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Course overview

 

Online teaching

We are now offering many of our courses online (over Zoom or similar platforms). No prior experience with these platforms is required. Continue learning with us by taking courses remotely via live distance learning.

 

This is a great introduction into feminist and queer studies and its relationship to the archive, which are spaces that hold different narratives and histories about how we once lived, informing us about the past, present and future. This holds an important place within feminist and queer scholarship, enabling us to understand how racialised and gendered histories live on. Through media examples we will explore how LGBTQ artists and activists use the archive in their cultural interventions.

The American author, feminist and social activist bell hooks articulates that “confronting the ways women-through sex, class and race-dominated other women” is the basis for a truly liberatory and empowering feminist framework. Through an analysis of media examples, this unique course will provide you with a fascinating overview of, and accessible way into, feminist and queer studies. We will put feminism and queerness in conversation with the archive – a space in which we can understand the past, present and future in parallel - gaining an insight into the major themes and intersections within these fields. We’ll cover film, photography, television and archival material in order to address the body, gender politics and erotic desire through an intersectional lens. You will be encouraged throughout to develop new ways of thinking about gender and sexuality. This is ideal for former or future students within the arts, gender, media and cultural studies, who are looking to develop or build further on their existing knowledge or interests.

You will not only learn about feminist and queer studies, but also how to present your ideas, develop arguments, analyse media examples and how to conduct research through a feminist and queer framework. Towards the end of the course you will have the opportunity to present and receive feedback on a topic of your choice based on the themes you have explored over the duration of the course.

Why Study this Course?

  • Gain insight into key issues within sexuality, gender, race and media studies
  • Develop a variety of approaches and skills to analyse media examples
  • Learn to reflect upon the relationship between feminism and the media
  • Understand how film and media shape our understanding of sexuality
  • Learn to understand key theoretical concepts which shape the intersections of feminism, sexuality, race and media studies

Fees

£310

Booking information

Disability Support

We are committed to providing reasonable teaching adjustments for students with disabilities that may impact on their learning experience. If you require adjustments, please complete the relevant section on the booking form and also contact us at shortcourses@gold.ac.uk so we can respond to your requests as soon as possible. 

Please note our short courses sell-out quickly, so early booking is advisable.

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Enquiries

If you have any questions about this course please contact shortcourses (@gold.ac.uk) .

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Location

Online

Tutor information


Chandra Frank

Chandra Frank

Chandra Frank is a feminist researcher who works on the intersections of archives, waterways, gender, sexuality, and race. Her curatorial practice explores the politics of care, experimental forms of narration, and the colonial grammar embedded within display and exhibition arrangements. Chandra earned a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and exhibition catalogues, including Feminist Review, the Small Axe VLOSA catalogue, The Place is Here publication and the collection Tongues. She recently co-edited a special issue on Archives for Feminist Review. Her curated exhibitions include Re(as)sisting Narratives (Amsterdam/Cape Town), Fugitive Desires (London), and Proclamation 73 (Durban, co-curated with Zara Julius). Chandra curated the 2016 Archives Matter Conference at the Centre for Feminist Research at Goldsmiths. Chandra has taught at Goldsmiths, School for International Training, and California State University in Los Angeles. Her areas of teaching include queer and feminist theory, popular culture, visual cultures, and critical race studies.

Olivia Barnett-Naghshineh

Olivia Barnett-Naghshineh

Dr Olivia Barnett-Naghshineh has long been interested in questions of colonisation, environment and activism across contexts including student movements in Togo, the food sovereignty movements in Mali and resistance to settler-colonialism in Aotearoa New Zealand. She completed twelve months of fieldwork in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea and gained her PhD in social anthropology from Aotearoa New Zealand, University of Auckland. Her teaching and writing focus on questions of value, gender and exchange with an emphasis on affect, aesthetics and colonial capitalism. She is currently working on a transdisciplinary project on historical approaches to understanding food systems in the Caribbean at the University of Exeter with colleagues at the University of West Indies, University of Cambridge and University of York. In the future, she hopes to develop a cross-sectoral project with colleagues in Papua New Guinea to create a living seed bank and an indigenous food knowledge database. 

Tutor Aditi sitting by the river smiling into the camera

Aditi Jaganathan

Aditi is a PhD candidate at Brunel, University of London. With an MSc in Human Rights, Conflict and Justice from SOAS, she has worked with numerous Black and brown grassroots organisations to bring a holistic and nuanced approach to human rights advocacy and social justice.

Aditi’s current work looks at the nexus between Black and brown cultural production in Britain, with a particular interest in creativity as decolonial praxis.  Through her PhD, she explores the ways in which Black and brown creativity, audio-visual culture specifically, interrupts narratives of British coloniality, from the 1980s to the present.

