Dr Simidele Dosekun

This course is available on the MSc in Gender, Media and Culture, MSc in Global Media and Communications (LSE and Fudan), MSc in Global Media and Communications (LSE and UCT), MSc in Global Media and Communications (LSE and USC), MSc in Media and Communications, MSc in Media, Communication and Development and MSc in Politics and Communication. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Media have been crucial to feminist politics across the globe, from 19th century pamphlets to early television representations to 90s zine culture to the multitude of hashtag feminisms in contemporary social media.  This course explores the ways that feminisms in both the Global South and North are enacted through and represented on a variety of media platforms, from print to digital. Topics we will consider include: mainstream and alternative feminist media productions; the meanings and politics of feminist visibility and even popularity; feminist uses of the body as a medium of activism and communication; and mediated reactions to feminisms, including misogynist and sexist ones. The course draws on theories from cultural and media studies, creative industry studies, film studies and gender studies, and throughout we will take an intersectional and transnational approach, thinking of and across multiple forms and sites of ‘difference.’ The course is intended for MSc students interested in acquiring a broad cultural-theoretical understanding of the role that media play in defining feminisms for broad audiences, as well as those who are interested in feminist media productions across history.

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars totalling a minimum of 25 hours across Lent Term. This year, some or all of this teaching will be delivered through a combination of online lectures and in-person classes/classes delivered online. This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of term.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the LT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 x 1500 word formative essay in the LT.

• Amrita Basu. (2018). Women’s Movements in the Global Era: The Power of Local Feminisms. 2nd Edition. London: Routledge.

• Diabate, N. (2020). Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa. Durham: Duke University Press.

• Dow, Bonnie. (2014). 1970: Watching Woman’s Liberation: Feminism’s Pivotal Year on the News. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

• Friedman, E. J. (2017). Interpreting the internet: Feminist and queer counterpublics in Latin America. Oakland: University of California Press.

• Grewal, I. and Kaplan, C. (1994). Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

• Hegde, R. (2011).  Circuits of Visibility: Gender and Transnational Media Cultures. New York: New York University Press.

• Jackson, S. J., Bailey, M., & Welles, B. F. (2020). # HashtagActivism: Networks of race and gender justice. Cambridge: MIT Press.

• Kearney, M. (2006).  Girls Make Media.  New York: Routledge.

• Keller, J, Ringrose, J, and Mendes, K. (2019). Digital Feminist Activism: Girls and Women Fight Back Against Rape Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press

• Noble, S., & Tynes, Brendesha M. (eds) (2016).  The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class, and Culture Online. New York: Peter Lang.

• Shohat, E. and Stam, R. (eds) (2003) Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality and Transnational Media, New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.

• Yang, M. M. H. (Ed.). (1999). Spaces of their own: Women’s public sphere in transnational China. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

• Banet-Weiser, S. (2018).  Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

• Dobson, A. (2015). Postfeminist digital cultures: Femininity, social media, and self-representation. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 1st Ed.

• Gill, R. (2007). Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility. European journal of cultural Studies, 10(2), 147-166.

• Gilson, Erinn (2014). The Ethics of Vulnerability: A Feminist Analysis of Social Life and Practice. Routledge.

• Gray, H. (2013). Subject (ed) to Recognition. American Quarterly, 65(4), 771-798.

• Grewal, I. (2005). Transnational America: feminisms, diasporas, neoliberalisms. Duke University Press.

• Hasinoff, A. A. (2015). Sexting panic: Rethinking criminalization, privacy, and consent. University of Illinois Press.

• McRobbie, A. (2009). The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and social change. Sage.

• Piepmeier,  Alison. (2009). Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism. New York: NYU Press

• Sobande, F. (2020). The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

• Zeisler, A. (2016). We were feminists once: From Riot Grrrl to Covergirl: The buying and selling of a political movement, New York: Public Affairs.

Essay (80%, 2000 words) in the ST.
Assignment (20%).

The summative assessment consists of a 2,000 word essay (80%) and the production of a feminist media artifact, product or plan, e.g. a socia media plan, a pitch for a reality TV show, a zine etc (20%). For the media production component of the assessment, students do not have to have experience in production; this is more of a creative assignment to think through the connections between feminist theories and how these theories might be represented in media productions. Assessment will be based on how well-thought out the product is, and the ability to apply ideas from the course to a media product.

Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.