Course Description

At the core of the course is the question how feminism has become a demonized and ridiculed “F-word” in an age when issues of gender and sexuality are at the center of constant, often explosive political debates. These debates often connect media representation and political representation but tend to do so in simplistic ways that bypass or distort decades of sophisticated feminist theory and practice. We will trace back such representations through the decades around case studies that encompass film, video, television and new media practices. The case studies come from the United States and beyond, taking into full account the global interconnectedness of media production and consumption as well as the transnational travel of feminist ideas. The main goal of the course is to evaluate how useful feminist thinking is to understanding the relays between media and political representation; and to develop a lasting critical apparatus to analyzing the politics of gender and sexuality in the media.


Friday, December 6, 2013

Nancy Fraser "Mapping the Feminist Imagination"

Through Fraser's article "Mapping the Feminist Imagination" in which he describes the growth throughout time and locations of women, it greatly made me question the future of women. He goes to say that "feminists throughout the world are linking struggles against local patriarchal practices to campaigns to reform international law". The result is a new phase of feminist politics in which gender justice is being reframed. This phase seeks to challenge injustices of maldistribution and injustices. Feminists he also states are targeting a newly visible meta-injustice which he categorizes as misframing. Misframing is a form of injustice that denies the poor and leaves them without the power to press transnational claims. This however has been emerging as a central target of feminist politics in its transnational stage. Fraser stresses its importance that by confronting misframing "this phase of feminist politics is making visible a third dimension of gender justice beyond redistribution and recognition. He calls  this third dimension, Representation, which is not only a matter of ensuring equal political vice for women in already constituted political communities. It also requires reframing disputes that can not be properly contained within established polities. Fraser's article taught me just how important contesting misframing within now and the future is in that it reconfigures gender justice as a three-dimensional problem in which redistribution, recognition, and representation must be integrated in a balanced way.

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