 

Course structure

Week 1: Introduction

  • Introductions
  • The course content, objectives and outcomes will be discussed
  • There will be a collective reading of a short text to provide you with an insight into the type of literature which will be covered in the course

Week 2: Mapping Queer and Feminist Studies

  • A history of different types of feminism(s) will be outlined and analysed through a critical lens
  • The purpose and power of feminism will be explored using bell hooks’ text, looking at the consciousness raising element of feminism as a radical praxis
  • A history of queer studies will then be outlined with a focus on queer of colour perspectives
  • The intersection between queer of colour theory and women of colour feminisms will be reflected upon with reference to the El Tayeb reading on queering ethnicity in Europe
  • To illustrate the importance of an intersectional view of queer and feminist histories, there will be a short screening of Gay Black Group (United Kingdom, 1983, 24min)

Week 3: Media Studies and Sexuality

  • Sexuality within the media will be discussed through looking at different media case study examples
  • The construction of sexuality in the media will be explored through a feminist lens
  • Drawing on critical media studies, students will engage in an interactive discussion on power, agency and audiences

Week 4: The Use of Archives

  • A look at the role of archives and the types of knowledge(s) that are conserved in archival spaces
  • Through looking at Esteban’s work, the concept of archive will be queered, illustrating how archives may be located in unexpected places and home different types of knowledge, emergent knowledge
  • There will be a screening of Marlon Rigg’s work to illustrate how an avant-garde piece of work by Black queer filmmaker Marlon Riggs speaks to the power of the archive

Week 5: On Queerness and Diaspora

  • The relationship between queerness and diaspora will be built upon to illustrate the power of “queer diaspora” in capturing the nuanced histories of those whose identities have marginally positioned
  • Racialised subjectivities within queer spaces will be explored using Gloria Anzaldúa’s work on women of colour feminisms and sexualities
  • The diasporic element will be further consolidated through reflecting on transnational queer and feminists relationships that forged solidarity and intimacy

Week 6: Black and brown Audio Visual Culture: British Perspectives

  • Tracing the history of Black and brown audio-visual culture in Britain from the 1980s onwards
  • A brief look at the infrastructure and institutional support that enabled Black and brown creatives to craft experimental work
  • An analysis of the textual, political and social potency of the work in the context of anti-racist movements and an expansion on the concepts of diaspora, identity, Blackness and queer.
  • A look at how this work correlates with a politics and praxis of resistance

Week 7: Feelings, Intimacy and Affect

  • The affective cartography of different sexualities will be explored here, with a deep analysis on tactility, trauma and affect theory
  • The ways in which trauma and colonial histories effect intimacy and affect will be analysed
  • Sarah Ahmed’s work on happiness will be used to interrogate how certain feelings may be socially conditioned and bend according to the will of patriarchal and racist structures

Week 8: Navigating Desire and Race

  • The racialisation of desire will be explored. Desire will be interrogated through the prism of colonial histories, looking at how this impacts on the ways in which certain racialised subjectivities may be represented and perceived

Week 9: Pleasure Politics

  • The power of pleasure in its nuanced and capacious conceptualisation shall be built upon using the work of Audre Lorde and contemporary feminists
  • Pleasure as resistance will be explored in the context of histories of racialised oppression and sexism

Week 10: Class Presentations

  • You will share a 5 minute presentation on a selected case study based on the themes from the course

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course you will have:

  • An understanding of the key themes of feminist and queer of colour studies
  • Developed the skills to analyse media examples
  • Reflected on various constructions of femininity, masculinity and sexuality
  • Discussed, shared and collaborated with other participants
  • Demonstrated critical thinking and analysed various approaches to race, gender and media

About the department

Our Department of Media and Communications is committed to asking the hard questions about the media that will change the world in the 21st century. We are ranked 8th in the world for communication and media studies, and 1st in the UK for the quality of research. The Department works closely with the Centre for Feminist Research and the Centre for Investigative Journalism, as well as housing important research centres in media democracy and political economy.

As well as offering a range of undergraduate programmes, the department plays host to a range of dynamic and innovative postgraduate pathways. The Screen School houses a number of highly renowned filmmaking and scriptwriting programmes, and regularly hosts events in their state of the art lecture theatres and studios in the Professor Stuart Hall Building. The Department is devoted to integrating criticism and creation, through a mixture and theory and practice at all levels of study. Industry speakers, networking events, careers fairs and the option to undertake work placements alongside international exchange programmes connect us to the wide world of media work

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