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Gender and Genre: Knowledge Transformation in Liberal Arts Education

Year:    2025

Author:    Ruixue Zhang

Innovative Teaching and Learning , Vol. 7 (2025), Iss. 1 : pp. 37–47

Abstract

This article explores how liberal arts education leads students to critically examine their everyday experience of mass media and to creatively transform their observation into radical knowledge about social norms, especially gender identities. The first part of this article lays out the shared grounds and connections between genre and gender: both are repetitive performances that reflect cultural rationality and gather people into distinct communities. The second part illustrates the significance of relating genre studies with gender issues in the liberal arts classroom through the example of the genre parody assignment in my Mellon-funded course “Race, Gender and Media.” Through showcasing two students’ parodic works, my article shows how liberal arts education can cultivate students’ genre-gender awareness and transform their experience of mass culture into knowledge about social norms.

Journal Article Details

Publisher Name:    Global Science Press

Language:    English

DOI:    https://doi.org/10.4208/itl.20250104

Innovative Teaching and Learning , Vol. 7 (2025), Iss. 1 : pp. 37–47

Published online:    2025-01

AMS Subject Headings:    Global Science Press

Copyright:    COPYRIGHT: © Global Science Press

Pages:    11

Keywords:    genre studies gender parody liberal arts education.

Author Details

Ruixue Zhang