Women and Popular Culture: Images, Consumers, Creators Dr. April Schultz
Course Description:
This course begins from the premise that popular culture is not only historically and culturally situated, but has a profound effenct on the way we think about and experience gender in American culture. In terms of popular culture in general, rather than view it as a "lure" for a mass audience that mindlessly consumes every product it is offered, we will analyze popular culture texts for their often contradictory meanings and uses and for the social and cultural dynamics they represent. In terms of women and popular culture, we will analyze not only representations of gender in popular culture texts, but the complex responses to those representations by female audiences as well as the efforts of female artists to intervene in those representations. This course will address issues and debates about women and popular culture through theoretical readings and specific analyses of popular culture texts, including fiction, film, television, and music video.
Required Books (Available at Hammes' Book Store):
E. Deidre Pribram, ed., Female Spectators
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Tania Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance
Jackie Byars, All the Hollywood Allow: Gender in 1950s Melodrama
Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature
Lisa Lewis, Gender Politics and MTV
Anne Cranny-Franicis, Feminist Fiction
Reading Packet available at LaFortune Copy Center:
Andreas Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other" Judith Williamson, "Woman is an Island: Femininity and Colonization" Nina Baym, "Woman's Fiction" and "The Form and Ideology of Woman's Fiction" Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" Michelle Wallace, selections from Invisibility Blues
Remaining readings in the packet will be divided up for class presentations.
Assignments and Evaluation:
Leading discussion and general participation: approx. 20%
This course is a seminar, which requires everyone to participate fully in discussions. You will be graded on your participation and your engagement with the material. Therefore, attendance and preparation are mandatory. I will permit only two absences (equivalent to one week of class) before I begin to penalize your grade. Please let me know of any extenuating circumstances.
In addition, once during the semester, you will work with two or three class mates on an oral presentation of a reading which will form the basis of a class discussion.
Exams: approx. 80%
You will be given three take-home essay exams--two midterms of 4-6 pages (25% each) and a final essay of 6-8 pages (30%). I will give you a choice of questions to answer which will allow you to synthesize and analyze course materials, lectures, and discussions.
Guidelines:
--All papers and assignments are to be turned in at the beginning of class
on the day they are due. NO LATE PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED.
--NO INCOMPLETES WILL BE ACCEPTED.
--ALL PAPERS MUST BE TYPED, DOUBLESPACED, AND PROPERLY DOCUMENTED.
--Students taking the course pass/fail must follow all guidelines, including
attendance, in order to pass the course.
CLASS SCHEDULE
Week 1 Popular Culture
1/16 Introduction
Week 2
1/21 Women and Popular Culture: Representation and Resistance
Reading: Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other"
Williamson, "Woman is an Island: Femininity and Colonization"
1/23 Creating a Woman's Narrative
Reading: Baym, "Woman's Fiction" and "Form and Ideology of Woman's Fiction"
Week 3
1/28 Reading: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Volume 1
1/30 Reading: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Volume 11 Andreas Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other" Judith Williamson, "Woman is an Island: Femininity and Colonization" Nina Baym, "Woman's Fiction" and "The Form and Ideology of Woman's Fiction" Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" Michelle Wallace, selections from Invisibility Blues
Remaining readings in the packet will be divided up for class presentations.
Assignments and Evaluation:
Leading discussion and general participation: approx. 20%
This course is a seminar, which requires everyone to participate fully in discussions. You will be graded on your participation and your engagement with the material. Therefore, attendance and preparation are mandatory. I will permit only two absences (equivalent to one week of class) before I begin to penalize your grade. Please let me know of any extenuating circumstances.
In addition, once during the semester, you will work with two or three class mates on an oral presentation of a reading which will form the basis of a class discussion.
Exams: approx. 80%
You will be given three take-home essay exams--two midterms of 4-6 pages (25% each) and a final essay of 6-8 pages (30%). I will give you a choice of questions to answer which will allow you to synthesize and analyze course materials, lectures, and discussions.
Guidelines:
--All papers and assignments are to be turned in at the beginning of class
on the day they are due. NO LATE PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED.
--NO INCOMPLETES WILL BE ACCEPTED.
--ALL PAPERS MUST BE TYPED, DOUBLESPACED, AND PROPERLY DOCUMENTED.
--Students taking the course pass/fail must follow all guidelines, including
attendance, in order to pass the course.
CLASS SCHEDULE
Week 1 Popular Culture
1/16 Introduction
Week 2
1/21 Women and Popular Culture: Representation and Resistance
Reading: Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other"
Williamson, "Woman is an Island: Femininity and Colonization"
1/23 Creating a Woman's Narrative
Reading: Baym, "Woman's Fiction" and "Form and Ideology of Woman's Fiction"
Week 3
1/28 Reading: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Volume 1
1/30 Reading: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Volume 11
Week 4
2/4 Early Feminism and Popular Culture
Reading: Gilman, "Yellow Wallpaper"
2/6 Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women
Reading: Modleski, 11-58
Week 5
2/11 Reading: Modleski, 58-114
2/13 Early Film and Gender Politics
Class Presentation on May, "Revitalization" and "Politics Dissolved"
Week 6
2/18 Midterm #1 Due
Feminist Film Theory and Popular Culture
Reading: Pribram, 1-44
2/20 Reading: Pribram, 64-89
Week 7
2/25 "Dance, Girls, Dance"
2/27 "Dance, Girls, Dance"
Week 8
3/3 Cultural Studies and Melodrama
Reading: Byars, 1-66
3/5 Reading: Byars, 67-131
Week 9 Midsemester Break
Week 10
3/17 Reading: Byars, 132-209
Class Presentations on Mellencamp, " Situation Comedy, Feminism and
Freud" and Rogin, "Kiss Me Deadly"
3/19 Popular Culture, Race, Gender and Class
Reading: Byars, 210-258
Week 11
3/24 Reading: Pribram, 90-109; Wallace selections
3/26 Reader Response and Popular Culture
Reading: Radway, 1-18, 46-118
Week 12
3/31 Midterm #2 Due
Reading: Radway, 119-222
4/2 No Class
Week 13
4/7 Representation and Reception
Reading: Lewis, 3-54
4/9 Reading: Lewis, 55-148
Week 14
4/14 Reading: Lewis, 149-224
Class presentations on McClary, "A Material Girl in Bluebeard's
Castle" and "Living to Tell"
4/16 Women Artists and Popular Culture Institutions
Reading: Cranny-Francis, 1-106
Week 15
4/21 Reading: Cranny-Francis, 107-176, 193-208
4/23 Reading: Pribram, 45-63, 157-173
Week 16 Contemporary Film and Gender Politics--Class discussion and analysis
4/28 Out of class screening of "Silence of the Lambs"
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