My Academic Interest On Gender And Kinship Studies

Naying Ren Statement of Purpose My academic interest in gender and kinship studies was triggered by my encounter with one of the greatest minds in our history. I was fascinated by Simone de Beauvoir in her The Second Sex, both by her insightful existential analysis of women’s situation and the interdisciplinary approach which she takes. She approaches gender from manifold perspectives including the biological, the psychoanalytic, the historical, the literary and the anthropological, leading to a powerful revelation of how women are socially constructed and how the myth of the â€Å"Eternal Feminine† is perpetuated. Progressively, my curiosity and admiration grew into academic enthusiasm. I find myself particularly interested in the topic of gender. In an attempt to learn more about gender, a dimension of human life that is rarely taught in Chinese universities, I directed numerous course essays towards gender, which enabled me to combine my study in English literature with my self-study in gender theories. After studying gender independently through reading some of the feminist classics and queer theories, I probed into the cultural representations, particularly those in the form of literature and film, which delineate gender in certain implicative images out of certain intention. Besides one of my written work submitted in this application about the stigmatization of the queer as the new â€Å"femme fatale† in David Lynch’s neo-noir Blue Velvet (1986), I’ve also written about howShow MoreRelatedThe Is A Man s World1459 Words   |  6 Pageswomen may concur on. Gender equa lity is a human right, but our world faces a persistent gap in access to opportunities and decision-making power for women and men. 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