Media Representations of Women, Men, and Sexuality

Catalog description

Offered autumn in even-numbered years. This course is designed as a survey introduction to a variety of issues related to gender and sexuality in the mass media and pop culture. The goal of the course is to familiarize students with the breadth of these issues while at the same time providing them tools to critically analyze and engage with modern media. The course focuses largely on mass mediated forms such as television, film, music, sports, news, advertising and new media. An underlying understanding within the course is a recognition of the inextricable interconnections between gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation and so forth. Therefore, the course is invested in exploring the ways in which differences in identity produce different mediated representations and experiences of media. The course is comprised of class discussions based on readings, class presentations, and viewing and interpreting various mediated texts and documentaries. The course readings are both practical and theoretical, and while many of them focus on specific case studies, they are intended to provoke thoughtfulness in each student such that it can be applied to a variety of media.