Day 7 -- Gender and Sexuality

Assignment for all Teams

Today you should imagine that you are writing a paper about sexuality and gender relations in Paris in the second half of the 19th century.  Once again, you will need to work together to develop an interesting and manageable question and to create a presentation answering that question.

1)  Your team should begin by surveying the material available on the course web site for this week (or in previous days, if any of those sources seem relevant).  Think about a general area that seems to have a good deal of potentially useful material and identify a series of sources that seem promising for developing a question about Parisian sexuality and/or gender roles in the period we are studying.

2) Divide up the sources and write individual research reports on the ones that you have been assigned by your team.

3) Come back together and share what you have found. Formulate the question that you will be building your presentation around

4) At 4:00 share with us:

• The question that you set out to answer

• The interpretation that you developed to answer that question

• An alternative (but credible) interpretation that you will show is less convincing than your own

• A series of points that you need to convince your readers are valid in order for them to accept your interpretation as more sound that the alternative that you have suggested.

• The evidence that you would use to make each of these claims credible

• The first paragraph of a hypothetical paper incorporating your thesis and demonstrating that your thesis is superior to the alternate interpretation you have described