WMST9025 Media and Cultural Identities: Gender, Race and Sexuality GE

The topic will critically explore representations of gender, race and sexuality in a number of media and popular culture genres. It will investigate the ways that interaction with media both reproduces and challenges existing social and cultural relations of power. Students will be introduced to contemporary approaches to analysing the production of media, the interpretation of media texts by audiences and the multiple meanings that all media texts embody, in relation to the formation of cultural identities. Students will have the opportunity to develop specific skills in media analysis and will undertake collaborative research projects.

This topic aims to support students to:

• Understand relationships between the production of and engagement with media representations and cultural identities (especially those related to gender, race and sexuality)
• Identify and analyse key discourses and genres in media representations and the ways in which power relations are challenged as well as reproduced in the ways we interact with media
• Develop skills in analysing media texts
• Develop skills in researching and communicating about a specific media form
• Develop oral presentation skills

1. Appraise media texts using a range of feminist approaches
2. Defend feminist approaches to media texts and genres with skills and confidence
3. Assess critically the connection between power, gender and the media