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 course includes a reading week in Week 6 of term.

All students are expected to complete advance reading, participate actively in seminar discussions and submit one essay of 1500 words.

• Banet-Weiser, S. (2018).  Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Diabate, N. (2020). Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Gill, R. (2007). Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility. European journal of cultural Studies, 10(2), 147-166.
• Grewal, I. (2005). Transnational America: feminisms, diasporas, neoliberalisms. Duke University Press.
• Keller, J, Ringrose, J, and Mendes, K. (2019). Digital Feminist Activism: Girls and Women Fight Back Against Rape Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• 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 (100%, 3000 words) in the ST.