Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2006 Using visual culture to address gender expectations in middle school art education: Visual art curriculum design based on the Manga Ranma1/2 Ting-Yu Chen Virginia Commonwealth University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.edu/etd Part of the Art Education Commons © The Author Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.edu/etd/1129 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact libcompass@vcu. Using visual culture to address gender expectations in middle school art education: Visual art curriculum design based on the Manga Ranma1/2 A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art Education at Virginia Commonwealth University.
by TINGYU CHEN B. in Arts and Crafts Education, National Taipei Teachers College, Taiwan, June 1999 Director: Dr. Taylor Chair and Associate Professor, Department of Art Education Dr. Melanie Buffington Assistant Professor and Art Education Graduate Program Coordinator Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia December, 2006 © Tingyu Chen 2006 All Rights Reserved Table of Contents Page Abstract.1 Chapter 1: Literature Review .3 Genderrelated societal expectations .3 Relationship between visual culture and gender expectations .5 What is feminist pedagogy? .7 Feminist pedagogy as empowerment.9 Feminist pedagogy strategies for empowerment in classroom .10 Chapter 2: The Manga subject analysis .17 What is Manga? What is it for? What can we learn from Manga?.17 Introduction to the Manga subject: Ranma1/2 .21 Chapter 3: Three lessons in the Unit plan .24 Student group and community.24 Suggested teaching materials .24 Lesson 1: Introducing Manga Ranma1/2 and characters: Male Ranma? Female Ranma? .25 Lesson 2: Create a Manga character .32 Lesson 3: My Manga story.38 Chapter 4: Discussion and implications.50 Appendix A: Selected images from Ranma1/2.51 Appendix B: Male Ranma? Female Ranma? .52 Appendix C: Story Memo .54 i ii Abstract Using visual culture to address gender expectations in middle school art education: Visual art curriculum design based on the Manga Ranma1/2 By Tingyu Chen, Master of Art Education A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art Education at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Virginia Commonwealth University, 2006 Major Director: Dr. Taylor Associate professor, Department of Art Education Dr. Melanie Buffington Assistant Professor and Art Education Graduate Program Coordination In this thesis, I identify and explore approaches to middle school art curricula that address the cultural expectations of gender in visual culture media. I use images from the Japanese comic Manga: Ranma1/2 to develop units of instruction with goals of engaging students in relating the study of art to their visual culture outside the classroom.
The unit has three lessons that deal with cultural expectations of gender to help students become aware of understand gender differences in contemporary society. In the lessons, students examine how the Manga characters are depicted differently according to the character’s gender. Also, the teacher utilizes feminist pedagogy which considers how educators and students can work in a classroom with less power struggles. Educators provide students space to let them openminded to have conversation in the classroom.
Through sharing iii personal experience and interacting with classmates and teachers, students may owing to the empower activity to get more confidence in their academic studies. Introduction Visual culture has a significant influence on students’ understandings of the norms of culture and society around them. Freedman (1994) observed that although students accept a huge number of popular images in visual culture, they do not really pay attention to how they are influenced by visual culture images. Freedman also advised art educators to think about how to utilize the creative idea of visual culture to help students comprehend the diverse family, social, and cultural issues around them.
The early research pointed out that gender differences are not just different because of physiology, but also due to the societal expectations of how people act properly in accordance with their biological gender (Mead, 1935). Some feminists have explored whether these gender issues and societal expectations promoted stereotypes and misconceptions of gender (Beauvoir, 1974/1949). To help students have better understanding of how the societal expectations of gender affect them, and help them determine the root of their bias, the theories of feminist pedagogy suggested by Shrewsbury (1987), Maher (1987) and Sandell (1991) provide many suggestions for incorporating feminist pedagogy into teaching. The purpose of the Unit plan featured in this thesis is to address feminist pedagogical strategies in classroom practice through visual culture materials, specifically the Japanese manga comic Ranma 1/2 image reading.
After the teacher leads students to 1 2 these manga images, the art curriculum will stimulate students’ strengths and self awareness to explore how gender expectations affect them. Through the lesson plans, the teacher leads students to read, analyze, and categorize the selected manga images from Ranma1/2, encouraging students to reflect on their experience with gender bias around them. Finally, the class empowers students to deal with the dilemmas that arise in their interests and in the cultural expectations within their friendships, family relationships and community. Through the art study process, students will have more awareness that the media influence their gender stereotypes1.
Chapter 1: Literature Review Genderrelated societal expectations Some school teachers and parents have different expectations for boys and girls (Levitin & Chananie, 1972). Some students complain about the unequal expectations and treatment by their teachers and parents between themselves, their classmates, and their siblings of the opposite sex (Orenstein, 1994). Colebrook (2004) defined gender as socialization and stereotyping in human cultures which causes people to distinguish gender between masculine and feminine. It is important to know that people have different definitions of gender.
