My essay for applying for Gender studies MA offered by Centeral European University.

Women's situation in Iran

I was born and raised in the Middle East where the issue of sexual orientation or even gender is sometimes a matter of life and death. Moreover, we have to deal with a variety of psychological problems stemming from a distorted identity, a much beloved but demolished culture and an admired but disfigured history. Understandably, such problems have provided me with the motivation to work towards potential solutions and more importantly directed my reflections and thoughts ever since I became aware of them.

This same motivation led me change my major after receiving my BS in marine and shipbuilding engineering from the Amir Kabir University one of leading polytechnic universities in Iran. I decided to give up engineering and pursue an area in which I was both interested and had talent for, and was also more valuable to my country. Unfortunately, there was no major in cultural studies at any Iranian university so I had to choose a more general major and make cultural studies my specific interest during my master's program. In order to fulfill such a goal, I chose the arts for my master's program entrance exam and was admitted to the Art University of Tehran as a student in the theater and dramatic literature department. In that respect, I started to research the post-colonial era and finally made it my thesis topic which gave an increased opportunity to learn more about existing approaches toward third-world problems in general and those of Middle East in particular. My master's thesis topic was "A Study on Modernity and Colonialism in Saedi's Plays According to Post Colonialism Approaches". Moreover, my thesis was written under the guidance of Dr. Farzan Sojoodi whose books regarding Post structuralism are well-known in Iranian scholarly circles. The goal of my thesis was to show how Iranians' memories of the pre-modern era led them to reject both modernism and colonialism while they mistakenly thought that both notions were the same. In addition, I tried to paint a clearer picture about the fact that how such a strong desire to return to the "ideal pre-modern era" led Iranians to spark a revolution that was at its essence anti-modernistic and anti-colonial. My thesis received a score of 17.5 out of 20 and I graduated from Art University of Tehran with an 18.1 GPA (out of 20).

As for my MA thesis studying in Central European University, I would like to give a sharper focus on the fact that how anti-colonial movements in Middle East have silenced women's and queer's voices during the past century. Since the same study is already done by Gayatri Spivak on the impact of anti-colonial movements on women's and other minorities' voices in India, I can enlist the help of her works to prove that in fact many of anti-colonial movements in the Middle East were at the same level anti-feminist. My primary focus would be on the Arab spring and Islamic revolution in Iran two famous agitations that can set a good example of the fact that how masculine power exploited anti-colonial sentiments to silence and subjugate women.

Best Regards,

Alireza, I need you clarify the kind of essay that you are writing for your application. Are you being asked to write a personal statement, statement of motivation, or statement of purpose for your essay? Your essay has a little of each represented within the work so I would like to make sure that we can properly focus the information presentation towards the correct essay requirement. In general though, there are a number of things that I would like to call your attention to within your essay.

First is the format, please make sure the format the essay into paragraph topics in order to lessen the stress on the reader's eyes. Right now, the essay seems to be very long and just goes on and on and on within the page. There need to be page breaks in order to allow the reader a pause to understand the content of your paragraph. Without it, the reading tends to get confusing.

Second, you don't really need to present your grade point average in the essay. That is something that the reviewer would rather base on your transcript of records. The transcript is considered a more accurate rating of your academic abilities than your written explanation of your grades.

As for your thesis project, it is an interesting topic that I believe could be very well received by your thesis adviser in the future. We just need to make sure that the overall essay contains the correct information for the type and purpose of the essay that you are writing. I hope you can tell us which type of essay you are writing soon so that we can further fine tune the content of your essay to better serve the purpose you wrote it for.

@Holt
Hi Mary,
According to CEU website, "applicants must attach a 500-word typewritten essay on the relevance of their academic/professional background to graduate study at CEU and to their future career goals." In addition, the website elaborates :

"First and foremost, we are interested in finding out about your academic interest in gender studies. The best way to tell us is to describe a research project you are planning to do for your MA thesis. Such a mini research proposal does not have to be longer than two paragraphs, but it should contain a research question you are interested in pursuing, and some theoretical justification for doing the study. It is important to indicate briefly the methodology you will be using and your academic preparation for carrying out such a project."

