Gender Representations in the Media Study + Internship in Barcelona Program Spring 2020 Semester

This course explores the role of media and popular culture in the processes of production, reproduction, and perpetuation of gender roles as well as practices of resistance. Students will use a multidisciplinary approach to study how the notions of gender and sexuality interact with other social, cultural, and biological categories such as race/ethnicity, class, nationality, religion, ability, and age. Students will use a lens to compare contemporary American feminism and European feminist theory.

In this light, students will examine the contents of news, audiovisual fiction, advertising, and social media, to investigate how socially constructed gender categories shape ideas of gender and sexuality. The course will use discussion, lecture, film, reading, public speaking, and field studies to examine how social, cultural, and biological categories inform students' lives and their understanding of the world.