Program Overview

Course overview

This course is a great introduction into race, gender and popular culture studies. We are surrounded by literature, film, series and music videos on a daily basis, from listening to Beyoncé, to watching Orange is the New Black to films such as Carol. We will question how we engage with representations of race and gender in popular culture, exploring how identity is constructed (for example femininity and masculinity) and deconstructing the complex notions that are rooted in our cultural system.

This course went above and beyond for me. Not only was it inspiring but it also served as a space of great healing for me, dismantling oppressive ideas that have been ingrained in my mind since childhood. Highly recommend for anyone looking to unlearn racial oppression.

Melanie, Spring 2021

This course was amazing. Aditi is so knowledgeable and articulate and truly listens and responds to every point made. She never made any point seem unworthy and always had a quote or a reference to respond with. The material was engaging and I have actively been encouraging my friends to attend next time. Please consider turning this into a degree course!

Jessica, Outreach Advocate, Spring 2018

To avoid disappointment, please book your place on the course 72 hours prior to its commencement

This course provides introduction into the way popular culture shapes discourses on race and gender. Throughout the course issues such as feminism, queerness, colonialism, desire and the representations of race and sexuality within popular culture will be unpacked and explored to help us engage with the culture we consume in a more nuanced way. We will complicate fixed ideas such as male and female, questioning how popular culture functions as site for forming and constructing race and gender. We will achieve this understanding by examining a range of different topics, including popular culture figures such as Jennifer Lopez, of whom Guzmán writes: ‘[her] media visibility creates an opening for cultural resistance because the unclassifiable nature of her identity vexes established representations of U.S. ethnic and racial identity.’ Through examples such as J-Lo we will explore the argument that the representation of ambiguous racialised identities has the potential to interrupt the binary logic woven into racialised and gendered bodies in popular culture. This feeds into a broader conversation regarding the colonial histories that shape hierarchies of beauty and desire, exposing and problematising the norms of desire that are perpetuated through popular culture. We will look to underline the important role of popular culture as a site of communicating racialised and gendered norms about desire, beauty and power.

The course is designed for all levels, from complete beginners to those with more experience with critical race and gender studies. It will appeal to students who want engage in scholarship on how popular culture influences us, as well as those who want to learn the basics of gender theory and critical race theory. This course will also appeal to those who do not merely want an academic approach as we will also be engaging popular culture texts and question how we can come to a more inclusive understanding of feminist and queer research. Course materials and visual materials will pay special attention to questions of culture, identity, class, racism, colonialism, archives and the body.

Why Study this Course?