Through an example of your choice, describe and analyse an area of debate in con
Through an example of your choice, describe and analyse an area of debate in contemporary feminist media culture. Show how your example offers an exemplary example of the particular area of debate, contention or challenge that interests you. Draw on specific theoretical frameworks discussed on the module to do so.
Structure A
1. Title
2. Introduction: Case Study
Introduce your case study. This should be an exemplary (unique, outstanding, highly relevant) example of the thing that you are going to be talking about in your essay. This
might be a cultural phenomenon such as the rise of a particular phrase or terminology, a particular book, film, music video or TV series, an institutional practice such as ‘women’s
day’, a national cultural phenomenon such as the NHS clap, or another version of any of the examples we’ve read about in the key readings or talked about in the lecture and seminar,
e.g. a particular protest, a particular speech act, a particular historical moment such as the
‘Blair babes’ that McRobbie talked about.
Possible things to include, i.e. contextual information, when introducing your case study:
– details RE publication
– details RE audience reception, sourced from particular media
– details RE historical specificity (in relation to which other examples does this sit)
– how you came to this example
– how this kind of example has been understood in particular academic literature
Do not use hyperlinks in your assessment, but write out web or social media addresses
according to the referencing style you are following.
3. Introduction: Argument Tell the reader what you’ll be arguing in this case study essay. Tell the reader how you will
be presenting this argument. E.g. ‘I will develop this argument in three stages …’.
4. Introduction: Academic Literature
Tell the reader which body of work, concept, debate, etc. your essay will be examining. Tell
the reader how you will use your case study in order to examine this body of work, concept,
debate, etc.
5. Main Body
Divide into sections if helpful. Probably no more than 3 sections. Each should support your
overall argument. They might be based on 3 different themes, three different examples (e.g.
3 characters from the film), three questions or problems, for example. Or they might be
based on ideas presented by three different authors. You could identify the same
phenomenon you want to talk about in three different asspects of the case study (i.e. here
are examples 1, 2, 3 of the same thing), or arguments for / against / ambiguously related
through your three different aspects (in example 1 we see agreement, in example 2 we see disagreement, example 3 is both agreement and disagreement). There are numerous ways in which you can build your analysis.
Use the readings attached in documents and as references
reference list that you may use：
Alcoff, L. (1988) Cultural feminism versus poststructuralism: The identity crisis. Signs, 13(2): 405–436.
Al-Nakib, M. (2013) Disjunctive synthesis: Deleuze and Arab feminism. Signs, 38(2): 459–482.
Ang, I. (1995) I’m a feminist but … “Other” women and postnational feminism. In: B. Caine and R. Pringle (eds.) Transitions: New Australian Feminisms. London: Allen & Unwin, pp. 57–73. [This essay is reprinted many times, including in Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, Lewis and Mills (eds.)]
Anim-Addo, J. and S. Scafe (eds.) (2007) I am Black/white/yellow: An Introduction to the Black Body in Europe. London: Mango publishing.
Balsamo, A. (1991) Feminism and cultural studies. The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 24(1): 50–73.
Ackerly, B. and J. True (2010) Back to the future: Feminist theory, activism, and doing feminist research in an age of globalization. Women’s Studies International Forum, 33: 464–472.
Cefai, S. (2022) Feminist aesthetics of resistance. In: Todd. W. Reeser (ed.) The Routledge Companion to Gender and Affect. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 227–236.
Banet-Weiser, Sarah, Gill, Rosalind and Catherine Rottenberg (2019) Postfeminism, popular feminism and neoliberal feminism? Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg in conversation. Feminist Theory, 21(1): 3–24.
Zylinska, J. (2018) Exit man. In: The End of Man: A Feminist Counterapocalypse. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 27–30.
Background reading
Haraway, Donna (1991) A cyborg manifesto. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books, pp. 149–181.
Little, Ben and Alison Winch (2021) Elon Musk: Geek masculinity and marketing the celebrity founder. In: The New Patriarchs of Digital Capitalism: Celebrity Tech Founders and Networks of Power.
Ben Little and Alison Winch (2021) Elon Musk: Geek masculinity and marketing the celebrity founder
Alcoff, L.M. (2018) Rape and Resistance: Understanding the Complexities of Sexual Violation. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Alcoff, L.M. (1996) Dangerous pleasures: Foucault and the politics of pedophilia. In S. Hekman (ed.) Feminist Interpretations of Foucault, pp. 99–136. University Park: Pennsylvania State Press.
Barker, M.-J., Gill, R. and L. Harvey (2018) Mediated Intimacy: Sex Advice in Media Culture. Cambridge and Medford, MA: Polity.
Beres, M.A. and J. E.C. MacDonald (2015) Talking about sexual consent: Heterosexual women and BDSM. Australian Feminist Studies, 30(86): 418–432.
Katherine Angel (2021) On consent.
Virginie Despentes ([2006] 2020) You can’t rape a woman who’s a total slut.
Laura Kipnis (2017) Introduction: Sexual paranoia on campus.
Choose one from below:
Angela McRobbie (2020) Feminism and the politics of resilience
Angela McRobbie (2007) Top Girls? Young Women and the Post-Feminist Sexual Contract