So, I am not sure what category the essay would fall into!

gender.ceu.edu/ma-program-requirements

Hi Alireza, don't worry, I know it can be hard to develop these statements but you are on the right track with your content. What you are being asked to write is a combination personal statement and statement of purpose. Which is why it will tend to run long. However, you ran over by 16 words. Which could pose a problem. It is normally easier to edit complete sentences or paragraphs in order to bring down the word count. The only part that I am sure you can delete will be the ending of the essay that says "Best regards,".

For the actual paper, I will suggest that you don't discuss that you changed majors while a college student. That is irrelevant because the course that you actually majored in is what concerns the reviewer. The fact that you changed majors really doesn't matter. It would help the reviewer if you could remind him of what major you actually graduated from though and how it relates to your current interest in masters studies. Don't forget to develop an actual thesis statement or question aside from the description that you have in the essay. The actual question is an important consideration for the reviewer as he considers your application. Make sure it is a stand out question that will be memorable to him.

For more of my suggestions, you can refer to my previous response to your thread. You don't really have too much to revise or worry about. The work you did is more than acceptable for submission. The tweaks are just meant to help you improve the presentation and highlight the content by only offering the relevant information for your application. Let me know if you have any problems with it. I'll be glad to help.

By the way, the edit will help to bring down your word count to even lower than 500 words. You will most likely clock in at 400 words or a little more but definitely less than 500 words.

@Holt
Hi Mary,
I put your points into consideration and here is my last version of the essay aimed to be send to the university.

As a student who was highly engaged in political activities in university, I first became aware of the depth of the issue of gender seeing how female students work diligently to raise the awareness regarding the disparities between men and women in our society. It was then that I came to understand how the problems related to the gender were central to many other political problems that I was trying to address. As soon as I understood the fact that democracy was unachievable in a society in which men continued to subjugate women, I started to become more committed to elimination of the discriminations towards women. In doing so, my family was my first arena and I started to make my younger sister familiar with the rights that she was denied. Later, as I read more, I realized that the problem was not just about men and women, but also it was about power and the ways that hegemonic masculinity was at work to marginalize other sexual identities. So, I decided to fight against all cultural practices that perpetuated such a marginalization. Such A mission requires me to take an academic course, so I am hopeful that studying in the gender studies course offered by Central European University will allow me to gain a better understanding of cultural forces behind such a marginalization.

As for my thesis, we should first take a look at Iranians' drama, theater and cinema that are in my focus. Iranian's drama and cinema witnessed a new wave of anti-imperial and anti-colonial sentiments during 60s and 70s. A phenomenon that was directly under influence of global anti-colonial discourse that had found its way into Iranian's Intellectual circles. While Iran's relationship with the west was at its pinnacle and Iran's economy was booming, many new scholars and writers emerged holding a pessimist view towards the west and the capitalistic values that it represents. Among them were famous names such as Gholam-Hossein Sa'edi, Jalal Al-e Ahmad and Ali Shariati. Having influenced by thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, they all tried to attack the rapid pace of westernization that they believed was poisoning Iranians' mind and society. In that respect, the drama of the time became filled with a wide variety of metaphors showing two oppositional forces representing the west and Iranian's untouched traditional society. So, exactly here the main question of my thesis arises.

Taking into consideration that the main focus of the male-dominated writers of the time was anti-colonial sentiments and rejecting the western values, my thesis will primarily try to answer the question that "how were women represented in the Iranian drama and cinema during 60s and 70s?". In other words, how masculine power, in a Foucauldian sense, influenced the anti-colonial movement of Iran and helped one special anti-colonial type of patriarchy render women voiceless. I will then look into the fact that how such influence has had an effect on today's situation of women within Iran and Middle East as a whole.

