Course:WMST307/Syllabus

GRSJ 307:001 Gender and Popular Culture Dr. Janice Stewart Office: 2080 West Mall, Room 137 Jack Bell Building 604-8221391 janice.stewart@ubc.ca Office Hours: Monday 3-4, Tuesday 2-3 IBLC 355 and by appt Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice http://www.grsj.arts.ubc.ca

Course Description This course introduces students to the field of cultural studies, as well as the relationship between popular culture and the media. Students will be asked to look critically at movies, television, radio, and print, in order to ponder a number of important questions. To what extent do the media lead or follow trends in popular culture? The emphasis in the course is on examining cultural artifacts as artistic objects seen in the light of various socio-political contexts. Cultural analysis will be studied to connect what’s ‘popular’ to what’s going on in our society. By taking a closer look at the movies and television shows you are watching, the clothes you are wearing, and the music you listen to, students will endeavour to understand the role of popular culture in maintaining and reproducing the kind of society we live in. We will explore the ways in which each of us is both a user of and is used by popular culture. Popular culture is all around us, influencing how we think, how we feel, how we relate, how we live our lives in countless ways. This course will use your own expertise as consumers of popular culture as a take-off point for exploring the various roles played by mass-mediated popular culture in our lives. We will look primarily at television, film, advertising, and popular music, with occasional forays into other types of pop culture. We will analyze how such critical factors as ethnicity, race, gender, class, age, and sexuality are shaped by and reshaped in popular culture.

Course Objectives • To think about the relationship between what we do with media and the impact on society • To engage critically with theories of cultural studies, media, and the production of gendered bodies • To write critically about popular culture • Examine the various elements of popular culture and how they inform or reflect our attitudes, behavior, and society, in general. • Learn strategies to connect cultural knowledge to everyday life and practices.

Course Texts O’Brien, Susie, and Imre Szeman. Popular Culture: A User’s Guide. 2 ed.

Course Evaluation Participation 20% 3 page paper 15% wiki entry 10% Proposal 15% Case study project 40%

Course Schedule Date Topics Readings Due Dates Sept 11 Welcome to Hogwarts PC CH 1 18 Intro to the field, getting started PC CH 2 and McRobbie 25 Construction of Reality PC CH 3 and Kirrilly

Oct 2 Production of PC PC CH 4

9 Consuming Life PC CH 5 and Katz

16 Identity and Body PC CH 6 and Noble 3 page paper 23 Identity and the Community PC CH 7

• watch Ethnic Notion

30 Subcultures and Countercultures PC CH 8 and Hall

• consider Shades of Grey

Proposal Nov 6 Space n Places PC CH 9

13 Globalization PC CH 10 and Condry

20 Popular culture and Film

27 Conclusions Final project due 1. 3 page paper: choose a central idea in one of the chapters in our text or readings below and explore it with an example. Make a clear connection with a current example. 2. The Keywords Assignment Description A Keyword Map for popular culture In his book Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Raymond Williams described “keywords” as important elements in a living vocabulary (see examples). There have followed other keyword projects (see liberty/freedom). Keywords invite research and reflection because debates about technology, culture, and society can be enhanced by an increased understanding of the multiple genealogies of their structuring terms and the diverse conflicts and disagreements embedded in differing uses of those terms. Your objective in this assignment is to briefly trace and describe, with citations from the readings, how one or more authors utilize this keyword, and then, and importantly, to articulate what thoughtful, inquiry-oriented questions emerge from your readings relative to this keyword and its significance in a scholarly discussion. Your Keyword entry should pay close attention to how an author articulates an argument through your efforts to trace the author’s use of that particular use of that keyword. You can also introduce the history and etymology of the word by consulting and citing the Oxford English Dictionary (available online through the library), while considering it a model for using citations to back its meanings. The 307 Keyword wiki will offer a guide to how various key terms are used in the readings, by presenters, in curriculum documents or the popular press, by providing short citations (with linked references). As such, its entries are not "opinion pieces" nor summaries, but well-documented reflections on how the word is used, accompanied by ongoing questions raised by the term.

(10% of course grade).

2. Proposal of Case Study…2 pages of what you will do and why. What is your research question? How will you work on this project? What are a sense of the resources you will use. 3. Case Study/Research project For this major project, you will be required to observe and research some artifact or phenomenon (of your choosing) of popular culture and produce a 6-8 page essay. Details about what is expected in this essay will be handed out at the appropriate time, but involves observation and research outside to help support your conclusions. The most important aspect of this essay, however, will be formulating a good, solid, and specific question about what it is that you want to know. Therefore, as we go through the first half of this course, if something in particular strikes you as interesting – something that you want to further explore – be sure to start jotting down notes and make a list of questions to which you can later refer. This case study essay will count towards 40% of your final grade.

