Exploring global issues in the english classroom through creative writing activities

Rapid and complex changes in today’s world bring an unquestionable need for adapting education to the new reality. Within this panorama, special attention must be given to the set of global issues that concern a great portion of humanity, either directly or indirectly, and its environment. To this end, the purpose of our Master’s Thesis is to provide guidance on how to introduce global issues into the classroom of Bachillerato. More concretely, we do propose creative writing activities as the prime way to get students truly involved and committed to the problems across the globe. Through an initial theoretical approach to both global issues and creative writing, and the subsequent proposal of activities, it will be demonstrated that creative writing actually enables global issues to be addressed in the classroom in a successful and significant manner.Departamento de Didáctica de la Lengua y LiteraturaMáster en Profesor de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria y Bachillerato, Formación Profesional y Enseñanzas de Idioma

Identities on the Move: Contemporary Representations of New Sexualities and Gender Identities. Silvia Pilar Castro Borrego and María Isabel Romero Ruiz, eds.

Sixteen chapters might seem too many for a collection of essays, and the diversity of topics, objects of analysis, and theoretical frameworks found in the table of contents might, at a glance, suggest a degree of random incoherence. However, an attentive reading demonstrates that those factors constitute one of the main strengths of the volume. Identities on the Move travels with ease and smoothly from one chapter to the next in an engaging trip that gradually integrates a wide range of issues and analytical tools with two distinctly common denominators: the focus on gender and sexuality (as the book’s subheading appropriately points out) and the interdisciplinary, politically committed frame of cultural studies. More significantly, the volume is further enriched by the shared interest of all the chapters in the intersectionality of identity, as they all center on the meaning and implications of the crossing of gender and sexuality with other axes constitutive of the so-oft questioned notion of identity; namely: class, race, (post)coloniality, religion, location, and the socially-inflected assessment of intellectual ability

“Girl meets boy”: postcyborg ethics, individual identity and collective rights in the posthuman age

Taking as a point of departure the novel’s setting in a world controlled by online networks and global corporations, together with human beings’ position as decoders of the excess of information in contemporary culture, this essay provides a posthuman interpretation of Ali Smith’s "Girl meets boy" (2007) under the lenses of Rosi Braidotti’s postulates on posthumanity and Heidi Campbell’s postcyborg ethics. Thus, I analyse the ways in which the novel probes into the limits of humanity and individual identity as related to virtual environments, body politics and sexuality. Attention is also paid to the novel’s raising of collective awareness and social struggle against injustice and the oppression of women, homosexuals and third-world citizens as a response to their invisible, naturalized dehumanization by the contemporary global politics of consumer culture

Space and Place in The Hunger Games: Fiction or Reality?

Los Juegos del Hambre es una trilogía de novelas adolescente que pertenece al género de distopía y bildungsroman. En el análisis realizado en este trabajo, se establece no sólo una relación entre el uso de los espacios y lugares que hace la autora Norte Americana Suzanne Collins, si no su influencia en la percepción del lector sobre la realidad y la ficción en si mismos. Además, el análisis cuenta con un estudio detallado de las continuas referencias y alusiones a la realidad en su pasado y presente, que junto con todos los elementos relacionados con la opresión y la vigilancia, hacen que el lector se cuestione no sólo su realidad si no la de la novel a en sí misma

“I Do as I’m Told”: Gender Dynamics, the Dark Side of BDSM and Antifeminism in E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey.

Female sexuality has always played a central role when it comes to feminist studies. It was precisely during the period of the 1980s and 1990s when this controversial theme took the shape of the so-called ‘Sex Wars’ in which feminists divided themselves into ‘radical feminists’ and ‘libertarian feminists’. The issue of pornography in relation to female sexuality was not only debatable in the 80s and 90s but has also posed a problem in our present-day society since pornography has become part of our daily lives. This dissertation about E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) revolves around gender roles, BDSM and pornography as a source of female oppression. In order to show how E.L. James romanticizes BDSM relationships and tries to sell a feminist message of empowerment through violent sex (which is not feminist at all), the analysis of the novel is going to tackle issues of female powerlessness, dependence and submission embodied by the female protagonist-narrator, and heteropatriarchal tyranny and dominance in the figure of the male character.La sexualidad de la mujer siempre ha ocupado un papel central en lo referente a estudios feministas. Fue precisamente durante el periodo de los años 80 y 90 cuando este tema tan polémico tomó la forma de lo que se denomina como ‘Sex Wars’ en las cuales las feministas se dividieron en ‘feministas radicales’ y ‘feministas libertarias’. El asunto de la pornografía en relación con la sexualidad de la mujer no solo fue cuestionable en los 80 y 90, sino que también ha supuesto un problema para la sociedad actual debido a que la pornografía forma parte de nuestra vida diaria. Este trabajo sobre Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) de E.L. James gira entorno a los roles de género, el BDSM y la pornografía como fuente de opresión femenina. Con el propósito de demostrar como E.L. James romantiza las relaciones basadas en el BDSM y trata de vender un mensaje feminista de empoderamiento a través del sexo violento (que no es feminista en absoluto), el análisis de la novela va a abordar problemas como la falta de poder de la mujer, la dependencia y la sumisión encarnados en la protagonista y narradora femenina, así como la tiranía y dominio heteropatriarcal en la figura del personaje masculino. <br /