WMN2080

Feminism and Popular Culture: Reading Mainstream Cinema

(ART)

Maryanne Dever

6 points + 2 hours per week + Clayton + Second semester + Prohibitions: CLS2240, CLS3240, WMN3080 + Prerequisites: Any first year sequence.

Synopsis: This subject will utilise contemporary Hollywood cinema as a vehicle for examining the impact of feminist ideas, theories and politics on forms of popular culture. While broadly concerned with the representation of feminists and feminist politics within popular films, the subject will also explore the complex and contradictory ways in which recent commercial films negotiate important questions contemporary feminism has raised about gender roles, sexual difference and sexual identities. It will also examine how these films produce gendered understandings of careers, marriage, parenthood and romantic love for cinema audiences in the post-second wave feminism era.

Assessment: Bibliographic/research skills exercise (1000 words): 20% + Essay (2500 words): 50% + Class test (1 hr, equiv. 1000 words): 20% + Class participation: 10%