How do popular media (film, television, music) represent race, class, gender, and sexuality?
How is your identity (race, gender, class, etc.) affected by and represented through the popular culture you consume?
What is the relationship between identity and politics, and what are some of the recent and current debates around identity in the US?
What is privilege and how do various social institutions and popular culture perpetuate systems of privilege and inequality in the United States?
Suggested Readings
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
McIntosh, ‘White Privilege and Male Privilege”
Sample Assignments/Activities
Have students come to class with a list of their favorite childhood books and toys. Use this as a starting point for a discussion on the ways that gender is socially constructed in childhood.
Analyze Halloween costumes for their racial and gender implications and to help students understand the concept of cultural appropriation.
Use LookDifferent.org website and commercials to start class discussion.
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