MSc Gender, Media and Culture

About the MSc programme

The programme is taught jointly by the Gender Institute and the Media and Communications Department. It is administered from the Gender Institute. The programme employs a gender perspective to critically examine such questions as how representations in the media may reinforce or subvert social roles and ideologies; how gendered forms of address and identification have been theorised across different visual and print cultures; the role of a variety of media forms in critiquing or contributing to wider social processes such as globalisation, conflict and migration. Students are encouraged to interrogate a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to the gendered analysis of contemporary media and culture. In addition to the core units in gender theory, media and communication and gender and media representation students can choose from a range of options in the two departments. All students on this programme are housed within the Gender Institute.

Theories and Concepts in Media and Communications (Media and Power) involves ten one hour lectures and one and a half hour seminars weekly. Gender Theories in the Modern World is taught through one and a half hour lectures and seminars, and the course in Gender and Media Representation is taught through a series of one hour lectures and seminars. A series of dissertation workshops are held during the Lent term and are compulsory.

You will be assessed by written examinations, a series of research assignments, essays related to the substantive courses and the dissertation, which must be submitted on 1 September (or the first working day after if it falls on a weekend).

You may take the course part-time by taking courses equivalent to two units in each year.

All students on the programme will have an academic adviser who will be allocated upon arrival. Dissertation supervision is allocated in the Lent term. 

The programme involves the completion of four courses including a dissertation.

Compulsory courses

(* half unit)

• Gender Theories in the Modern World: An Interdisciplinary Approach
• Gender and Media Representation*
• Methods of Research in Media and Communications (including Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis)* or Gender, Knowledge and Research Practice* or Qualitative Research With Non-Traditional Data*

Dissertation of 10,000 words on a topic in gender and the media, which is approved by your tutors. This should reflect both learning from the media and gender components of the MSc.

Options

Theories and Concepts in Media and Communications I (Key concepts and interdisciplinary approaches)|* and one other half unit course offered by the Gender Institute or the Department of Media and Communications

or Theories and Concepts in Media and Communications II (Processes of communication in modern life)|* and one other half unit course offered by the Gender Institute or the Department of Media and Communications

Gender Institute options are likely to include:

• Cultural Constructions of the Body*
• Screening the Present: Contemporary Cinema and Cultural Critique*
• Globalising Sexualities*
• Gender and Militarisation*
• Global Media Industries*