Sex-Role Stereotyping in Video Games

Length: 3,000–4,000 words (12.5 to 16.5 pages, double-spaced, not including references page)

Instructions

Choose a topic for your essay from the list below. Develop your essay using a combination of course materials and readings, and secondary research. At least 60% of the sources that you use for the essay must be taken from the course readings; up to 40% of the sources that you use for the essay must come from your own research. Your sources outside of the course materials must be critical, peer-reviewed articles or books; please consult AU Library’s Discover tool and the AU Library journal databases.

Your essay must address one or more questions raised in the course. Given that the field of children and media is very broad, this requirement reduces the possible scope of your essay, which should make it easier for you to narrow down your topic. Please finalize a topic with your tutor after you have completed Unit 8. It is recommended that you submit your essay at least two weeks before the end of your course contract.

You mark will not only be based on your ideas and your clear presentation of them, but on your demonstration of appropriate academic essay writing. Please consult the guide Writing Academic Essays section in the Course Information.

Use APA Style to cite your sources and to create a corresponding references page. Ten percent (10%) of your mark for this assignment is allotted to your properly citing your sources in the text and in your references list. Consult your tutor with any questions.

Essay Topics

Your essay should address one or a combination of the following topics. Alternatively, you may devise another topic in consultation with your tutor.

Your tutor will only accept an original essay topic that the two of you have discussed beforehand.

1. Using the eighteenth century and the twentieth or twenty-first centuries as points of comparison, discuss some aspect of the interplay between social change, definitions of childhood, and narrative.
2. Literacy is a theoretical concept that was first formulated with respect to print culture, particularly the ability to read. Having now studied the different competencies required for “literacy” across a variety of technologies, this topic offers an opportunity for you to summarize your learning and add to it through further research. Choose two or three technologies to compare or contrast. What has changed from the medium of print? What has stayed the same? What do we think we know? What questions remain unanswered?
3. Examine how movies, toys, and experiences based on narratives are marketed to children. Outline and explain the effects that such media-based commodities and their associated advertising may have on children. Analyze and evaluate the role played by the Disney Corporation or any comparable organization in the narrativizing of consumption.
4. Genre is an important factor in any study of storytelling. Each text genre—whether chapter books, information books, series books, or digital stories—requires certain competencies from its readers. After performing a close reading of two or three books of a particular genre, indicate which skills readers would need to bring in order to understand that genre, and describe which skills would be developed through reading it.
5. Employing methodologies and readings that you have encountered in this course that relate to analyzing the relationship between narrative and visual imagery, write an essay indicating why you would or would not recommend five or six specific texts for the curriculum of a certain school grade (you must choose and identify the age of the children).
6. This option gives you the opportunity to write an essay that analyzes some aspect of narrative in film and television. This analysis can take you in many directions. You may look at repertoire, address, modality, intertextuality, focalization, camera techniques, cultural difference, and so on. You might, for example, compare different television shows or films aimed at the same age or gender; versions of the same show or film produced in both the United Kingdom and the United States; versions of the same show or film produced in different eras; or the same narrative delivered through different technological formats. You might focus on how successful the show or film has been in its intent to entertain, to educate, and/or to inform. Alternatively, you might examine how one show or film has influenced others over time. Choose a specific aspect of narrative in film and/or television for your essay.
7. The study of narrative in video games presents an especially interesting field for discovery. Have a good look at the literature on what happens to narrative in video games. What should we ask ourselves about the ways in which video games are changing (or may change) narrative? You may wish to refer to a specific game or game type to illustrate your argument, but you must ensure that your tutor has access to the game.

Generic essays on “Violence in Video Games” or “Sex-Role Stereotyping in Video Games” will not be accepted, as these areas have been covered thoroughly by students before you. Be original. Take this general topic and apply it specifically to a narrative text or an aspect of narrative that has not yet been studied or thoroughly analyzed. For example, consider the questions raised about narrative in video games in the course readings. Do any of these questions or issues interest you?

1. Any study of children and narrative is inevitably implicated in the material culture of childhood. Several obvious choices include Disney, Barbie, Peter Rabbit, and so on. Describe and explain what you see happening to a particular narrative (and its readers) as it becomes part of the fabric of material culture. If you choose a popular narrative (for example, a Disney narrative), make an effort to develop a new take on an old theme. Alternatively, take a narrative not discussed in this course and use a theory or methodology that you have encountered in the course to describe and explain the progression of the narrative as it has become part of material culture.

Before you complete this assignment, please read the section on Plagiarism on AU’s Write Site.

Note that you can submit an essay assignment to the Write Site to receive feedback about the writing component—organization, mechanics, grammar, and style—of an assignment before you submit it to your tutor for marking. The Write Site does not provide comments on the factual accuracy or general academic content of your essay.