Satisfies Social Science General Education Requirement

Examines the gendered politics of representation by analyzing film, literature, popular media, and/or other popular cultural texts. May be repeated for credit with different semester themes. 

Within the last couple of decades, digital media has become an integral part of our societal world. Everything from the sociopolitical landscape, culture, community, social movement organizing and identity formation has become increasingly mediated through digital media. This course will explore how gender is being (re)constructed in the digital world and how that impacts our physical identities, relationships, and the way we interact, see and come to understand our (virtual) reality. We will focus on how gender intersects with various systems of difference such as race, class, sexuality, ability, etc. in ways that reinforce and challenge systems of oppression and how it affects physical bodies and groups of people. We will look at things like how social media affects our gender socialization, identity, and performance, gendered representations in the media, and the gendered politics in contemporary social movements spearheaded online. Students should leave this course with an understanding of the fluidity between online and physical space, the ability to analyze gendered stereotypes and narratives that occupy online space ( think memes and viral videos), and the ways in which digital media allows for new conversations about gender beyond the binary to flourish (and recieve backlash).