- Department: Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: H
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
This humanities module explores the relationship between feminism(s) and the history of primarily American popular film and television from the post-war era to the present, by charting the dialogue between feminism and its screen representations from the 1950s to the 2020s.
Occurrence | Teaching period |
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A | Semester 1 2024-25 |
By the end of the module you will be able to:
This humanities module explores the relationship between feminisms and the history of (primarily American) popular film and television from the post-war era to the present, by charting the dialogue between feminism and its screen representations from the 1950s to the 2020s. In doing so, it focuses on key moments for feminism (e.g. the women’s liberation movement or second-wave feminism; millennial postfeminisms; intersectional feminisms; the global financial crisis; the #MeToo movement) and groundbreaking screen texts that foregrounded or struck a chord with feminist concerns, have resonated particularly strongly with female audiences, and generated foundational criticism by feminist media scholars. By covering a range of genres and texts from Western film and television such as I Love Lucy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Thelma and Louise, 9 to 5, Absolutely Fabulous, Sex and the City, Girls, Hustlers, Mrs America and Barbie, the module equips students with the skills to critically analyse popular media's engagement with feminist and gender politics.
Task | % of module mark |
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Essay/coursework | 100 |
None
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
Students will receive written feedback on all assessments and reassessments in agreement with university policies.
Banet-Weiser, Sarah, Empowered: popular feminism and popular misogyny, Duke University Press: Durham, 2018.
Brunsdon, Charlotte and Lynn Spigel (eds), Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader (Second Edition), McGraw Hill/Open University Press, 2008.
Dow, Bonnie J., Prime Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture and the Women’s Movement Since 1970, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
Havas, Julia, Woman Up: Invoking Feminism in Quality Television, Wayne State University Press: Detroit, 2022.
Hollinger, Karen. (ed.) Feminist Film Studies. London: Routledge, 2012.
Hollows, Joanne, and Moseley, Rachel. (eds.) Feminism in Popular Culture. Oxford: Berg, 2006.
Negra, Diane and Yvonne Tasker (eds), Gendering the Recession: Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity, Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.
Perkins, C., & Schreiber, M. (eds.) Independent Women From Film to Television (1st ed.). Routledge, 2021.
Radner, Hilary and Rebecca Stringer (eds.) Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema. New York; London: Routledge, 2011.
Tasker, Yvonne and Diane Negra (eds), Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007).
Thornham, Sue (ed.) Feminist Film Theory. Edinburgh University Press, 2019.
Zoonen, Liesbet van. Feminist Media Studies. London; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994.