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My early education in anthropology started with a historical glance at cultural theory through works of influential pioneers like Malinowski and Mead. I became fascinated by the theoretical framework involved in cultural exploration, especially how cultural beliefs and values play a role in the every day lives of individuals. During a class on ritual and spectacle, I drove headlong and enthusiastically into ideas of ritual importance and its impact on societies. The subjects ranged from the roles of wedding rites to funerals, and I analyzed certain ceremonies and assessed the meaning of their various components. Another class taught by the same professor took ritual metaphor and applied it to narrative. The course addressed European stories from an analytical perspective, and I examined well-known folktales to yield their ritual symbology. I found myself impassioned by the idea of exploring beyond the superficial guise of narrative and seeing it as a meaningful way of expressing a societys basic beliefs and ideologies. Immersing myself in the works of other inspiring anthropologists, I examined texts on narrative form and nature, ritual metaphor and the importance of storytelling in culture.
My interest in storytelling resulted in the subject of my undergraduate thesis. I decided to focus on American narration, specifically concentrating on expressions of masculinity in mens magazines. It discussed dialogue in magazines as well as in teen male group settings, focusing on the conceptualization and presentation of gender in both circumstances. My overarching approach examined how masculine id