ENGC 2016: Males & Females: Insights from Biology, Film, Literature, and Social Sciences
During spring semester, I took an Honors seminar taught by Professor Billie Dzeich and Professor Mary Fox called Males & Females: Insights from Biology, Film, Literature and Social Sciences. The class examined many of the classic stereotypes attached to males and females in present day and throughout history, how they are depicted in many different ways in our culture, whether or not these stereotypes are accurate, and where they might have originated from both culturally and biologically. When picking my classes for spring semester, this course stood apart from the rest because of my personal experiences with harsh female stereotypes. I felt as if this class would help me disprove the stereotypes that I have, in the past, been subjected to. I learned a lot by taking this course, but perhaps the biggest moral that I learned from this course was that, whether based out of biology or our culture, stereotypes are just that and do not hold true for everyone. Stereotypes should by no means be expectations of what men or women should act like, and should not hold anyone back from breaking the barriers between what men and women are expected to like. My final paper, posted below, is a reflection on what I learned throughout the course.