Abstract
This chapter explores the possibilities for incorporating music as a medium for understanding cultural narratives about gender and their influence on our own gender identities. The primary discussion revolves around a Mix Tape Assignment that has been modified into a type of musical autoethnography. This assignment is designed to enhance students’ media literacy skills and increase self-awareness about the ways that music has influenced their own understandings of what it means to be a gendered person. Following the project students should be able to discuss the complex relationship between the music we consume and the gender identities we embody, not just as it pertains to us individually but with an understanding of dominant gender scripts in society and the ways that music confirms, rejects, or otherwise transforms those messages. This assignment additionally helps students reflect on the tension between structure and agency, an important theoretical puzzle within the social sciences, and encourages awareness of the power of agents of socialization in our lives. Moreover, the project has been designed to be fun and promote creativity while contextualizing our personal and individual tastes within the larger framework of historical and cultural influences as they pertain to gender identities. While the actual assignment is discussed in detail, several suggestions for modifications and alternative approaches are shared.
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Notes
- 1.
For a pdf version of the assignment please email the author at aharker@whatcom.ctc.edu.
- 2.
When exploring this concept in class, I like to share a joke I once heard a comedian make about how he really enjoyed the sound of the British woman’s voice on his GPS (navigational system) but that he just couldn’t trust her. This usually sparks some interesting discussions, and allows them to think of other ways that we judge people by the way they talk. Another great example is illustrated in the film, “In a World,” (2013) in which a woman who works as a movie trailer voiceover artist experiences discrimination in her field due to the premium placed on masculine voices, in that they are considered to literally be the sound of reason, authority, and power. Finally, the fact that Apple has introduced a male voice as an option for Siri, as a strategy for “mak[ing] “her” appear more capable” as an assistant is another example of the way that we privilege the sound of male voices (Bosker 2013).
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Harker, A. (2016). An Autoethnographic Mix Tape: Deconstructing Gender Identity Through Music That Has Meaning to Us. In: Haltinner, K., Pilgeram, R. (eds) Teaching Gender and Sex in Contemporary America. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30364-2_13
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