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Film, Media & Gender (325-0-70)

Topic

Girls' Media Culture

Instructors

Kirsten Pike

Meeting Info

Northwestern Qatar Room 2-256: Tues, Su 2:30PM - 3:45PM (AST)

Overview of class

Although media made for girls has long been derided as silly and undeserving of close attention, to the millions of preteen and teen girls who consume it, it is anything but insignificant. From novels and movies in the 1930s featuring teen sleuth Nancy Drew to contemporary films and TV shows such as Whip It, Wadjda, and That's So Raven, girls' media artifacts have functioned as important historical sites for the negotiation of cultural politics and youthful feminine ideals. In order to shed light on the often-overlooked history of girls' media, this course offers a critical investigation of (primarily) U.S. girls' media from the 1930s to the present, including novels, films, TV shows, advertisements, music videos, teen magazines, toys, and new media. We will investigate girls' media artifacts as aesthetic, political, and commercial texts through which youth have interfaced with lessons about gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, national identity, and generation at different historical moments. Although American commercial media will be taken up as our main object of study, students will have opportunities to explore media made outside the U.S. in their own research projects, and we will consider girls' independent production and reception practices in both Western and non-Western contexts. Ultimately, the goals of the course are: 1) to explore the dominant strategies utilized by the media industries to represent female youth and their concerns, as well as those utilized by girls in practices of self-representation; 2) to examine girls' reception of and diverse engagements with media; and 3) to consider how the landscape of girls' media production and consumption has changed, and resisted change, over time.

Registration Requirements


  • Prerequisites: None

  • Open to Sophomores and above, MIT majors only

    • Enrollment Requirements

    Enrollment Requirements: Registration is reserved for COMM Majors who are Sophomores and above.