For historian Joan Scott, gender is a useful category for historical analysis. For transactivist Leslie Feinberg, gender is poetry. For Black feminists, such as Angela Davis and Kimberlé Crenshaw, gender is inextricable from race, class, and sexuality. This course examines the complex and fluid concept of gender as it manifests in media forms of the widest sense (including human and cyber bodies, print and online news, graphic novels, movies, television, web series, and performing arts). We will study the ways in which gender identities are imposed, resisted, and lived, focusing on the role of media in transmitting, shaping, maintaining, and transforming representations of gender. Students will analyze gendered and racialized language and embodiment within the fields of art, activism, popular culture, and the law, and will consider how the intersection of gender and race impacts the construction of media. The course provides an introduction to feminist approaches to media studies, drawing on Black feminism, queer theory, disability studies, psychoanalysis, memoir, and journalism. NOTE: This course was formerly titled "Gender & Visual Culture" in Fall 2019. The content overlaps significantly. Please email the instructor for more details.