Gender and Popular Culture

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course will explore how popular culture, constructed through as well as against folk and high cultures, operates at the intersection of gender with race, class, sexuality, and nationality in the United States. Approaching gender and popular culture from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, we will consider how culture in its commodified form has helped construct gendered identities, communities, and power structures in the United States. For example, we will examine how popular media texts may influence ideas about gender and how fans may transform and use mass culture texts for different purposes. Along the way, we will consider popular culture's ideological potential in relation to gender justice. Do negative representations harm the cause of women's and/or minority rights? What do the rise of the Internet and social media activism mean for the intersections of popular culture and social justice? Assignments include mini essays, a multimedia essay, and a final creative project accompanied by an analytical paper.