In my thesis, when I talk about gender, I consider the concept of gender to be not only a biological matter, but also “the social construction of sex” (Colebrook, 2004, p. Some children’s play is a direct reflection of what they have learned from their society about gender roles. Maher and Ward (2001) stated that as young children become aware of gender stereotypes, they adapt their cultural expectations to identity with different gender roles. When children play with peers, they also learn how to adapt to different gender roles based on their cultural expectations.
In addition, being from different cultures and races may affect how children learn about different genders. The transition from thinking about gender differences as physical to thinking about them as societal culminated in the 1960s in the West. Colebrook (2004) stated “a concern with gender is a peculiarly modern and western phenomenon—that it is only with the advent of feminism and the demand for equal rights that we started to think 3 4 about gender, sexual difference or the relation between male and female” (p. Before the 1960s, most scholars considered that the differences in behavior between males and females resulted from physiology and natural differences.
This goes back at least two thousand years, to Aristotle’s describing that “the female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities” (as cited in Beauvoir, 1974/1949, p. Women were considered to be born weak, not because of society but because of their nature. During this time, people did not consider the societal influence on gender roles (Beauvoir, 1974/1949). Since the 1960s and 1970s, feminist scholars have argued against the unfairness in treatment between males and females.
However, there are still many disputes about how biology affects and defines gender in the society that people live in (Beauvoir, 1974/1949). For instance, in some cultures, males are taught to be aggressive while females are guided to be passive: Feminist scholars advocated that the gender differences were also influenced by societies, customs, and cultures. The American anthropologist Margaret Mead provided strong evidence that societies have the capability to influence gender behavior according to the dominant values of the society. In her article about nonWestern societies published in 1935, she observed the three societies: Arapesh, Mundugumor, and Tchambuli.
The findings of her study showed that in these three societies, both male and female form their personalities according to their cultural expectations. For instance, in Tchmbuli, females take dominant positions, independence and responsibility for their families, while males take less duty and have the habit of relying on others. With the materials that she 5 collected, Mead concluded that masculinity and femininity were not caused by biology but by intensive “social conditioning” (p. 38) connected with gender.
Some feminist scholars tried to determine the influence of gender expectation on personal identity. In The Second Sex, Beauvoir (1974/1949) expressed that human beings not only acted upon what their biology dictated, but also were taught to obey customs, taboos, laws, and so forth that construct their society. In addition, Beauvoir claimed that “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (1974/1978, p. This demonstrated that people were not born with a natural, mental, or economic destiny, based on sex; rather, societal influences shaped them.
Moreover, Beauvoir recorded that gender differences between boys and girls seem to have been decided in early infancy. But when comparing the influence of nature and culture on males and females, how females expressed themselves in a society was more likely defined by the civilization’s idea of feminine (1974/1949). Relationship between visual culture and gender expectations With the flourishing development of mass media, children today receive a multitude of visual images not only from fine art but also from folk art and popular art. These visual images are “increasingly understood as infused into daily life” (Freedman, 2003, p.
Duncum (2001) explained visual more relates to visible artifacts, while culture is considered the context and text of the artifacts. Meanwhile, the idea of art would not only be fine art but also the “nonart,” or, in other words, visual culture (Gaudelius & Speirs, 2002, p. Visual culture is a socialcentered art education that 6 considers human contemporary life, including gender, class, and race. Homer (1998) announced that visual culture caused a “new visuality” (p.
7) which considers that visual images and texts depend on a huge amount of visual and auditory sensory input. Involved everywhere in children’s daily life, visual images influence how children think about the things around them. The formats of visual culture cover numerous visual images, such as fine arts, many kinds of image and sound in movies, mass media, malls, public art, buildings, amusement parks, sculpture gardens, the Internet, architecture, magazines, cartoons, comics, film, computer games, Manga, toy design, advertising, television programming, fashion design, craft art, and a variety of digital technologies (Burton, 2004; Freedman, 2003; Gaudelius & Speirs, 2002; Rogoff, 2000). Exposure to media is increasing while the message in this media changes.
Meanwhile, “[t]he visual arts are expanding not only in their form, but in their influence through connections to the range of social issues, including issues not always thought of as social in character, such as ecology and conception of self” (Freedman, 2003, p. Visual culture reflects upon social and cultural values. Freedman (2003) stated that “art education [is] a professional field that influences all levels of education and is a form of social production tied to larger symbolic practices of visual culture”(p. Therefore, I think the value of patriarchy in our society is also reflected in such visuals as Manga.
Art educators should contribute to the transformation of the common visual culture that influences social changes (Feldman, 1996) because some of the students’ works of art embody the semiotic symbols of visual signifiers. For example, some 7 children will dress up as animation characters to pretend they have the same powers as the animation characters. Such semiotic icons enable students to show their personal identity in terms of gender, sexuality, and class that may relate to social issues. Freedman (1994) advocated that “the future of art education will depend on teaching visual culture and interpreting vital social issues such as those concerning gender in school” (p.