WFQS 267 - Topics in Gender, Media, Culture

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

This topics course focuses on gender as it plays out in any number of forms of culture and media. Various texts help elucidate how gender is constructed, represented, and consumed, with important interventions derived from feminist theory, queer theory, media and cultural studies.

Topic for 2024/25b: Visibility Matters? Gender and Representation in U.S. Media. (Same as AMST 267 and MEDS 267) The fight for greater visibility and representation has been central to gender liberatory movements in the United States, but some feminist, queer, and trans scholars and activists have raised doubts about the idea that more representation equals more liberation. This notion seems especially fraught, for example, in the context of trans liberation today—we are at a peak for trans representation in popular media in the United States at the same time that anti-trans legislation and violence has skyrocketed. This course investigates the importance, limits, and possible risks of visibility and representation in popular media (broadly construed to include film, television, literature, news, advertising, and social media). We ask questions like: what is the relationship between visibility, representation, and liberation? What kinds of public visibility or media representation are liberatory, and what kinds are not? What alternatives are being proposed that augment or replace the goal of visibility? Rachel Silverbloom.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS