This course will examine representations of race, gender, and sexual identity in the media, investigate what influences these representations, and consider their repercussions. This course will encourage you to analyze media phenomena in a manner that is theoretically grounded, context-specific, and historically situated. Instead of looking at media representations as simple and monolithic, we examine them as being complex and constituted in and through communication. Using a combination of lectures, class exercises, assignments, and discussion, we will explore such questions as:

• How are race, gender, and sexual identity socially constructed by the media?
• How are power and privilege related to media representation and stereotyping?
• How do the economics and working practices of media industries play a role in portrayals and coverage of groups, particularly racial and sexual minorities and women?
• What are the differences between how the commercial media and independent media depict people of color, LGBT people, and women?
• What effects might these images have, and what sense do audiences make of them?
• What are the needs and interests of minority communities, and are they being met by the mainstream media?
• Is change in the diversity of media images likely, and what can be done to promote change? 

The course uses contemporary theoretical approaches in order to examine both race and gender as social constructions. The role and function of cinema and television texts (and visual media in general) in contesting and circulating those constructions will be the central concern of the course. Focusing on analyzing cinema and television texts for their construction of meaning, the course investigates the complex ideological operations at stake in the operations, maintenance and resistance to meanings constructed around race and gender.

Cinema and television texts –including such forms as talk shows, music videos, soap operas, television sitcoms, dramatic series, advertising, genre films and experimental/avantgarde cinema --will be analyzed from a variety of critical perspectives. Issues of power related to gender and race, of privilege and discrimination, of cultural capital and modes of reading and spectatorship will be integrated through readings, screenings and discussions. The economic and cultural implications of the mass media as institutions, as sites of production, as actual texts and of the diverse forms of consumption will also be analyzed.

Course Organization:

The course will be run as a seminar. Students are highly encouraged to cultivate their own perspective on the points raised in the assigned readings, those they encounter as part of their own research and interest and those raised by others during class discussion. There will be regular screenings during class time. Students are responsible for the materials missed due to unexcused absences.

Course Readings:

The readings are critical to your understanding of the material. I have tried to select readings that will introduce you to important theoretical concepts and also provide concrete examples from the mass media. In some cases, the readings will provide valuable background for issues we will discuss further in class. At other times, the readings will supplement what we discuss in class by addressing issues and concepts that we do not have time to cover in class sessions. I will try to regularly propose as series of key questions to keep in mind as you do the readings and I will introduce these as we move through the semester. Please complete the readings BEFORE coming to class.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• Critically deconstruct the representations of race, class, sexuality, and gender in the media and articulate how media representation connects to issues of power and privilege.
• Explain the influence of media industries’ economic imperatives and working norms on representations of race, gender, and sexual orientation.
• Discuss the effects of media representation on audiences, and how audience members might interpret the meanings of media representations.
• Develop ideas about how to improve or challenge entertainment and news media to better reflect the nation’s true diversity. 

Please note that frequent absences automatically lower your participation grade.

Also consider that three unexcused absences (those not justified by a medical certificate or a note from the administration) will result in your final grade for the course to be dropped by one letter grade. Anything above five unexcused absences will result in failure.

Lateness: Students more than 10 minutes late are marked as absent. Late arrival (less than 10 minutes) is marked as such, and 3 late arrivals are counted as one absence.

Class procedure:   Students are requested to make sure their cell phones are turned off (and not just muted) at the start of class.

Week 1:

Power, Privilege and Discrimination

Cultural Studies and Representation

Week 2:

Semiotics: Popular Culture and Critical Media Literacy

Ideology and Hegemony

Week 3:

Stereotypes and the Active Audience

Political Economy and Consumer Culture

Week 4:

Gender Construction and Performance

Week 5:

Constructing Masculinity

Week 6:

Feminist Media Activism

Week 7:

The Social Construction of Race

Discourses of Race

Week 8:

Race, Gender and Consumerism in Children’s Media

Week 9:

Rock, Hip-Hop, Race, Gender and Sexuality

Week 10:

Gay, Lesbian and Queer Representation in Film: A Historical Perspective

Week 11:

Queer Television

Week 12:

Riot Grrrl and Alternative Networks

Week 13:

Race, Gender and Sexuality in Digital Media Contexts

Week 14:

Conclusions and Review