COMM 6300

Media and Sexuality

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2022-2023.

This course investigates how sexuality, broadly conceived, is produced, represented, and enacted through a variety of media. We will consider how groups of people collectively produce their erotic identifications, practices, and connections through media and in space. These affinities may be transient or life-long, co-present or virtual, of the majority or marginalized. Rather than assuming sex is a private matter, we will analyze the ways sexuality is constituted through media engagements, in physical and online spaces, and in the ways that mediated desire play out in broad movements of consumerism and neoliberal aspirations. We will consider sexual cultures from a transnational perspective and in historical context. The course will address how structural hierarchies such as gender, race, sexual identification, and location help to shape sexual media.

When Offered Fall.

• Evaluate a variety of contemporary analyses of media and sexuality.
• Identify intersections among media, sexuality, gender, race, and class.
• Appraise the significance of historical and geographical specificity in mediated sexuality.
• Situate media studies within broader approaches to sexuality.
• Conduct an independent research project with particular attention to writing-as-research.

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