Your final exam for this class is an essay, to be submitted via Canvas by Wednesday, May 11 at 11:59pm. Write a 4-5 page, double-spaced (around 1000-1500 words) essay addressing the following prompt:
In her chapter entitled “A Complex Model of Beauty,” (from our Futures week) Meeta Jha writes: “beauty is an uneven socializing force circulating in transnational cultural flows that can be oppressive and objectify, racialize, and exoticize women; or it can open up small spaces of agency in women’s everyday encounters with the world” (91). For your final paper, draw from our course material to discuss these conflicting structural forces of oppression surrounding beauty/the beautification of bodies AND possibilities for resistance/agency/activism/re-writing norms.
Your essay must engage with at least three of the following concepts in your essay:
Skin/skin lightening/colorism
Affective consumption (Lynn Thomas)
Technologies of Visibility (Lynn Thomas)
Aesthetic surgery
Racial nose
Emotional labor
Gendered and racialized labor
Mutual Aid
Biopolitics/Biopower
Necropolitics
Disability/disability justice movement/ableism
Ugly
You may absolutely bring in readings and terms from the first half of the semester, but do try to focus the main themes of your analysis of the final half (post-mid-term).
Guidelines:
The essay must be on the above prompt and draw on AT LEAST 3 relevant course readings (aim for more).
The essay should have a strong thesis statement and a well-organized structure. Prepare an introductory paragraph that has a strong thesis statement and be explicit about how you will support your thesis statement with concepts from the list above.
One of the goals of this essay is to give you a chance to show your own critical engagements with the texts. Therefore, no outside research is necessary for this midterm.
Citations (references to reading) can be in APA, MLA, or whatever format you are familiar with, as long as it is used correctly. Prepare a Works Cited page (not included in word count).
Assignments will be graded for clarity, academic writing style, and convincing use of evidence to support your analysis. A rubric is available below.
