For this capstone project I had to pick a topic to research, write a research paper and create visualizations that would explain my research to viewers. Finally I created a show that presented my visualizations so that people could come see and interact with them.

I decided to research gender stereotypes in young children’s literature and the harmful biases that they create. Through my research I learned that harmful stereotypes in certain children’s books can hinder children’s aspirations, development of self, career and study goals. For the first poster I took a passage from Where the Wild Thing’s Are By: Maurice Sendak. This poster was intended as the introduction to the show. It pointed to instances in the book where gender was indicated and plainly states statistics that were pulled from the research. I hoped that by reading some shocking facts viewers would be more open to identifying their implicit biases. The intention of the collage was to be a space where people could stop, recognize, and discover newness in familiarity. The final poster was a pop-up poster thats goal was to bring awareness to the pronouns characters are given in children’s stories. Many children’s books give pronouns to characters that aren’t typically gendered. And more often then not those pronouns are male.

Due to COVID-19 I wasn't able to hold a reception, but I was able to share my show online, as well as get feedback from people when they interacted with it on campus. I received both positive and negative feedback which was wonderful as my intention was to start a conversation and help people start to recognize their biases.