Monday, March 19, 2012

Outline Revised

I am really frustrated with what direction to take my paper. I feel pulled in so many directions but I feel like keeping to what shifted in the 1920 is where I want to keep my focus instead of starting my research all over and researching information about Judy Chicago. The only thing I struggle with is if covering just the 1920 will be enough information to cover the required 30 or so pages of the research paper.

How do you determine if there is enough information out there to cover your topic?


Revised Outline:


Introduction: I want to talk about what caught my attention in the first pace with wanting to research this topic. I want to explain an overview of how throughout time, a voluptuous bodies type was the ideal and why. I feel like it would be important for the audience to have a background of this before diving into this shift occurred. The reader needs to know what it was like before the shift.

1920: Progressive Era: Why the shift?

  • Women Suffrage
  • Beginning of the diet industry for women

o women wanting to be more like the men

§ the diet industry was created first for men

o showing self control in eating habits=power

  • Changes after WWI

o Women needing to compete for the men that were homosexual while away in the war.

  • Prohibition
  • Men wanting to suppression women on the political stage through getting them to focus on perfection of the body
    • Naomi Wolff, Author of the Beauty Myth
  • Media Influences
  • Industrial Revolution
    • Development of big business
      • Sears Catalog, mass production of products

2 comments:

  1. Holly,

    I don't know offhand if there are enough sources available for you to focus strictly on the pre1920-post1920 shift, but I'd bet there are. It was a hugely important era for changes in the visual arts--painting, sculpture, film, photography--and scholars have written at length on the art of that era.

    Also, it was an era that saw a seismic shift in the lives of western women. Female beauty was not only redefined but marketed heavily and in ways not seen before. The film and magazine industries in particular presented young women of the time with an onslaught of new images and types of role models, both liberating and destructive.

    I think if you dig into the histories of art and women in the 1917-1927 period (roughly the decade from the end of WWII to the advent of "talkie" movies), you'll find plenty.

    It's a good time period to work with, especially for your subject, and I don't think it's too narrow at all. People have written shelves of books on just those years.

    Thanks for the outline. It's a good start. I think it will change fairly dramatically once you get your teeth into more diverse sources on the 1920s.

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  2. Thank you for the outline. That is very helpful.
    The next thing on which to focus is finding good sources to fill in the topics within your outline.
    I agree with Mark about sources. I would also like to add that a good researcher is able to tie together sources on a wide range of topics and tie them together into a mosaic that illustrates your own topic. In other words ... it may not be as necessary to find many sources specifically about your topic as to pull together sources on all the related issues. (e.g. women and body image, women in the early 20th century, art in the 20th century, etc).
    My challenge for you would be to see if you can get us a brief annotated bibliography within the next week or so.

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