Gender, Sexualities & The Media

This course examines the relationships among media, sexuality, and gender politics. Students analyze theories of the construction of sexuality, femininity, masculinity, and male violence from multidisciplinary perspectives - biological, cultural, psychological, and anthropological. Applying feminist theories, queer theories, film theories, and theories of sexual scripts to the text of popular media and sexually explicit materials (such as pornography), students engage in a discussion of eroticism, sexual fantasy, desire, and the eroticization of violence. Students learn to demonstrate a critical understanding of the key theories of gender and sexuality from multiple disciplines, and to apply these theories in their analyses of the media text.