Beyoncé, Roxane Gay, and Bad Feminism Presentation

Abstract

In this teaching demonstration, I will model a shorter version of a lesson that encourages students to practice critical thinking and introduces them to media literacy. In this lesson, I have students watch a Beyoncé musical performance. I then ask students to consider what Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist, says about feminism and Beyoncé in her TED talk. We look at our preconceived notions of feminism, and we consider both where we acquire our assumptions about feminism and how Gay complicates those assumptions. In each case, the media plays a major role in how we conceptualize feminism. We discuss why basing our ideas about feminism on what we see in the media is a problem. My ultimate goal in this lesson is to help students begin to question how the media can be used to promote stereotypes and express subliminal messages; in addition, I want them to start thinking about how analyzing media can move our collective thought-process about a topic forward. This lesson engages with the first FW Hallmark because it introduces students to academic discourse. But I would also contend that this lesson demonstrates the importance of critical thinking—which is, I believe, not emphasized enough in the current Hallmarks. This lesson implicitly argues that strong writers are born out of strong critical thinkers and that teaching students how to think critically is an important part of teaching the entire writing process.