Proposition

For my research paper, I have decided to write on my favorite series that I had watched recently: Avatar: The Last Airbender. After I had known the prompt about halfway through this class, I was on my second viewing of the animated series. I had noticed that there were many of the gender tropes being either upheld or broken during my viewing of the show. From there, I knew that that was what I had wanted to focus on for my topic.

            Initially, despite wanting to write about gender tropes in Avatar, I was afraid that I could not find enough scholarly sources on the topic. Sites such as JSTOR and the research catalog on the library’s website did not yield sufficient enough results to find five scholarly sources on the subject. Not wanting to switch topics, I turned my attention to scouring Google. Surprisingly enough, this did yield enough academic results to write my paper, though it did take awhile to sift through the popular sources.

            The sources reflected what I had initially thought when watching the series: for its time, Avatar was extremely progressive in its gender roles, and still is progressive in that fact. As of now, I plan to focus on the main cast of characters: Aang, Katara, Iroh, Sokka, Toph, and Zuko. I should have plenty of material there to focus on.

            I am also excited to write on this because it is one of my favorite all-time series. I hope that I will actually have fun writing on this.