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Gender, Sexuality and Media

Module description

Media play a powerful role in both constructing and challenging local and global understandings of gender and sexuality. On this module you will focus on how practices and norms of gender and sexuality are represented, complicated, and resisted across different forms of media. This inter-disciplinary module draws on insights from media/communication, anthropology, and queer and feminist theory to examine historical and contemporary media production, consumption, and circulation across nations, with a special emphasis on the Global South and look at a series of case studies. There are no pre-requisites or co-requisites for this module, and no specialist knowledge is required to take it.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module aims to:

• Provide you with a critical understanding of the roles that media play in constructing and challenging the norms of gender and sexuality.
• Provide you with an in-depth knowledge of the roles of gender and sexuality at the intersection of race and class in shaping media designs, production, and consumption.
• Historicise the construction of gender and sexuality from de-colonial perspectives.
• Help you contextualise and understand feminist and queer theories.
• Help you diversify and de-colonize your views of gender and sexuality by learning about media practices in the Global South.
• Help you understand contemporary feminist and LGBTQ movements and encourage them to challenge mediated sexism, misogyny, and homo- and transphobia.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate an advanced knowledge of key approaches, theories, and concepts in the field of feminist and queer media studies and apply these to better understand contemporary examples in specific social, political, historical and geographic contexts
• 2. Cultivate analytical skills to critically understand, intervene in, and challenge mediated sexism, misogyny, and homo- and transphobia.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Critically understand the role of gender and sexuality as political categories and everyday practices in globalization and their social and political implications.
• 4. Analyse changes in media production, consumption, and representations, positioning them to broader historical and de-colonial understandings of gender and sexuality

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Demonstrate, in zine-making, creative analytical skills in visualizing theoretical concepts
• 6. Demonstrate, in essay-writing, appropriate research and bibliographic skills, a capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument and a capacity to write clear and correct prose.

Syllabus plan

The content will vary from year to year, but it is envisioned that the module will cover some or all of the following topics:

• A short history of feminist zine making and how to make zines yourself
• Gender theories, particularly from decolonial perspectives
• Intersectionality
• An introduction to queer theory
• Transnational feminism
• Gender and sexuality in national televisions in the Global South
• Racialised desires and intimacies in media production and consumption
• Influencers’ gendered labour
• Digital feminist/queer activisms

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e., a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Todd, M. and Watson, E.P. (2006) Whatcha mean, What’s a zine?: The art of making zines and mini-comics.
• Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble. Routledge. 
• Cohen, C. (1997) ‘Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?’ Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, pp. 21-51
• Crenshaw, K. (1991) ‘Mapping the Margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color.’ Stanford Law Review 43(6), pp. 1241-1299.
• Duguay, S. (2016) ‘‘He Has a Way Gayer Facebook than I Do’: Investigating Sexual Identity Disclosure and Context Collapse on a Social Networking Site.’ New Media & Society 18 (6), pp. 891–907.
• Kang, D. (2014) ‘Idols of Development: Transnational Transgender Performance in Thai K-Pop Cover Dance,’ TSQ 1(4), pp. 559-571.
• Lugones, M. (2008) ‘The Coloniality of Gender’ 'Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise. Pp.1-17.
• Mohanty, C. (1984) ‘Under Western Eyes’ boundary 2 12/13(3/1), pp. 333-358.
• Shome, R. (2006) ‘Transnational feminism and communication studies.’ Communication Review, 9(4), pp. 255-267.
• Yin, S. & Sun, Y. 2021. ‘Intersectional digital feminism: assessing the participation politics and impact of the MeToo movement in China,’ Feminist Media Studies (21)7, pp. 1176-1192

Key words search

Gender, sexuality, media, feminism, queer, decolonial, media, activism, representation, digital media, body