Monash University

Leader(s): JaneMaree Maher

Offered

Caulfield First semester 2009 (Day)
Clayton First semester 2009 (Day)

Synopsis

This unit offers students an introduction to feminist cultural studies by exploring questions of gender, media and consumption. Critical interdisciplinary approaches are used to address the following key questions:
How is 'gender' created and produced by popular culture?
How are cultural meanings around sex and gender made, circulated and reinforced?
What roles do consumers have in determining and defining the product?

Objectives

On successful completion of this unit students should have:

1. a grounded working knowledge of the major theoretical and methodological approaches that constitute the field of cultural studies and feminist cultural studies;
2. an informed theoretical critique of how gender is constituted in popular culture;
3. an interdisciplinary approach to textual analysis;
4. library-based research skills and a working knowledge of the major data-bases used in 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 production of thoroughly researched, well documented and presented formal essays;
8. 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

Written work: 80%
Class Participation/presentation: 20%

Contact hours

One 2-hour seminar per week

Prerequisites

A first-year sequence

Prohibitions

GND3030, WMN2030, WMN3030