The first essay will be a five (5) page, double-spaced, typed critical analysis and argument of the issues (not a summary or personal response). It will acknowledge and document all sources used in the essay by following the MLA documentation format (see MLA handout posted on Moodle). The essay will critically analyze the social and cultural construction of gender and/or sexuality and experience in a global age. To do so, your essay will draw upon the theories of critical cultural analysis that we have studied so far and produce a critical cultural analysis of one of the “experiential narratives” we have read (i.e., a short story or a nonfiction narrative of personal experience). In the course of your essay, use theoretical texts to develop critical concepts and an argument on how and why you think we should critically analyze and re-understand the social construction of gender and/or sexuality in a global age. In turn, use the critical concepts and argument you develop to critically analyze the narrative you choose, including inquiring into the social assumptions and conditions behind the experience. While all essays should examine some aspect of the social construction of gender, sexuality and experience in a global age, you should focus your own essay and argument on a specific question, issue, problem or concern of your choosing paying attention to one or two concepts or issues that you are interested in analyzing in relation to gender and/or sexuality, for example: “subjectivity,” “signs, codes, and constructs,” “social structures of recognition,” the social constructions of “nature” and “the body”; “masculinity,” “femininity,” “non-binary, “intersex”; the relationship of gender and/or sexuality to such issues as cultural diversity, power relations, colonization, “race” and racism, Eurocentrism, and/or class and global social inequality. You should use three required texts along the following specifications: A) At least one (1) chapter of Nealon and Giroux’s The Theory Toolbox. B) At least one (1) narrative text: Kincaid, Woolf, Ngugi, Friedan, Lorde, Jordan, Menchú, Martinez, Hesse, Narayan, Ellison, National Post (on millennial men). C) At least (1) additional theoretical text from Unit 1: Locke, Bartsky, Butler, López, Fausto-Sterling,