Monash University

Leader: Maryanne Dever

Offered

Clayton Second semester 2008 (Day)

Synopsis

This unit utilizes themes of love, sex and romance in order to examine the impact of feminist ideas,theories and politics on how we think about popular culture. The unit explores the complex ways discourses of romantic love and (hetero)sexuality feature in our daily lives,the media, film, television and literature and examines the important contributions recent feminist thought has made how we understand these phenomena. Using critical analytical feminist concepts, this unit explores how popular romance narratives; celebrity marriages; self-help literature; contemporary fairytales; chick-flicks; internet dating represent and shape individual and social experiences of love, sex and romance.

Objectives

By the successful completion of this unit, students will have acquired the following skills:

1. A grounded working knowledge of the major feminist theoretical and methodological approaches to popular culture.
2. An informed theoretical critique of how such concepts as sex, gender and romantic love are constituted in a variety of popular cultural forms.
3. An interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of popular cultural forms.
4. Library based research skills and a working knowledge of the major data-bases used in feminist cultural studies.
5. The ability to think critical and analytically, and to be able to articulate those thought processes in a high standard of written and oral expression.
6. A focus upon the production of scholarly research as the end point of a process of reading, discussion, drafting and debate.
7. The ability to work both independently as scholars and to participate actively in group projects.

Third-year students will be expected to demonstrate greater capacity for independent research and will be required to answer a class test of a more conceptually challenging nature.

Assessment

1. Bibliographic/research skills exercise (1000 words): 20%;
2. Critical Media Analysis (Class test)1hour(equiv. 1000 words): 20%;
3.Research Project (2500 words): 60%
Additional comment: Students at levels 2 and 3 will complete qualitatively different assessment tasks linked to their year levels.

Prerequisites

Any first-year sequence

Prohibitions

GND2080