- Thu Sep 05, 2024 9:49 am
#108810
Hi lsater,
For Passage A
The Viewpoints include the author's and some of the author's colleagues (lines 27-32) and many historians (line 10).
The Structure is:
The first paragraph describes an increase in the study of women's history and then a shift into gender studies (or "gender relations") that took place in the 1990s. The paragraph then describes gender relations study in more detail and the specific forms that this scholarship took.
The second paragraph discusses the advantage and disadvantage of gender relations scholarship. Gender relations scholarship is again contrasted with the study of women's history.
The third paragraph discussed the author's mixed views on the shift to gender relations scholarship. The author believes that this scholarship "obscures as much as it reveals" (lines 29-30).
The Tone is mixed/ambivalent.
The central Argument is that gender relations scholarship has strengths and weaknesses, specifically, its main strength is in its explanatory potential (lines 17-18) but its weakness is that it overlooks "the particular ways in which individual women engaged in their worlds" (lines 31-32). This is also the Main Point.
For Passage B
The Viewpoints include those of author and Augustus.
The Structure is:
The first paragraph describes how Emperor Augustus believed that the integrity of the family and specifically women's domestic roles as wives and mothers were critical for peace of Rome, and how he passed family/marital laws in order to restore traditional morality. The paragraph then provides a few examples of these martial laws.
The second paragraph explains how the gender roles of women were both "constrained but also more visible and politicized" (lines 48-50) as a result of Augustus's laws/policies. The paragraph then provides an example of the importance of this familial language to Augustus and his view of his fatherly role in the state.
The third paragraph discusses how this sociopolitical emphasis on the family and women's domestic roles was reflected and emphasized by artists of the time.
The Tone is scholarly, objective, neutral.
The central Argument is that Augustus's focus on Roman family, especially women's domestic roles in the family, as the key to promoting peace of Rome shaped the politics and culture of that society. This is also the Main Point of the passage.
The relation between Passage A and Passage B is that Passage B provides an example of the type of gender relations scholarship that is discussed in Passage A. This relationship is directly tested in question 17.
