Feminism in Popular Culture
What you'll learn
- This course will trace the emergence of new types of women in popular culture, in television and film.
- Students will discuss shows such as Jane the Virgin, Ugly Betty, Orange is the New Black, & Crazy Ex Girlfriend.
- The class will look at how themes of the women's movement are represented and taken to a broader level.
- For example, we will compare two Star Trek episodes of women-dominated planets, one from 1968 and another fro 1988.
Requirements
- Be able to buy and read books, watch shows on Netflix and Hulu, post regularly.
- Be able to research topics online.
- Be able to make comparisons between shows.
- Be able to spot themes
Description
This course will trace the emergence of new types of women in popular culture,, particularly in television, and offer students the opportunity to follow and discuss shows of their liking such as Jane the Virgin, Ugly Betty, Orange is the New Black, and Crazy Ex Girlfriend, using communication critics such as Susan Douglas, whose Where the Girls Are lays out themes and paradigms of study from traditional shows since the early days of television. The class will look at how themes of the women's movement are represented and taken to a broader level incorporating issues such as body size, new family forms, class, ethnicity, reproductive rights, and career choices as well as intergenerational strife among women. Students will participate in weekly forums at first structured around an article comparing two forms of all-women societies on planets in Star Trek created in 1968 and 1988, , and then around more current shows representing issues of contemporary times. The forums will create safe spaces to discuss gender challenges and transformation that is going on at a very rapid pace today.
Who this course is for:
- Viewers of popular culture;
- anyone interested in feminism and the impact of the women;s liberation movement on mass culture
- television and film fanatics
Instructor
![Batya Weinbaum](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.7 Instructor Rating
- 5 Reviews
- 22 Students
- 1 Course
Batya Weinbaum holds a doctorate in English from University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She founded and edits the journal Femspec and has published 17 books as well as over 500 articles, poems, reviews and pieces of short fiction in feminist and other media. She has been an online professor since 2007 and has taught at universities such as Empire State of SUNY, SUNY Buffalo, East Carolina, Cleveland State, Tiffen, Life, and Pacifica. Her dissertation, Islands of Women and Amazons: Representations and Realities, was originally published by U of Texas Press and is available as an ebook on Amazon. She is a member of the Authors Guild, Science Fiction Research Association, and the Association for the Study of Women in Mythology.