are depicted as submissive, dependent, or inferior. There may be exceptions to this generalization, but it is commonly accepted that men occupy the dominant role in the majority of male-female relationships. Power relationships between men and women tend to be unbalanced, with men usually having greater control over decisions and activities within the relationship. This imbalance can manifest itself in a variety of ways such as physical strength differences or economic disparities. Women may also feel pressure to conform to certain societal expectations regarding their behavior and appearance which further reinforces gender imbalances within relationships.
PlayBuild is an after-school program located in New Orleans which repurposes vacant lots around central city to engage kids with the architectural history and design of public spaces with outdoor play with imagination playground and design challenges. Do these activities have unique cognitive learning opportunities that warrant investment, and if so what curriculum decisions contribute to positive learning outcomes and what kinds of methodology are feasible to measure such a cognitive development among children? A literature review on play and children’s cognitive development has been done to explore these three questions.
Before detailing particular research findings, below is a brief summary of this literature review. Research suggests that role play, joint action, and physically modeling objects, spaces, or systems can develop perspective-taking and systems literacy (Harris, Vygotsky, Schwartz et al., Sebanz et al., 2006). Research comparing invention-based curriculum with teaching-practice curriculums show evidence of perspective change (e.g., seeing deep structural relationships vs. surface feature covariation) and evidence that perception of deep structure correlates with increases in understanding and transfer.
Invention-based curriculums have the potential to engage participants in fantasy and role play as well as scale to forms of meaningful sociocultural participation in the community. Design and construction of diagrams and models of homes, cities, spaces, or city systems grounded in the community and history of New Orleans is worth an investment because it affords opportunities to develop perspective-taking, systems reasoning, metacognition, and mathematical and spatial thinking skills through meaningful participation in local community culture.