Media and Identity

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course focuses on critical analyses of identities in media culture. Taking a cultural studies approach, we will interrogate theories and popular discourses of identity while exploring how identities are constructed, negotiated, resisted, and transformed within media culture. Our primary questions in this course are: What is identity? How do our identities inform our various relationships to media culture? And, how does media culture impact the construction of our identities? Our sites of analysis will be media representation (narrative, performance, aesthetics), media production (industrial and alternative), and media consumption (reception practices and audiences). We will examine a broad array of media forms, including film, television, the Internet, and popular music. Conventional demographic identities, such as gender, age, race, sexuality, class, and religion, are central to the course, although other identities, including geographic, lifestyle, and virtual identities, will be examined also. We will strive toward critical analyses that understand identities as socially constructed, not biologically determined, and intersectional, not autonomous.