Gender and Media Culture

Student Learning Outcomes, Goals, Objectives:

Students successfully completing this course will be able to:

Course Goals

• Develop independent and rigorous approaches to film interpretation.

• Introduce relationality and embodiment as central frameworks for analyzing cinematic form, representation, spectatorship, and lived experience.

• Encourage students to examine films from multiple perspectives rather than seeking a single fixed or authoritative interpretation.

• Promote transdisciplinary analysis by bringing film studies into conversation with history, philosophy, visual culture, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, literature, and other relevant areas of inquiry.

• Strengthen academic writing through sustained practice in observation, interpretation, argumentation, research, citation, and revision.

• Help students develop their own analytical voices while remaining attentive to context, complexity, ethical questions, and the limits of any single perspective.

Student Learning Outcomes

• Conduct close film analysis by identifying significant formal choices and explaining how those choices shape meaning, affect, and interpretation.

• Apply relational approaches to examine how bodies, spaces, histories, environments, technologies, institutions, and viewers interact within and around a film.

• Analyze embodiment by considering how films represent physical experience and how images, sounds, movement, rhythm, and duration affect the viewer.

• Interpret films transdisciplinarily by making meaningful connections among cinematic form, historical context, social experience, and concepts from more than one field of study.

• Compare analytical perspectives by identifying the assumptions, contributions, and limitations of different approaches to the same film or scene.

• Develop independent interpretations that move beyond plot summary and unsupported opinion toward focused, evidence-based arguments.

• Engage ambiguity and complexity by considering multiple plausible interpretations and explaining how different perspectives produce different readings.

• Write effective academic arguments that include a focused thesis, logical organization, close analysis of specific scenes, appropriate scholarly evidence, and accurate citation.

• Revise academic writing to improve clarity, organization, precision, evidence, and engagement with alternative interpretations.

• Reflect on their interpretive position by recognizing how personal experience, prior knowledge, cultural context, and assumptions influence the ways they view and analyze films.

Course Objectives

• Practice close analysis of cinematography, editing, sound, performance, mise-en-scène, narrative structure, and other formal elements.

• Examine how films construct bodies, relationships, identities, spaces, and social differences.

• Analyze how meaning emerges through relationships among characters, viewers, images, environments, histories, institutions, and technologies.

• Explore embodiment as both a represented experience and a condition of viewing, including sensation, affect, movement, vulnerability, visibility, and physical presence.

• Compare different theoretical and disciplinary approaches to the same film, sequence, or visual problem.

• Identify assumptions, values, hierarchies, and relations of power within cinematic representation and interpretation.

• Distinguish among description, summary, observation, interpretation, contextualization, and evaluation in academic writing.

• Develop clear and arguable thesis statements supported by close analysis and relevant scholarly sources.

• Consider perspectives that differ from their own and respond to disagreement through careful listening, questioning, and evidence-based discussion.

• Revise analytical writing in response to feedback, research, discussion, and further viewing.

Course Grading Information:

Activity/Performance Measure	Percentage/Points
Attendance and homework	15 points
Close Reading of a Film Sequence	15 points
Relational and Embodied Film Analysis	20 points
Comparative Perspectives Essay	20 points

Independent Transdisciplinary Film Analysis

30 points

Grading Scale

Percentage	Letter Grade
95-100	A
92-94	A-
89-91	B+
86-88	B
83-85	B-
80-82	C+
77-79	C
74-76	C-
71-73	D+
68-70	D
65-67	D-
64 & below	F

Attendance/Participation:

This course is designed as a discussion-based seminar and analytical workshop. Because much of the learning takes place through discussion, screenings, close analysis, in-class writing, collaborative activities, and peer feedback, regular attendance and active participation are essential.

Students are expected to:

• Attend class and arrive on time.

• Complete assigned readings and screenings before class.

• Participate respectfully in discussions, analytical activities, and peer-review exercises.

• Contribute thoughtfully to group work and in-class exercises.

• Submit exit tickets and other in-class assignments by the stated deadlines.

Attendance will be taken at each class meeting. Attendance is not assigned a separate percentage of the final grade. Instead, participation is demonstrated through preparation, engagement in discussions and analytical activities, contributions to peer feedback, and completion of weekly exit tickets. Simply being physically present does not constitute participation. Students are expected to engage actively with the course materials, consider perspectives that may differ from their own, and contribute to the shared learning environment.

If a student misses a class, they are responsible for contacting a classmate to obtain notes, announcements, and information about in-class activities. They are also responsible for completing all assigned readings, screenings, writing exercises, and other materials for that week. Students who miss class must still complete and submit the weekly exit ticket independently, based on the assigned readings and screenings, even if they were not present for the class discussion.

An absence does not excuse missed work or deadlines unless arrangements have been made in advance or the absence qualifies for an accommodation under university policy.

Students are allowed two unexcused absences during the semester without a grade penalty. Beginning with the third unexcused absence, the final course grade will be reduced by 0.5 percentage points for each additional unexcused absence. For example, a student earning a final grade of 92.0% who has four unexcused absences—two beyond the allowed limit—would receive a final grade of 91.0%.