Gender, Sexuality and Digital Culture (862P4A)

30 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Autumn teaching

This module seeks to explore relationships between the 'hardness' of technology and the 'softness' of the body. Moving through cyber-feminism and cyber-queer studies to critiques of social networking and reconfigurations of space - both public and private - the module seeks to engage with the diverse range of connections made daily between gendered subjects and technologies of media production and reception.

The aim is to provide you with an array of critical approaches that will allow you to discuss, analyse and critique such connections at a depth commensurate with M-Level work. While popularly conceived as an opposition to the organic, the corporeal and the subjective, technologies of mediation are intrinsically linked to and indelibly marked by issues of embodiment just as our understanding of the body has historically been coded through technologies of media production and reception.

Hollywood deploys the post-organic as a means of expressing contemporary cultural anxieties, while mobile phones are being used as a platform for gendered software. Online, the digital divide cuts across more than just geographical lines providing a space for both the re-inscription and subversion of hegemonic masculinity in multiple ways. This module addresses intersections, advances and ecologies across an array of media technologies and associated practices and cultures.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 300 hours of work. This breaks down into about 22 hours of contact time and about 278 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2023/24. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum. We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.