Media and Gender: Representations, Subjectivities and Power

About

This two-week interdisciplinary online course addresses the intersection of gender and media through developing a critical understanding of how ‘gender’ helps shape media texts and institutions and how media (understood to include all forms and genres of communication) structure our understandings of gender. The term ‘gender’ refers to constructed ideologies of femininity and masculinity in the public sphere as well as to the intersection of gender with other social identities – including cultural categories such as religion, race, class, and sexuality. Focusing on studies and examples from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, we will examine the ways in which gender is represented, reproduced, targeted and normalized in a variety of media outlets, and address how textual, visual and aural images mediate, challenge and also reproduce gender ideologies and gender identities that intersect with other social identities, class and race. At the same time, we will address how the social construction of gender is continuously challenged in different media genres and forms and by whom, thus acknowledging individual and collective agency and lived experiences in different socio-historical contexts.

Course leader

Gina Heathcote, Kyoung Kim, Dina Matar

Target group

You will have completed one year of undergraduate study at the time of joining the Academic Summer School. Professional experience can be acknowledged as equivalent to a university qualification.

Course aim

On successful completion of the course, a student should be able to demonstrate the ability to:

- Understand key theories and methods of studying media, power, and social identities
- Examine the role of media in constructing gender and its intersections with race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality
- Address and recognize the persistence of gendered media industries
- Address the role of new media technologies in challenging and/or reaffirming traditional constructs of gender

Fee info