History of Gender in Advertising

Catalog description

(same as GWST 322) This course uses advertising to examine the construction of gender from the late 19th century to the present, particularly how advertising has contributed to the meanings we attach to being a man and being a woman in American culture. We take a historical look at how consumer culture has represented and defined the male, the female, the masculine, and the feminine by focusing on the development of significant advertising campaigns and consumption items. We will examine the relationship between major shifts for men and women in the private and public sphere and the depiction of those shifts in advertisements. Throughout the semester, we will relate the old to the new by focusing on persistent patterns of meanings that reoccur in advertisements and what these patterns tell us about the development of particular gendered meanings and gendered norms.