In her project, Swenson reviewed Cooking Network for the purpose of studying the portrayal of gender roles that are changing rapidly in the modern society in relation to consumption, domestic work, and television. The author chose Cooking Network as the source of materials due to the diverse representation and content matching different perceptions and ideas of the modern gender roles in regard to cooking specifically.
As methods, Swenson used the review and discussion of episodes of different cooking shows and their reflection of the historically constructed gender expectations and stereotypes. In her article, Swenson focused on the discussion of the production of each show in combination with ideological and social codes engraved in it. Her main point is to point out that cooking on TV is no longer associated solely with women, but shows hosted by men are different from those with women in their content presentation.
Analyzing this article, I found that the most helpful “moves” described by Rosenberg were focusing on the abstract as the concentration of goals and purpose of a reading, skimming through headings and using them and the article title as sources of general information. Also, I found it very productive to review the conclusion for the final thoughts and a summary for the entire article and its main points. At the pint of reading the abstract and then the final part of the introduction, I realized that I fully understood the author’s main point and how she was going to communicate it to the reader.
Rosenberg’s method revealed a clear structure and organization of scholarly works and proved helpful when the requirement is to read quickly without missing important information. It surely made my reading process much easier and less fussy.