Additional Course Policies

Assignments: Do not submit electronically. No hand-written assignments will be accepted. Double-space all work. Staple your pages.

• • Bring books to class
  • Attendance. Regular attendance is expected. Excessive absences will negatively affect your grade. In line with Arts policy, students missing 40% of classes for any reason will automatically fail the course.

• • Late penalties will be assessed at 2% per day. Reasonable requests for extensions may be granted, but requests must be made at least 24 hours before the assignment is due. For obvious reasons extensions cannot be granted for the work-shopping and discussion material.

• • Should you have a religious observance that will prevent you from attending class, from completing an assignment on time, or from writing a test, please be sure to let me know at least two weeks in advance so that alternate arrangements can be made. Attendance is essential for this course. Regular absences will result in a failing grade.

• • Please review departmental regulations on plagiarism and cheating so that we can all avoid the unpleasantness of discoveries and of consequences that range from a minimum of a zero on the paper to a maximum of expulsion from the university. In particular, please remember to document all sources, to ensure that all work is fully original and your own, and not e that you may not recycle even your own work from other university courses, from student publications, or from way back in high school. All of these things constitute academic dishonesty. http://www.library.ubc.ca/clc/airc.html

http://www.arts.ubc.ca/faculty-amp-staff/resources/academic-integrity/resources/plagiarism-avoided.html http://www.ryerson.ca/academicintegrity/tutorial.html

• • Medical. Class attendance is mandatory. If you miss class, you will be expected to provide a signed medical certificate, unless special arrangements have been made

Prior to the day (preferably in office hours or by telephone if necessary). If you are experiencing long term illness, please make an appointment at arts advising http://www.arts.ubc.ca/students/degree-planning-advising/advising.html

• • Access Centre. To arrange for accommodations, students with disabilities should

Contact the Access Centre as early as possible, and at latest, 2 weeks before the end of classes. Accommodations begin with registration and are not retroactive: http://www.students.ubc.ca/access/

• • Punctuality. Please arrive in a timely manner.

• • Preparation. Acquire all the required materials for the course, including the

online materials, and bring these materials to class. Come to class prepared to participate in discussions and writing exercises related to the assigned readings.

• • Respect. Listen to and respect each other and avoid ad hominem attacks.

• • Personal Problems. All rules aside, please come and speak to me if you are having any problems that will negatively impact your academic performance.

http://www.arts.ubc.ca/students/degree-planning-advising/advising.html

• • Use a UBC email address for all correspondence with instructors or the University.

Resources http://www.writingcentre.ubc.ca/ http://www.leap.ubc.ca/ http://www.events.ubc.ca/welcome.html http://cstudies.ubc.ca/aes/index.html English Language Support

Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice (GRSJ) is a multidisciplinary field, which brings together teachers andstudents from a variety of academic backgrounds with often quite different ways of articulating and responding to assignments. This diversity is an intellectual asset. Nevertheless, some basics need to be set out so that evaluation procedures can continue to be relatively standardized across all Institute courses. Each instructor will, of course, adapt these general guidelines where necessary in their own course but students should expect that the following guidelines are basic to all courses in the GRSJ Program. GRSJ course assignments follow the conventions of grammar and punctuation expected n al academic writing. Language in GRSJ course assignments is non-sexist, non-racist, and non-heterosexist. Arguments are logical and coherent, and organization of materials is appropriate to the topic. Sources are cited following a consistent footnote and bibliography format as appropriate in the field. Since plagiarism is a serious offense, care should be taken to ensure that materials from other sources are correctly attributed to their authors. How a paper is written and what it says are not separate issues, but rather, components of the whole project and are evaluated accordingly. Statement of Respect: Students, instructors, visitors and readings/media in Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice courses often raise controversial issues in the course of classroom discussion. It is vital that your fellow students and the instructor be treated respectfully at all times and in all interactions. Remember, one can disagree without being disagreeable.

Other Readings 1. Angela McRobbie (2004): Post: Feminism and Popular Culture, Feminist Media Studies, 4:3, 255-264. 2. Jackson Katz (2010): Reconstructing Masculintiy in the Locker Room, Havard Educational Review, 65:2, 163-175. 3. J. Bobby Noble (2007): Refusing to Make Sense, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 11:1-2, 167-17. 4. Kirrilly Thompson (2010): Because looks can be deceiving: media alarm and the Sexualisation of childhood – do we know what we mean?, Journal of Gender Studies, 19:4, 395-400. 5. Stuart Hall (What Is This "Black" in Black Popular Culture? Social Justice, Vol. 20, No. 1/2 (51-52), Rethinking Race (Spring-Summer 1993) 6. Ian Condry (2001): Japanese Hip-Hop and the Globalization of Popular Culture. Urban Life: Readings in the Anthropology of the City. (357-387)