Merged:

Women's situation in Iran. My essay for applying for Gender Studies.

Iran has one of the strongest student activism in the Middle East. So, as an Iranian student, I first became aware of the issue of gender at the student meetings during bachelor years. Although I had known the limitations and disparities that a woman such as my sister had to face in my family and society since my teen, I wasn't much aware of women's right movement as a political entity. The more I became engaged in student activism the better I understood the fact that we couldn't achieve democracy until men continued to subjugate women. Then, I joined the feminist student club in our university and started fighting for women's right. Unfortunately, our activism didn't bear much fruit and we faced Iron fist of the government.

It was during master's years that I started to think about the women's situation more critically. Through reading Simone de Beauvoir's books I came to understand that we also had the option to fight the disparities in a cultural level. Studying in Tehran University of Art, I conducted a research regarding how women were represented in Iran's pre-revolution drama and novels focusing on the works of Gholam-Hossein Sa'edi and Jalal Al-e Ahmad.

Having studied such a subject in the dominant anti-colonial and anti-imperialistic discourse of pre-revolution Iran, the question raised that "Why did Iranians, including both male and female scholars, hate western feminism so much?" I think the question is so important because there is a direct link between such a hatred and the level of oppression that Iranian, even Middle Eastern, women face at the moment. I found it interesting that Iranian scholars tended to associate western feminism with the imperialistic views of the west. According to them, there was a sharp distinction between rural and urban Iranian women. While they tried to represent rural Iranian women as the holders of rich and pure Iranian values, the western lifestyle of urban-educated Iranian women who took responsibilities outside the house was completely strange to them. To them, such a strangeness was frightening and menacing and at same time a new cultural weapon by which the imperialistic west wanted to undermine Iranians' identity.

As for my thesis, I will try to look into the stereotypical images of rural and urban Iranian women focusing on Iranian drama and cinema in 60s and 70s. Further, I want to answer the aforementioned question by showing the fact that Iranian scholars tended to blame feminism and the west for the new image of Iranian women. In fact, not only the middle class western feminism did not help Iranian educated women, but made it easier for the anti-colonial movement of the time to silence them. After that, the issue that how such a belief has had an effect on today's Iranian women will be investigated. As for the theoretical part, I will draw on the works of Michel Foucault, Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak.

Alireza, is this supposed to be a motivational letter or statement of purpose? The title of your post is too general and doesn't really tell me much about the reason that this essay was written and developed in this manner. It would really help if you can tell me what type of application essay this is supposed to be. The reason I say that is because, for a motivational letter, it is really informative but then deviates from the proper discussions related to your motivation towards the end of the essay. If this is for a statement of purpose, then the essay needs to lose some information that is more relevant towards a motivation letter. If you can just clarify the sort of essay that this is supposed to be, I think I can help you set this on the right track for your use. I look forward to your reply.

@Holt
Mary, we discuss the fact that the essay must be a statement of purpose or motivation letter here at length:

https://essayforum.com/graduate/applying-gender-studies-offered-centeral-73919/merged

I think I am on the right track based on what you've told me before. I put my final draft here mainly because I want to know if i have made any obvious grammatical mistake or if my English is good enough for an academic essay.

Thank you very much

Alireza, you should have posted this essay in the other thread since this is a continued conversation of this essay. From what I can tell from the previous thread, I have already approved the other version of your essay for use with your application. That is the essay that you posted at the end of that thread. I don't see why you suddenly decided to write a new one. Did you not see the like indicator in the other thread? The like indicator is used to reference the preparedness of an essay. That means it is ready for use because the content is already final in content and presentation. So don't use this new version that you wrote. The other version that you wrote is better to use for your essay. Do not use this new one. If you use this version, you are back to the first step and will have to revise constantly in order to prepare this essay for use. I do not believe that you would want to do that since you already have a version on file that is ready for use.