This course explores a range of feminist scholarship, with an emphasis on feminist studies of media texts, practices, and institutions. COMS 310 highlights feminist media studies’ interdisciplinarity by incorporating critical work from literary studies, film and television studies, political economy, and sexuality studies. In the process, COMS 310 demonstrates how – and why – feminist media studies works to politicize these fields. The course investigates what standpoints and strategies constitute the feminist aspect of feminist media studies, and how these perspectives are intertwined with notions of social justice and social change. COMS 310 pays particular attention to recent areas of debate in feminist media studies, such as postfeminism, racialized and sexualized subjectivities, queer and trans activism, and masculinity studies.
View complete course outline: COMS310A2010 [.pdf]