This subject offers students the opportunity to delve into the field of gender studies, especially in its intersection with audiovisual studies. Through the different readings we will theorise about the media as ideological apparatuses where discourses about our gender identities and sexualities are created and recreated.
The media, and the cultural artefacts that derive from them, will be analysed by means of critical thinking through the perspective of different authors: from the most classical liberalism or Marxism to radical feminisms or queer theory. The aim is to understand the complexity of these media discourses in order to understand the hegemonic thinking (and also the subcultures) that coexist in our ideological systems, shaping our identity and everything that surrounds it: gender, sex, race, homeland, religion, body, illness, etc.
Through the reading of articles, the viewing of films/series and the subsequent debate in class, we will look at how these audiovisual texts construct our ways of understanding the world, especially on issues such as sex-affective diversity or gender identity.
Students will acquire tools for critical thinking and audiovisual analysis. They will improve their group and individual work skills.
Students will learn to think of cinema and audiovisuals as ideological apparatuses that (re)produce ideologies of gender, sex and sexuality.
UNIT 1
Cultural Studies: Media as Culture and Ideology.
UNIT 2
Gender Studies: Sex, Gender and Sexuality.
UNIT 3
Feminist Studies: Masculinity, Femininity, Hegemony, Machismo and Misogyny.
UNIT 4
Sexuality Studies: Representation of Gays and Lesbians in the media.
UNIT 5
Queer Studies: Beyond Identity, Transfeminisms, Radical Feminism and TERFs.
UNIT 6
Intersectional Studies: Queer Colour Criticism, Crip Studies.
UNIT 7
Future of the Field: postfeminism, transhumanism, new formats, the end of identity.
Final project (50%): Consists of a critical analysis of one or more audiovisual texts agreed with the teacher. This project can be a written work or a video-essay with a memory. Students are expected to apply the ideas from the articles read in class in their analysis/video essay.
Directed Activities (50%): Students will have several short activities throughout the semester that include a discussion, scene analysis, and an oral presentation.
A 20% of this grade will be given to class participation and preparation of the sessions in the case of non-virtual teaching.
ANZALDÚA, G. (1987) ‘Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza’, San Francisco: Spinsters.
BUTLER, J. (2011) Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity.
FAUSTO-STERLING, A. (2000) ‘Sexing the Body: How Biologists Construct Human Sexuality’, International Journal of Transgenderism.
FERGUSON, R.A. (2004) ‘Aberrations in Black: Toward A Queer of Color Critique’, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
GAMSON, J. (1995) ‘Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct? A Queer Dilemma’, Social Problems.
GOULD, L., & CHWAST, J. (1978). X, a fabulous child’s story. New York, Daughters Pub. Co.
HALPERIN, D. M. (2000) ‘How to do the history of male homosexuality’, GLQ.
HARAWAY, D. J., Wolfe, C. and Haraway, D. J. (2017) ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, in Manifestly Haraway.
HOLMES, M. M. (2008) ‘Mind the Gaps: Intersex and (Re-productive) Spaces in Disability Studies and Bioethics’, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry.
JAGGAR A. M. and RICH, A. (2019) ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’, in Living with Contradictions.
McRUER, R. and BERUBE, M. (2006) Crip theory: Cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York: NYU Press
RUBIN, G. S. (2002) ‘Thinking Sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality’, in Sexualities: Some elements for an account of the social organisation of sexualties.
SPADE, D. (2015) ‘Trans Law and Politics on a Neoliberal Landscape’, in Normal Life. New York: South End Press.
WITTIG, M. (1980) ‘The straight mind’, Feminist Issues.
WITTMAN, C. (1970). A Gay Manifesto. New York: Red Butterfly.
In addition, the following texts will be worked on, which are included in:
DURHAM, M. G., and KELLNER, D. (2006). Media and cultural studies: Keyworks.
Malden, MA: Blackwell
“The Concept of “Ideology”” (Antonio Gramsci)
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (Walter
Benjamin)
“Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (Louis Althusser)
“Myth Today” (Roland Barthes)
“The Commodity as Spectacle” (Guy Debord)
“Subculture” (Dick Hebdige)
“Encoding/Decoding” (Stuart Hall)
“The Aristocracy of Culture” (Pierre Bordieu)
“Stereotyping” (Richard Dyer)
“Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance” (bell hooks)
“The Precession of Simulacra” (Jean Baudrillard)
“Feminism, Postmodernism and the “Real Me”” (Angela McRobbie)