Lectures: Saturday, Oct. 20, 10:00 am - 1:00 pm
Setting the agenda for the working group: Saturday, Oct. 20, 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Working group (independent): Friday, Oct. 26 – Sunday Oct. 28 (16 hrs)
Presentation: Monday, Oct 29, 10:00 – 4:30 pm (30 min.)

General methodology:

The two seminars (Gender & Religion, and Gender & the Media) will consist of a theoretical and a practical part:

1. First the students learn about existing theories and methodologies related to each field/topic of analysis (from various assigned articles). For that purpose they will be required to come to the seminar having read the assigned articles and prepared to discuss them in class.
2. Then these theories and methodologies are, as much as possible, examined, critiqued, and applied to specific cases (novels, films, television programs, magazines, advertisements, segments of Scriptures, etc.). Whenever possible, relevant scenes from films or television will be shown and discussed in class.

Seminar on Gender & the Media

Objectives:

This seminar aims at introducing students to the representation of men and women in the mass media in general and to feminist media studies in particular. Related theories will be applied to the study of particular cases involving the representation of women & men in various audio-visual media and art forms (films, television, books, magazines, etc.).  The purpose of this examination is twofold:

1.       to establish whether or not a pattern of representation actually exists, to identify this pattern and the extent to which men and women are similarly represented, and to examine whether this pattern is problematic (e.g. detrimental to women or men).

2.       to examine the various theories and methods of feminist media studies , their validity/usefulness as research tools, and their limitations.

Required readings (selected articles or chapters from books)

• -.Collins J. et al (1993) Film Theory Goes to the Movies , London: Routledge. [chapter 13, ‘The Big Switch: Hollywood Masculinity in the Nineties’, pp. 196 to 208]
• - Dabbous-Sensenig, D. (2006) ‘To veil or not to veil: gender and religion on Al-Jazeera’s Islamic Law and Life’ in Westminster Papers for Communication and Culture (WPCC), issue on Media and Religion, published by the University of Westminster, London, Vol. 3(2), 60-85. Available online at www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/pdf/4%20-%20To_Veil_or_not_to_Veil.pdf
•    Dabbous-Sensenig, D. (1999). “Who is the Prettiest One of All?  Hollywood Cinema, Egyptian Cinema, and the Recycling of Fairy Tales: A Structural Feminist Analysis”, in Al-Raida (The Pioneer), Vol. 16, No. 86-87, Summer-Fall 1999, Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World (IWSAW), Beirut.
• -.Global Media Monitoring Project  2000. Who Makes the News? , published by the World Association for Christian Communication, London. [pp. 10 to 36]
• Macdonald, M. (1995). Representing Women: Myths of Femininity in the Popular Media. London: Arnold. [chapter 3 ‘From Mrs. Happyman to kissing chaps goodbye’, pp. 73 to 102].
• -Mulvey, L. (1989) Visual and Other Pleasures [ chapter 3 on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, pp. 14 to 26]
• -Van Zoonen, L. (1994) Feminist Media Studies , London: Sage Publications.  [chapter 5: Media Texts and Gender, pp. 66 to 86]