BA Creative and Cultural Industries

Who designs, produces and controls digital media? What is their impact on the groups that have been historically marginalized, minoritized or othered? This course will scrutinize the questions of positionality and power structures as well as creative agencies, offering broader historical and global perspectives on the relationship between technology and disadvantaged groups. While the primary focus will be on gender and sexuality, students will additionally learn about how the two categories intersect with other socially and culturally meaningful axes of difference such as race, class, age, disability or religion, and in connection with a range of diverse digital media, for example artificial intelligence systems, social media platforms and dating apps. The course will highlight the evolving conceptualizations of gender and sexuality, and provoke questions about more just digital futures from feminist and queer perspectives.
 

The unit aims to:

• Introduce students to key concepts, debates and writers in feminist and queer studies of digital media and technology
• Explore key topics on the role of gender and sexuality in relation to digital media and technology 
• Develop students’ critical and analytical skills for examining feminist and queer issues related to digital media and technology from an intersectional perspective

This unit introduces feminist and queer theory and discusses the role of different media (especially digital media and technology) for how gender and sexuality are constructed, represented and expressed. Students will explore gender and sexuality representations in mainstream and alternative media such as newspapers, films, zines, blogs, social media and dating apps. They will examine how those representations promote or challenge the binaries of male versus female, masculine versus feminine, and heterosexual versus homosexual as well as how they travel around the world, promoting particular understandings of gender and sexuality. The unit will introduce students to key conceptualizations of gender and sexuality, and address such key debates as essentialist and constructivist approaches to gender and sexuality; representation and gender and sexual stereotypes; alternative media and counterpublics; globalization of queer cultures; intersectionality; dating cultures; pornography, sexualisation and objectification; sexting; selfies and identity performance; digital gender diversity; and gender and sexuality in social media design and use. As a group, students will be asked to choose a topic of their choice for the last week of the unit.    

In the spirit of feminist and queer self-organising and challenging traditional hierarchies of knowledge production, this unit consists of 2.5h-long collaborative workshops during which teachers and students work together to enhance their knowledge and skills.

The workshops will combine a variety of activities, including discussions of core readings, mini-research projects, analyses of media reports and representations related to gender and sexuality as well as work in groups, pairs and individually.  

For the first part of the assessment, students will work in groups of 2-4 people to create a zine on their topic of choice relevant to gender and/or sexuality and digital media. During one of the workshops, we will discuss the role of zines in feminist and queer cultures and look through the examples of feminist and queer zines. Students will be able to make the zines manually or digitally but all will be required to submit digital versions of the zine to TII (e.g. scans of the zines made manually). Markers will not assess the aesthetics of the zines but they will examine to what extent the form of the zines reflects their content.

For the second part of the assessment, critical essay, students will be asked to work individually. They will choose one digital cultural artefact and analyse it from the perspective of feminist and/or queer theory. A cultural artefact is defined here very broadly and could be an advert, poster, event, magazine, book, film, TV show, exhibition, song, website, blog, digital media platform or interface. In their essays, students will need to explain their choice and discuss the artefact using concepts related to feminist and/or queer theory.
 

• Define key concepts and identify major approaches in feminist and queer studies of digital media and technology A2
• Identify the ways in which power structures, privilege, and oppression manifest in digital spaces A2
• Discuss how gender and sexuality relate to other socially and culturally meaningful axes of difference A2

• Evaluate and compare various feminist and queer theoretical frameworks in analysing digital media production, content and use B2
• Critically assess the limitations and potential biases of digital media in terms of promoting or inhibiting feminist and queer agendas B2
• Examine the ethical challenges and dilemmas arising from the use of digital media and technology from feminist and queer perspectives B2

• Collaborate with peers to create a zine on the topic of feminist or queer issues in relation to digital media and technology, considering issues of inclusivity and social impact C2.2
• Demonstrate advanced information retrieval and communication skills necessary for creating and publishing a zine C2.2
• Employ critical media literacy skills to deconstruct and challenge stereotypical portrayals of gender and sexuality in various digital media forms C2.1

• Identify and make use of open-access databases of digital images and AI tools for creating digital images D2.2
• Cultivate effective communication skills by participating in class discussions and collaborating with peers on a project D2.2
• Apply subject knowledge to real-life case studies, offering feminist and queer analyses of digital cultural artefacts D2.2

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