2020-21 Academic Catalog

This course will read representations of racial, gender, and sexual minorities in popular culture through the lenses of feminist, critical race, postcolonial, and queer theories. Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in the late 1980s to describe an approach to oppression that considered how structures of power act multiply on individuals based upon their interlocking racial, class, gender, sexual, and other identities. “Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Popular Culture” takes up the charge of intersectional analysis—rejecting essentialist theories of difference while exploring pluralities—to interpret diversity (or lack thereof) in film, television, and digital media. Prerequisite: Women's and Gender Studies 110 or 112 or Cinema and Media Studies 110 or instructor consent