Spring 2009

WGS 345 • Girls' Media and Cultural Studies

Course Description

This course exposes students to girls' media and female youth cultures, and focuses on girl-oriented research in critical media studies, cultural studies, and communication studies. Though the majority of the class will focus on Anglo/American girls' media and female youth cultures of the twentieth century, students will engage with some historical research on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century girls and their cultural experiences. The course will explore girlhood as a unique identity and female youth cultures as unique social formations, and trace the representation of both in popular and alternative media. In addition to problematizing sex and gender through explorations of their intersections with age and generation, special attention will be paid to how race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality impinge upon particular formations of girls' identities, female youth cultures, and the representation of girlhood in popular culture.

Girls' Media and Cultural Studies exposes students to the various theoretical and methodological approaches that have been used to analyze Anglo/American girls' media and female youth cultures. The course will begin with an exploration of the various ideological dynamics that, prior to the 1980s, led to the exclusion of girls from feminist politics and research, as well as from scholarship focused on adolescence and youth cultures. Following an examination of the contexts leading to the rise of Girls' Studies during the 1990s, the course will focus primarily on girl-oriented research in critical media studies, cultural studies, and communication studies. In addition to problematizing sex and gender through explorations of age and generation, and vice versa, special attention will be paid to how issues of race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality impinge upon particular formations of girls' identities, female youth cultures, and the representation of girlhood in popular culture. Though the majority of the class will focus on girls' media and culture during the twentieth century, students will engage with some historical research on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century girls and their cultural experiences.

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