This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
This module gives students the opportunity to bring prior learning on gender and sexuality into a focused context, whilst employing a critical study of representation in contemporary mediaand digital cultures. `Students will be encouraged to question how (and if) representations of gender and sexuality are shifting in the millenial era though a series of critical questions, such as: How has the Internet changed human relationships? What is the impact of pornography on contemporary youth culture? Are men also objectified by the media? How should we understand misogyny and has it been intensified in the digital age? How do we define consent post MeToo? Have advertisers apropriated feminism? What is the difference between liberation and exploitation? How are LGBT groups represented (or not represented)? What is the relationship between race and sexualisation? What should diversity in the media look like?
One of the assessment methods employed on this module is a Digital Portfolio. The Digital Portfolio platform allows students on theoretical modules to create practical implementations of scholarly ideas and interactive forms of assessment, which may include blogging, video essays, and other forms of trans-media content.
Total contact hours: 30 hours
Private study hours: 270 hours
Total Study: 300 hours
Digital Portfolio (60%)
Essay (3000-words) (40%)
Banet-Weiser, S. (2018) Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9781478001683
Jane, E. (2017) Misogyny Online: A Short (and Brutish) History. Los Angeles: Sage.
Mikkola, M. (Ed.). (2017). Beyond speech: pornography and analytic feminist philosophy. Oxford University Press.
Nigel, A (2017) Kill All Normies: Online culture wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right. Zero Books.
Sastre, A. (2014) "Hottentot in the age of reality TV: sexuality, race, and Kim Kardashian's visible body", Celebrity Studies, 5:1-2, 123-137, DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2013.810838
Zacharias, M. S. (2016). “The need of a new theory of visual rhetoric in sexist advertisements”. Bharata Mata Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 62
Zheng, R. (2016). Why Yellow Fever Isn't Flattering: A Case Against Racial Fetishes. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2(3), 400-419.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge of a wide range of issues around gender and sexuality in contemporary and digital society.
- Demonstrate an understanding of various theoretical approaches to, and concepts operative in, the study of representations of gender and sexuality.
- Apply these concepts and theoretical models to produce critically informed interpretations of representations of sexuality and gender in the media and digital culture.
- Examine the moral, social and cultural impact of mediation and representation on communication and everyday life.
- Reflect upon their own role and responsibilities in relation to various communication practices, specifically in regards to gender and sexuality.
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